The traditional approach was not just to make sounds with conventional instruments, but to also include the post-modern sounds of the industrial revolution. Instead of the signature cement mixer and power tools faust is famous for, this version includes many who are engaged in adding varied degrees of other ʻindustrialʼ motifs as ingredients. This time the cast of characters returns to eight members, one more than the original lineup was previously in the days of Wümme. Those members are Zappi Diermaier (Faust) himself on drums, Elke Drapatz (monobeat original) on drum effects, Gunther Wüsthoff (Faust) on spieluhr (music box), Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM) on bass and guitar, Andrew Unruh (Einstürzende Neubauten) on metal percussion, Uwe Bastiansen (Stadtfisch Flex) on guitar and samples, Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten) on guitar and loops and Sonja Kosche on self-made instruments, harp and ventilator. Every ʻvoiceʼ heard by each artist contributing to this incarnation of faust is heard clearly. Instead of an amassing miasmic gurgle as of previous, each artist comes through with distinct individual voices that allow the listener to distinguish what each Musician is sonically responsible for in an unintended symphonic fashion.
"faust are a cornerstone of rock as a whole, if only for the innumerable array of artists he branded in the years to come. Prescient and omnivorous music: faust manage to amalgamate rock, progressive, jazz, folk, minimalism, noise, electronic, proto-industrial, pop, and modern classical with an ease equal only to their irreverence. They hadn't sold their soul to the devil; they had only lent it to chaos and madness, receiving in exchange the ability to construct "terrible" music from every point of view, an expressionist collage with dark tragic hues. Their "ideology of the absurd", grafted onto a senseless harmonic structure and full of "concrete" backdrops, will quickly lead popular music towards ultimate sublimation, towards the point of no return. After them, nothing will be the same as before, and, therefore, it is no exaggeration to consider them, together with the Velvet Underground (and perhaps more than them), the most influential and creative band of all time. Between new wave, industrial, and post-rock, there are countless bands that have learned the lessons of these anarchic and irreverent saboteurs. Today, still led by Werner "Zappi" Diermaier, live faust are capable of evoking the still devastating power of those extraordinary inventions that changed music forever in those years." Diego Loporcaro (Bari, IT 10/2023)
