As Einsturzende Neubauten are touring the world in celebration of their 30th year anniversary (although the US dates have just been canceled due to visa issues), Argentinian Tacu4ra Records is revering Einsturzende with a 15 track compilation tribute of bands from across the globe covering Neubauten tunes. Bands hailing from Brasil, Chile, Germany, Argentina, Spain, UK, Colombia and France flocked to the label to rise to the ambitious task of paying tribute to one of the greatest industrial bands of all times.
Overall, the level of the tracks is pretty high although the bands are all up & coming. Lots of female singers somehow. Some bands from the latin-speaking continent even courageously chose tunes with german lyrics. My favorite covers are probably "The Garden" by Spain's Oblique or "Sabrina" by UK's ElectroXcentric, but in general the covers I usually like the most are the ones that sound the furthest away from the original (it's easy to copy, it's harder to make a copy sound original!). Some bands that really deviate from the original version are Argentina's Lastrax with their techno-dance version of "Youme&meyou", "Armenia"'s sadly out of phase power-glitch-breakcore version by Colombian Nina Terrorista & STH, Spain's Vondage's "Haus der Luege" power-noise-industrial-goth version and others. To tell you the truth, EN is so original sounding that copying them is so hard most bands attempting it would end up sounding different that the original anyway!
I applaud the label for coming up with this concept and for the bands that decided to participate. It would be great to see a similar kind of tribute to EN by more established bands that have an instantly recognizable sound, because that's when you really know how much of their own a band has put into it (it's harder to make that assessment when you don't know any of the bands). Nothing of what I am saying though should take merits away from this compilation. Everything down to the art work is very professional here. Great idea and great execution overall!