OOMPH! – “The Early Works” (25-year classic)

OOMPH! – “The Early Works” (25-year classic)
OOMPH!
“1991-1996 The Early Works”
CD (Dynamica/RTD)

Since Oomph! are now signed to the major Virgin and have done quite well with their last work “Unrein”, the time is not bad for a best-of from the first four CDs of the three Wolfsburg. So the label Modern Music didn’t have to ask for long, and let the band itself choose the three greatest hits from the records “Oomph!”, “Sperm”, “Defekt” and “Wunschkind”.

Remixes of the groups Haujobb, Sabotage and Coptic Rain immortalized on the “Early Works”. And you have to admit that this is really a thoroughbred “Greatest Hits” album, because from the rather out of line EBM early works “Der neue Gott” and “Mein Herz”, to “Sex”, “Feiert das Kreuz”, “Ice-Coffin” or , “Wunschkind” from the Industrial Metal era, everything is represented that has ever been played up and down the clubs by this band. If you are only interested in the club hits, Oomph!’s “Early Works” will serve you well, and also the plagued DJ will be thankful that from now on he only has to carry one record instead of four. Even the three quite different remixes are pleasantly independent and crisp and do not seem – as so often – only like a caricature of the original song. Whether this is enough for the owner of the old records as a purchase argument, however, is still rather questionable. Finally, it should be noted that the boring artwork of the disc hardly suggests that such explosive, pathetic sound is hidden behind it. So it’s the inner values that count here.

Alexander Maciol

(The review was first published in the Orkus! issue September 1998)