After Hacke’s Exit, Einstürzende Neubauten Introduce a Bassist Born the Year Haus der Lüge Came Out

The Berlin group has spent over four decades building a reputation on controlled demolition. But the most telling detail about the current state of Einstürzende Neubauten might be this: their newest member, bassist Josefine Lukschy, was born in 1989. The same year the band released Haus der Lüge, their fifth studio album. At the National Theatre of the Netherlands in The Hague, ahead of a closing set at the Rewire festival, Blixa Bargeld sat next to Lukschy on a backstage sofa and gave his first joint interview with another band member in years.

The addition marks the first permanent lineup change since Jochen Arbeit and Rudolph Moser joined in 1997. It follows the departure last April of Alexander Hacke, who had been with Einstürzende Neubauten since shortly after their founding in 1980. Hacke’s exit statement pointed to a divergence of “basic standards, personally and professionally, on every level,” adding that he was stepping away to uphold his “core value of integrity.” Bargeld describes the situation with less friction. He mentions Hacke’s deepening focus on other projects, including hackedepicciotto, the duo he shares with his wife, artist and Love Parade co-founder Danielle de Picciotto. The diminishing availability, Bargeld says, was the practical break. “Alexander kept saying he didn’t have the time when we wanted to make a new record.”

That time pressure pushed the band toward the method behind Rampen, their 2024 album. Improvised passages from 2022 live shows became the foundation. The title track opened with Bargeld’s line, “Everything already written, everything already said,” which could be read as an ending. Bargeld dismisses that possibility outright. “Take it for granted, we’ll make another record,” he said.

Finding a replacement for Hacke, who had also served as musical director during live performances, was handled quietly. Neubauten invited four musicians to audition before settling on Lukschy. The festival run this spring and summer offers the first sustained look at how the new configuration functions. On stage in The Hague, the shopping trolley, pipes, drills and metal sheets were still present. That vocabulary has defined the band’s industrial language long enough to influence Nine Inch Nails and Swans, even as their own sound shifted toward something more melodic two decades ago. A younger player inside a legacy this dense could feel like an intruder. But when a band has spent 45 years finding music in collapsing structures, absorbing new weight is just another form of engineering.