Unheilig - Lichter der Stadt (2012) (6,5/10)

UNHEILIG are a phenomenon that is quite hard to explain to all those that are not familiar with German lyrics. The band around its charismatic and sympathetic singer “Der Graf” whose true identity remains mysterious arose from the depths of the German Gothic underground scene, the so-called “Schwarze Szene”. Musically, the band mixes hard Industrial riffs with some Dark Wave sounds and a lot of catchy moments influenced by Electro Pop and Rock. What counts most for the band are the very authentic, emotional and personal lyrics. The band often sings about personal experiences in their everyday life by employing a very positive attitude face to struggles such as the death of family members, the fear of getting older or the search for a sense of life. Anybody could at one moment or the other identify herself or himself with these empathic lyrics. That’s why the band really works well in concert and is less spectacular on a regular studio release.

Let me give one personal example I would like to share with you. A few years ago, I had a girlfriend that I had known during an exchange program and we had to say goodbye to each other when I went back to school in my homeland and when her vacancy and her visit in my country was over, too. Even though we were young and separated by distance for two hard years, I never thought about leaving her and we kept in contact. Finally, I moved to her country after facing a lot of challenges and we were united again. Through this time, we listened often to the UNHEILIG track “Astronaut”. It’s a song about an astronaut that is lost in space and misses the love of his life. He watches the small and tiny planet Earth and expresses that space may separate him from his girlfriend but that he is emotionally always close to her. When I write these lines, I still have tears in my eyes even though I’m even not with my girlfriend anymore since quite a while and happy with being a single right now. That’s what UNHEILIG is about: authentic emotions. Imagine a crowd of several thousand people singing as loud as they can: “I’m here, next to you – your astronaut”. These kinds of songs simply send shivers down my spines. UNHEILIG are not about listening to music. They are about feeling the message.

The band started to get more and more popular through the last years and even managed to create the most successful German record ever with the release of “Grosse Freiheit” that was for a total of 23 weeks at the top of the charts. The band got more pop orientated as time went by and today, you could meet sixteen year old young disco chicks as well as 70-year-old retired men that saw the band on television during the concerts that unite entire generations and families. While this sudden success of the band is well merited, they have become more and more controversial by being quite present in the medias, by working together with artists and musicians they would not have invited before and by rather playing their own arena shows instead of remaining faithful to the growing Gothic festivals that have made UNHEILIG what they are today.

Musically, the new record can be described as a copy of its predecessor “Grosse Freiheit”. The record opens with an atmospheric introduction and ends with an epic instrumental epilogue just as the album released two years ago. In between those two tracks, you can find 14 tracks that are mostly calm and include more and more piano and string passages as well as laid-back electronic beats. The main focus remains on the lyrics and only a couple of harder Neue Deutsche Härte tracks can be found on this release. The band didn’t change its formula at all. Commercially, the idea worked out even though the record didn’t become as popular as the predecessor. Artistically, the record though lacks of courage and innovation. It doesn’t mean that the lyrics are not authentic anymore as the band leader still stands behind every word that he sings. But we have already heard similar topics on the previous two or even three records and this release would have needed some fresh blood.

This fresh blood comes along with two collaborations that work surprisingly well. We have the laid back electronic ballad “Wie wir waren” that features chilling guest vocals by the young and quite promising pop singer ANDREAS BOURANI. There also is the atmospheric and overall decent dreamy half ballad “Zeitreise” with the participation of the famous but controversial Rhythm & Blues musician XAVIER NAIDOO who often writes somewhat pathetic tracks about philosophical and religious topics which don’t seem to fit at all to a band with Gothic origins and a band name that means “Unholy” in English. The track is though a very decent positive surprise and the two quite different voices fit together in a truly harmonic way.

Apart of these two welcome experiments, the few harder songs add an edgy and fresh feeling to the album. Let’s cite the quite atmospheric “Feuerland” and the heaviest track “Eisenmann” that sounds a lot like RAMMSTEIN but that might despite this flaw become an instant live classic as highlights.

On the negative side, we also have too many calm ballads around the same old and worn out topics. The single “So wie du warst” is another sequel to the previous hit singles “An deiner Seite” as well as the breakthrough track “Geboren um zu leben” that talk about the loss of a beloved person and how one should keep the good memories alive and live every instant of one’s life intensively. The lyrics are somewhat redundant and the song structure is too predictable to convince. Songs like “Tage wie Gold” and “Ein guter Weg” are even worse and feature cheesy lyrics about living the best days of one’s life and remind me of old German Schlager bands such as DIE FLIPPERS. This kind of lyrics may sound authentic coming from an old man in his seventies but not from a once energetic band leader in his forties.

In the end, there are a lot of lights and shades on this release. Two great collaborations and a couple of heavier track save this release but the band should definitely take the precious time to reinvent itself for the next record. The album is quite commercial and rarely rock or metal related but still way better than I would have expected before. Fans of the last UNHEILIG albums should not miss this new release even though the album is a little bit too redundant from time to time.

(Online September 10, 2012)