From an aesthetic perspective, the online home of Berlin's native sons must get qualified as "cool." At the home page, a collage of images is silhouetted on a suitably grey background. Flash technology powers the horizontally spinning site map which changes speeds and direction as you mouse over the choices. An on-off choice for sound lets you hear a murky, ambient track as you surf and read. A majority of the site is also bilingual, English and Deutsch.

The singular best spot on the site is the spectacular biography and band chronology that runs through 1998. The tone is that of a certain high-brow artiness that, for me, was alternately amusing, thought-provoking and freakin' pretentious, but a great read nonetheless. ("This [Neubauten's music] is stimulus overkill, a superfluity of decibels, an overdose of emphasis -- with the aim of bringing chaos into the well-loved order of mainstream taste.") Annotated with numerous quotes from band members, primarily from the seemingly omnipresent Blixa Bargeld (also a Bad Seed and solo artist), the tale traces the band's earliest ethic of using "objets trouvés," usually from construction sites -- simulatenously giving birth to the musical term "industrial" and a commentary on the band's name which translates to Collapsing New Buildings.

The early years were without a blueprint as the band dispensed with such typical popular musical trappings as set lists and mastery of instruments, to say nothing of traditional instruments themselves. Last year, Neubauten celebrated their twentieth anniversary with a new release, Silence is Sexy (get the feeling they're in on the joke?) and a clangorous anniversary concert. The three-plus hour celebration was bilingually narrated by Bargeld and featured a set list partially built from an online poll. The concert is hosted by a German site called Open Video Archive and on my wimpy 56K dial-up rig at home I had no problems with either sound or video. A personal first! Will they please share the secret.

For some reason, the biography seems to have been written for the site launch and not altered since. Other parts of the site are more up-to-date, particularly the discography which includes non-Neubauten projects of band members. If perusing this makes you feel like spending some hard-earned Euros, there is a commerce area with products that made me laugh out loud -- not what straightfaced Teutons are known for. An extensive, though unfortunately not complete, record shop includes as much non-Neubauten product at the expense of band releases. A quick check of Amazon US and Deutchland showed as much, if not more selections. However, that was all trumped by the opportunity to purchase either a hip flask or Zippo lighter with the EN stick figure. Who knew Germans were so damn funny.