KMFDM’s original glory: Naïve re-released

The KMFDM album Naïve is by far their best album. It’s also extremely difficult to get an original 1991 vintage CD or LP. The album, published by Wax Trax!, was taken off the market very quickly after it was released because of a licensing issue. The song “Liebesleid” on side 2 contains a sample taken from the opening of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana. The sample was never cleared, and Wax Trax pulled the record. It was a damn shame because it’s such a great album.

KMFDM chose to re-record the entire album – essentially a remix album – and released it as Naïve: Hell To Go. Instead of the bright orange, white, and black cover art, it was in a shade of green. This remix album of course didn’t match up to the brilliance of the original album, but copies of the original version could be found on eBay and other places online for $40 or $50 or more.

A little under a year ago, Metropolis published a new “edited” version of Naïve. The cool thing about the edit is that it contains the original album in its glory – minus the Orff sample on Liebesleid. If you’ve never heard the album before, you won’t miss it. And even if you have, the track doesn’t lose that much, and frankly, it’s just freaking great that it has finally seen the light of day again.

I had been meaning to write about it for a while because I happened upon it at the iTunes Music Store. Amazon.com has a high-bitrate MP3 (non-DRM) download of the album for under $10.

A lot of that late ’80s / early ’90s industrial music sounds dated to my ears now, but Naïve still sounds great. It’s a classic album that unfortunately disappeared from sight shortly after release. I’ve still got my vinyl LP – with the Orff sample intact – but definitely check out the remastered CD.