Pop Music Reviews : Einsturzende Neubauten Trims Its Hard Rock

Einsturzende Neubauten has cut way back on the hardware. At the German band’s concert at Helter Skelter on Thursday--a rare L.A. appearance that was a big event for the local sonic underground--there was little of its trademark arsenal: No chain saws or air hammers, no incendiary activity. In fact, the group spoofed its pyrotechnic past, dousing the stage with fluid from a gasoline can and striking a match before revealing, “Is vater !” Funny guys.

There was one power-drill solo on the amplified spring set-up, a shower of sparks from a sanding wheel, some pipes to pound on the floor. But essentially, the veteran band showed that it doesn’t need heavy machinery to construct its harrowing environments--just a front line of bass, guitar and vocals, backed by an assortment of electronics. It helped that the beats, whether driving and danceable or slow and ominous, were the product of people hitting things with sticks rather than keying a computer.

Blixa Bargeld, looking like a tortured, punk-rock Baryshnikov, sang passionately in German, but no translation was necessary for the chaos and disintegration depicted in his four colleagues’ panoramas of pain: Pounding, industrial disco and jaw-dropping storms of whooshing, squealing noise. The demolition derby peaked with a fluttering rumble that put fissures in your collarbone, gripped your throat so you couldn’t swallow and seemed to lift you off the floor.

Einsturzende Neubauten (rough translation: “collapsing new buildings”) is the indisputable, defining force of its genre. Time and familiarity might have dulled the novelty, but in today’s world, its combination of Germanic torment and Dada defiance still rings true.