Stephen Thomas Erlewine,  All Music Guide

Reinventions rarely come as thorough and effective as Achtung Baby, an album that completely changed U2's sound and style. The crashing, unrecognizable distorted guitars that open "Zoo Station" are a clear signal that U2 have traded their Americana pretensions for post-modern, contemporary European music. Drawing equally from Bowie's electronic, avant-garde explorations of the late '70s and the neo-psychedelic sounds of the thriving rave and Madchester club scenes of early '90s England, Achtung Baby sounds vibrant and endlessly inventive. Unlike their inspirations, U2 rarely experiment with song structures over the course of the album. Instead, they use the thick dance beats, swirling guitars, layers of effects and found sounds to break traditional songs out of their constraints, revealing the tortured emotional core of their songs with the hyper-loaded arrangements. In such a dense musical setting, it isn't surprising that U2 have abandoned the political for the personal on Achtung Baby, since the music, even with its inviting rhythms, is more introspective than anthemic. Bono has never been as emotionally naked as he is on Achtung Baby, creating a feverish nightmare of broken hearts and desperate loneliness; unlike other U2 albums, it's filled with sexual imagery, much of it quite disturbing, and it ends on a disquieting note. Few bands as far into their career as U2 have recorded an album as adventurous or fulfilled their ambitions quite as successfully as they do on Achtung Baby, and the result is arguably their best album.

Daniel Durchholz, Amazon.com

"I'm ready / Ready for what's next," Bono announces at the outset of Achtung Baby, the album that proved the so-called "band of the '80s" was capable of blazing into the '90s by replacing its flag-waving arena-rock stance with screaming synths, clubby rhythms, and industrial skronk. The group advances its sound without losing accessibility on "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," "Even Better Than the Real Thing," and "Mysterious Ways," while pushing the envelope a bit more on "The Fly," "Zoo Station," and "Acrobat." The moody ballad "One" is arguably the finest song the band has produced, full of sorrow, compassion, and hope all at the same time.

Beth Bessmer, Amazon.com

Achtung, Baby is U2's christening voyage into the postmodern, a brave venture into unknown territory and a brilliant musical transformation for the band. The album is packed with just as much passion as previous albums, but the lyrics are much more emotionally poetic and far less political. Musically, the tracks are a metropolis of intoxicating dance beats and lush guitar riffs. "The Fly" opens with guitarist The Edge's trademark reverberations cutting through the opening verse like a speedboat slicing through choppy water; on "Mysterious Ways," Bono's one-man gospel choir belts out the praises of an adored woman.

Caitlin Moran, Amazon.co.uk

Even though it was greeted at the time as U2's reinvention as a dance/rock post-modern revue, with a bit of post-Wall Berlin thrown in for luck, distance now shows that Achtung Baby is in fact a suite of extraordinarily perceptive and tender songs on the breakdown of the Edge's marriage. "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses", "The Fly", "One", "So Cruel"--it's as if Bono shuffled into the studio and said "Er, Edge. Was it a bit like this?" And the Edge wept until his hat became soggy. U2 fans will argue until the end of "Until The End Of The World" which is the best album in the band's exemplary canon, but with Bono sounding like a scorched St Paul, the Edge augmenting those electrified sheets of sound with deft funk-flicks and producer Brian Eno keeping it spacious, hot and holy, chances are, this is it.

U2: Bono (vocals, guitar); The Edge (guitar, keyboards, background vocals); Adam Clayton (bass); Larry Mullen (drums).
Additional personnel: Daniel Lanois (guitar); Brian Eno (keyboards).

Recorded at Hansa Ton Studios, Berlin, Germany; Dog Town, S.T.S. and Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin, Ireland.

A conscious reaction against "the myth of U2" (as guitarist The Edge put it), ACHTUNG, BABY was the result of two years work in Berlin and Dublin. Attempting to withdraw from the musical world and "re-invent" U2, the band secluded itself in studios, writing hours of material that was whittled down to 12 songs. The band's secrecy about the project aroused so much curiosity that early master tapes were stolen and bootlegged in Europe.
ACHTUNG, BABY reflects the band's interest in differing musical sounds. The quasi-industrial opening to "Zoo Station" and the hip-hop influence in "Mysterious Ways," define U2 as a group of musicians determined to challenge themselves and their audience.

Steve Ciabattoni, CMJ New Music First, issue 262, November 29, 1991

With a lot less hype, but with as much anticipation as Use Your Illusion I & II, U2 releases Achtung Baby, an eerie, adventurous and powerful pop record. In a way it's the prettiest, most polished disc U2 has recorded, but it's also the weirdest - full of wild beats, blown level guitar noise and other experiments (maybe Eno forced them to listen to hours of Stockhausen while they were taping in Berlin). The result, thanks to Lanois, Eno and Lillywhite, is the union of the beautiful moodiness of The Unforgettable Fire with the bratty attitude of Boy. It was worth waiting three years to hear The Edge tackle more sounds, from even spacier rhythm chords to downright funky jams. On "Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World," Bono sings the lines with such pure phrasing that you're convinced he's finally caught hold of those black soul muses he's been chasing for a decade. And with near-industrial vocals on "Zoo Station," you can hear he's not just satisfied with crooning. Even Adam Clayton's bass playing wakes up to go on the attack and stands in front of tracks like "Acrobat" and "Mysterious Ways." Like R.E.M.'s latest, Achtung Baby should dispel any notion that popularity and maturity has made them "uncool." Danke Schφn Baby: All the above plus "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," "One," "So Cruel" and "The Fly."

Mat Snow, Q Magazine

With each new U2 album there has been a growing buzz of anticipation, a sense of event stoked by the way the band has stamped each new offering with the imprimatur of Resounding Significance. The governing theme - if not "concept" - of War was, well, war; The Unforgettable Fire, the shadow of the bomb; The Joshua Tree, the ghosts of absent friends; and Rattle And Hum, the ancestral voices of rock itself. But the very title Achtung Baby strives for lack of significance and - just as insignificantly - the sleeve itself is not the usual single cinematic image of heroic import but rather a grid of snapshots evoking, if a little cleanly, the slapdash glory that was Robert Frank's artwork for the Stones' Exile On Main Street. So informal, indeed, is the new U2 pose that - quick before it's banned -you get to see Adam Clayton's willy. Don't be fooled though. This is U2's heaviest album to date. And best. Lyrics have always been the band's weakest suit, and U2 remain no stranger to such infelicities as "your gypsy heart", "your salt water kisses" and even "your wild horses" -all within the space of a single song (Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses). Achtung Baby commences with the romantic urban rush of Zoo Station, which intensifies with the transparently desperate eulogising of Even Better Than The Real Thing; but by the closing Love Is Blindness one would have to be an iron-clad Romeo indeed to find an ember of heart-warming solace. Over the LP's near-hour duration what accumulates -despite the odd stab at wackiness like the elderly "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" in Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World - is an all-pervasive mood of love blighted and betrayed, of judgment clouded by obsession, and of sight only restored with a legacy of bitterness. The End Of The World tries for U2's habitual mystical gloss -it imagines the conversation between Jesus and his betrayer Judas in the Garden Of Gethsemane - but maybe the true inspiration for these songs of love and hate lies closer to home. Bono does not take sole credit for the lyrics as has been the case recently; meanwhile The Edge split up from his wife Aislinn last Easter. What a bummer this record could have been. But, produced again by Daniel Lanois (with the occasional assistance of the Canadian's mentor, Brian Eno, and their regular predecessor Steve Lillywhite), U2 get their payload of blues airborne with music of drama, depth, intensity and, believe it, funkiness. The Edge's guitar is more than ever a superbly flighted aerial sprite of gleaming, streamlined rhythm play and a stylistic range that draws as much from the wah-wah psychedelicists of the Hendrix school as the industrial-strength calculated savagery of a cheesed-off Robert Fripp. Messrs Mullen and Clayton, meanwhile, have clearly clocked that Funky Drummer rhythm as appropriated by The Stone Roses and their disciples, and the dub-deep sound thus recorded is so subterranean it will give your speakers stretch-marks. Bono's singing has been flexible and assured for quite some time -and his hymnal descant over the main melody works better than ever -but could he, perhaps unconsciously, be imitating David Sylvian on the verse and Martin Fry on the chorus of Mysterious Ways? His quieter moments - One, Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around the World - have never been so persuasively tender, but where the songs are weakest, as in Ultra Violet (Light My Way), Bono falls back on his old habit of trying to be "inspirational" by banging up the heat from simmer to meltdown between the verse and chorus. Far more successful is So Cruel, where he explores that old seam of male pop heartache also mined by Bruce Springsteen, echoing Gene Pitney and The Walker Brothers of No Regrets. You suddenly remember that it was Bono of all people who penned and produced that loveliest of Roy Orbison's swansongs, She's A Mystery To Me. Which, in a nutshell, could have been Achtung Baby's alternative title. It's U2's Blood On The Tracks, their Tunnel Of Love. For their sakes, here's hoping they won't have to get this sort of record out of their systems again.

Elysa Gardner, Rolling Stone, issue 621, 1991

Having spent a good part of the Eighties as one of the most iconic bands in the world, U2 hardly needs to resort to a cheekily absurd title to draw attention to its first album in three years. Then again, subtlety has never been one of the group's virtues. In its early days and in its basic musical approach – a guitar, a few chords and the truth, to paraphrase one of Bono's more garish assertions – U2 fell in with other young bands that cropped up in the wake of punk. But U2 immediately distinguished itself with its huge sound and an unabashed idealism rooted in spiritual aspiration. At their best, these Irishmen have proven – just as Springsteen and the Who did – that the same penchant for epic musical and verbal gestures that leads many artists to self-parody can, in more inspired hands, fuel the unforgettable fire that defines great rock & roll.

At their worst ... well, the half-live double album Rattle and Hum (1988) – the product of U2's self-conscious infatuation with American roots music – wasn't a full-out disaster, but it was misguided and bombastic enough to warrant concern. With Achtung Baby, U2 is once again trying to broaden its musical palette, but this time its ambitions are realized. Working with producers who have lent discipline and nuance to the group's previous albums – Daniel Lanois oversees the entire album, with Brian Eno and Steve Lillywhite assisting on a number of songs – U2 sets out to experiment rather than pay homage. In doing so, the band is able to draw confidently and consistently on its own native strengths.

Most conspicuous among the new elements that U2 incorporates on Achtung are hip-hop-derived electronic beats. The band uses these dance-music staples on about half of the album's twelve tracks, often layering them into guitar heavy mixes the way that many young English bands like Happy Mondays and Jesus Jones have done in recent years. "Mysterious Ways" is a standout among these songs, sporting an ebullient hook and a guitar solo in which the Edge segues from one of his signature bursts of light into an insidious funk riff.

Elsewhere, as in the fit of distortion and feedback that opens "Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses," Edge evokes the cacophony and electronic daring of noise bands like Sonic Youth. Indeed Edge's boldness on Achtung is key to the album's adventurous spirit. His plangent, minimalist guitar style – among the most distinctive and imitated in modern rock – has always made inspired use of devices like echo and reverb; his shimmering washes of color on "Until the End of the World" and soaring peals on "Even Better Than the Real Thing" and "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" are instantly recognizable. But other tracks find the guitarist crafting harder textures and flashing a new arsenal of effects. On the first cut, "Zoo Station," he uses his guitar as a rhythm instrument, repeating a dark, buzzing phrase that drives the beat while his more lyrical playing on the chorus enhances the melody. Similarly, "The Fly" features grinding riffs that bounce off Adam Clayton's thick bass line and echo and embellish Larry Mullen Jr.'s drumming.

Bono's task, then, is to lend his sensuous tenor and melodramatic romanticism to expressions that match this sonic fervor. He announces on "Zoo Station" that he's "ready to let go/Of the steering wheel"; what follows are the most fearlessly introspective lyrics he's written. In the past, U2's frontman has turned out fiercely pointed social and political diatribes, but his more confessional and romantic songs, however felt, have been evasive. On Achtung, though, Bono deals more directly with his private feelings – not to mention his hormones. "The hunter will sin ... for your ivory skin," he sings on "Wild Horses," and boasts on "Even Better Than the Real Thing" that "I'm gonna make you sing/Give me half a chance/To ride on the waves that you bring."

Almost as surprising, and even more affecting, are Bono's reflections on being an artist. On "Acrobat," over an arrangement that recalls the apocalyptic frenzy of "Bullet the Blue Sky," he pleads for inspiration: "What are we going to do now it's all been said?" On "The Fly" self-doubt gives way to self-indictment: "Every artist is a cannibal," he sings in a whispered groan, "every poet is a thief." Squarely acknowledging his own potential for hypocrisy and inadequacy, and addressing basic human weaknesses rather than the failings of society at large, Bono sounds humbler and more vulnerable than in the past. "Desperation is a tender trap," he sings on "So Cruel." "It gets you every time."

That's not to say that U2 has forsaken its faith or that Bono has abandoned his quest to find what he's looking for. On the radiant ballad "One," the band invests an unexceptional message – "We're one/But we're not the same/We get to carry each other" – with such urgency that it sounds like a revelation. Few bands can marshal such sublime power, but it's just one of the many moments on Achtung Baby when we're reminded why, before these guys were the butt of cynical jokes, they were rock & roll heroes – as they still are.

© Frank Steven Groen