Berlin’s own Industrial music legends Einstürzende Neubauten have announced that they will be celebrating their looming 40th anniversary with a brand new album and tour titled The Year Of The Rat—whose name references the symbolic animal of 2020 in the Chinese zodiac.
The German band have also announced on their official website their next European tour in promotion of the record, which will make stops in their home of Deutschland, as well as Portugal, Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Switzerland, and England.
The new album will be the group’s first true album work since 2007 (not including 2014’s World War I concept piece Lament.
Einstürzende Neubauten are Blixa Bargeld, Alexander Hacke, NU Unruh, Jochen Arbeit and Rudi Moser—a group of musicians who have comprised this lineup for the past two decades.
Read the band’s official tour and album announcement below:
NEW ALBUM + EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN TOUR 2020
“After more than 12 years, Einsturzende Neubauten’s long-awaited new studio album is finally going to be released and will be performed live on an upcoming extensive tour called THE YEAR OF THE RAT.
The album and the tour mark the quintessence of the band’s output, opening yet another unexpected door in 40 years of ongoing sound research by a very experimental group of musicians around Blixa BargeId, consisting of Alexander Hacke, NU Unruh, Jochen Arbeit, and Rudi Moser. The Neubauten tour in the band’s own impressive and unrivaled style presents the results of these latest musical innovations.
This band, like nearly no other, has managed to create a musical cosmos. It has, in fact, built up its own genre by uniquely combining edgy souls with sophisticated poetry.
Appropriately, in the Year of the Rat – the symbol of ingenuity and versatility according to the Chinese zodiac – the band is not resting on the laurels of its last four decades. Instead, it curiously continues to exPlore everythIng that the sound universe has to yield, with one eye on the future and with boundless playfulness.”
Find Einstürzende Neubauten Tour Dates Here
*Correction: Initial reports had indicated that the album was titled “The Year Of The Rat”, based on the copy above. The band have updated their Instagram to clarify that “The Year Of The Rat” refers only to the tour itself.