My review: Xmal Deutschland - Fetish

 

XMAL DEUTSCHLAND- FETISCH

1983

LP-Fetisch (CAD302):

Qual, Geheimnis, Young Man, In Der Nacht, Orient, Hand InHand, Kaempfen,

Danthem, Boomerang, Stummes Kind

Genuflection 

Silence

A silent prayer on our knees ...

It is 1980s West Germany that speaks to us, we need to be careful, over there nothing is taken lightly, everything is serious ...

I address my review to young people: you have tons of things to learn from our Mom Anja and her Hamburg family ...

Xmal arrives and it is a detonation, fragments that spread in the dark sky that from Hamburg reaches the rest of the world ...

To call this an album is an understatement, by the way: FETISCH is a book and the pages do not turn yellow because talent does not know the influence of time ... FETISCH is the Bible for people like me who was lucky enough to listen to it six months after its release. From that point on it was always and only devotion towards those sounds, those references that turned their gaze to the Land of Albion, but then, as true Germans, they assembled everything with the perfection which is typical over there, where perfection is the starting point. ..

And it is a saber, a Wave metal that enters the skin, we find here songs that are the Olympus of beauty, a collection of that side of  New Wave which was able to combine rhythm, power, style, subtlety and more or less perceptible references to become a dance of the black heart in the nights of a city called Hamburg with its eyes open...

This album is the father of a generation that has copied it without restraint, because not having the same talent it could only do that ...

FETISCH arrived at the moment when the soul claimed beauty, a timeless album that still amazes and surprises ...

To the young people that I mentioned earlier I say that it is necessary to show gratitude for these songs that are the lung of the 80's, dark, extreme exaggerated but valid as never before ...

An album that comes to surprise the inept and the foolish: here the sound is the Sovereign and the songs their subject ...

There is sadness, there is movement of the soul that seduces without escape, the first album that, immature, shakes and leads us to maximum satisfaction.

Subtle arrangements, including bass, drums and guitars that are the altar on which Anja stands in all her immensity ...  it is devotion, it is a sparkle, it is a multiple orgasm to be the listeners of her unique voice, the cry of my heart explodes in its intense and seductive ability to make us become stupid, stoned by such a great skill ...

Xmal Deutschland was the band that changed the rules, the game destroyed because distracted by the artistic lesson of an album that is an absolute masterpiece, recognized by fools only a few years later ...

But the New Wave people of the time, attentive and faithful, immediately understood that they have before themselves an album that shook, killed ancient convictions, it was no longer just music ...

A debut preceded by some songs that like a stain from the silent Hamburg expanded in the industrious and capable Germany to get to take root especially in England, in France and at  the Nordic countries ...

Soon some lovers of that extraordinary album would become musicians, sacking the Fetisch Treasure because nothing else could be done ...

If there is an album from which we can learn the ABC of beauty is just that, there is no escape, it is impossible to run away from it.

QUAL

The post punk finally takes leave, he greets everyone with QUAL, a song in which the last gleams show themselves, but then it is pure Wave, inlays of German electronics take over, nervous guitars supported by an equally nervous drumming, an imposing bass, a timid keyboard which make everything sturdy and then HER, Our Priestess ANJA, who with her voice bewitches us, imprisoning us in the black and dark cave ...

GEHEIMNIS

Here it is the Batcave mixed with the German impulses which becomes a compact, aggressive, suggestive, cathartic, obsessive combo ... it is the dance of the senses that beats its head in front of this mixture of sounds that, ridden by the voice of the Priestess, merge in us, we are drunk with perfection, a lesson in style ...

YOUNG MAN

The sound darkens, the guitars scratch the skin, a keyboard that suspends, a bass that is a flight that flies low in our belly, while the Priestess spreads the dust with her voice drenched in blood and clouds ...

IN DER NACHT

Hold on, hold on I said!

Here everything entangles, we are open mouths in which seduction, rapture and ecstasy enters to change us forever, this is the celebration of the talent of inventiveness, sighs and screams arrive with a keyboard that is sacred, we are at Mass, the Holy Mass of Devotion, our listening is a prayer ... A song with a strong sensorial impact, an emotional bath that hurls us to the ground, pushing our faces down and our hearts upwards ...

ORIENT

Stunned, engulfed by compulsive tribalism, an introduction that buries us, we are at the center of the earth, we are worms ... Xmal with this song hits us, launches the attack, a song that develops its macabre dance until we cry, losing control, and here the Priestess does not forgive, her singing becomes Ancient, the persuasiveness that becomes art, we are in her jugular ... meanwhile the band insists on shaking us, oriental carpets in the keyboard, Anglo-Saxon matrix guitar, a bass that it is mantra, drums that are a chisel.

HAND IN HAND

And here we sink, the breath is a memory, Hand in Hand is the coma, the injection that anaesthetises us, it's a rarefied, biblical song, lit candles, the Priestess reveals her talent, we see the light, we go crazy, we are not more able to resist.

KAEMPFEN

Drums like rocks that disintegrate, guitars which crowd the gloomy place, the Priestess sits on her throne with a simple but powerful keyboard, her singing opens and what are we? We are nerves exploding by their glow ... and we dance like zombies in the cave ...

DANTHEM

It arrives slowly ... and we are faced with a new exercise of infinite beauty, only fools will continue to compare the XMAL to the Banshees and the Priestess to Siouxsie ...: they are different, open your ears and your hearts, come on, you can do it ... DANTHEM is the XMAL sound refuge, unreachable, violent and full of decadence ...

BOOMERANG

Acid in our veins here, we are bodies in a liquefaction condition, this song is the key to reading a debut album that is about to end and it does it with a song that is the synthesis of their sound DNA, simplicity and research come together, while the voice of the Priestess presents itself with low tones, a rope around our throats, a boomerang that hits us on the forehead ...

STUMMES KIND

The Mass is ended, but what peace, are you crazy?

XMAL and the Priestess take leave to kill us all with vocal and sound groans, screams that break us up, please remember, we must genuflect in adoration. An album that ends without missing the last pearl, here the New Wave shows the Passport for the future, we are warned, XMAL does not grant a  chance ... we are at the apotheosis, we are drops of blood that tremble in front of STUMMES KIND, the mother of the sound of the times ahead!

Alex Dematteis 

Musicshockworld 

Salford