Nina Hagen - NunSexMonkRock - 1982

 my rating: 5/5

Nina Hagen released this interesting album in 1982. It was her first solo effort, after two more punk-oriented records she did with her band as "Nina Hagen Band". She moved to United States, after her residence in (formerly) East Berlin, Poland, and West Germany. It was also her first english album, as she did her previous ones in her native German language. Although, she is known for mixing several languages in one song.

The album is actually a mix of punk, opera, funk and reggae. Her songs speaks about religion, Soviet Union, masturbation, UFOs and about herself. It's one of those records that you usually love or hate after listening to it. I guess that you can't stay netrual to it. I fell in love with it instantly after my first listening session in april 2010.

The first song on the album, the great 'Antiworld' is also one of the greatest songs in entire Nina's career.

And as far as I'm concerned, it's also her first song about Jesus, The Holy Bible, and Devil. The song is very good produced and it sounds very fresh even today. And Nina's opera-trained voice is captured ultimately good. After an almost-5-minute session with 'Antiworld', the music is getting louder and louder, and then the silence comes...quite nice feeling, isn't it? We can here some whistling in the background, which means that 'Smack Jack' is coming ahead. The song is sang in a typical Nina-Hagen-strange-manner, but it captures an universal Anti-drug message (remember! Smack ist dreck, stop it oder verreck) which makes it an another good point of the record. Then we have 'Taitschi-Tarot'. Is it a song? I wouldn't say so. It's more like a Mantra or something. In my opinion, the weakest point of the whole long-play. But hey! There comes the most eargasmic and ultimate NunSexMonkRock experience for me! typical rock-song 'Dread Love', 'Future Is Now', almost psychedelic 'Dr. Art', crazy 'Iki Maska', very raw 'Born in XiXax' and my favourite ones: 'Cosma Shiva' dedicated to Nina's daughter Cosma Shiva Hagen born in 1981 and 'UFO'. All those songs are just incredibly fantastic, they are showing the unique, crazy and quite scary view of Nina's world, her own place on this planet and her belief. 

Unlike her later releases such as 'Angstlos' from 1983 or 'Nina Hagen in Ekstase' from 1985, you won't find here any disco-oriented songs and any other 70's-mainstream-related things here. Also the synthesizers aren't overused. All we got here is some good post-punk-avant-garde music, with some guitars, drums and some mysterious synths in the background. Actually it's Nina Hagens singin' style what makes this album such a interesting position in any music lover collection.