For those who have never been granted the pleasure to be introduced to Die Krupps: it was/is a trio from Dusseldorf, Germany, who was amongst the leading representatives of the electro-metal genre, way before somebody else started calling it industrial-metal. What set(s) them apart from more famous bands like Ministry or Nine Inch Nails is that they were really an EBM band at heart but had this enormous guitar riffs to back up their electronic tracks. I used to be a huge Die Krupps fan back in the days and in my opinion they represent one of the historical and pioneering bands of that genre and somehow never enjoyed the level of popularity they deserved. I used to buy all their records and singles, every time they came out. Then they broke up and singer Jurgen Engler formed DKay.com (www.dkay.de) and I kind of lost touch with them for a while. While browsing through the shelves of the Rasputina record store in Berkley, CA, I found this CD and bought it right away. "I" was originally released in 1992. It was called "I" ("one") because it featured a ground-breaking electronic version of Metallica's ballad "One" (later Die Krupps released a "Tribute to Metallica" EP album of all electronic versions of some of Metallica's songs) and also because it was the first in a trilogy that included 1993 "II - The Final Option" and 1996 "III - Odyssey of Mind". This new double CD version of "I" (released August 2008) has the same art work as the old one and brings you a digitally remastered version of the original album (a classic in my collection) also featuring five early demo tracks from back in 1990. An additional CD offers a remixed version of the same album with the addition of three unreleased non-guitar bonus tracks.
Obviously you need to be a real Die Krupps die hard fan to enjoy listening to the same album twice (basically the new mixes are very similar really, which is almost a shame because I would have preferred the "remix" CD to be remixes by other people and not just new mixes of the old - even though they already have a couple of remix albums in their discography) but nevertheless it could be a great introduction to Die Krupps for somebody that's not familiar with them (although I should say that there are a couple of best-of's available for that purpose as well). Well I had to buy it for myself and I am enjoying listening to this stuff again after so many years. I grew up with this record so it's kind of hard for me not to like it, I know/remember every note and guitar chord so I can detect some of the subtle differences in the mixes. For those that were never Krupps fans I would still recommend it, as long as you do yourself the service of also buying one of their more recent albums to get a better idea of what they have been all about throughout their almost 20 year long record-making career.