One of the great things about coming of age in the 1980s - at least as remembered through the sepia-toned haze of middle age - was that every high school had one really cute punk girl. My school's cute punk girl was a year older than me, but because my school was so small, we managed to become friends. I would loan her my Dead Kennedys and Billy Bragg albums, and she would loan me her Clash and Savage Republic albums. One day, she supplied me with an odd EP by a German goth band called Xmal Deutschland. While it wasn't exactly love at first listen, I liked it enough that I picked up one of their CDs that spring when I was in Munich on vacation with my family.
Augenblick is a pretty representative sample of Xmal Deutschland in those days. Intentionally monotonous and repetitive rhythms and lyrics weave a post-industrial tapestry of barely contained angst. Really the perfect soundtrack for a misfit teenager in those days of the Cold War, the disintegrating family structure, and economic uncertainty.
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