{"id":1220,"date":"2011-12-12T15:56:25","date_gmt":"2011-12-12T15:56:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/skylight.gr\/administrator_wordpress\/index.php\/2011\/12\/12\/rammstein-made-in-germany\/"},"modified":"2011-12-12T15:56:25","modified_gmt":"2011-12-12T15:56:25","slug":"rammstein-made-in-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skylight.gr\/index.php\/2011\/12\/12\/rammstein-made-in-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"RAMMSTEIN – MADE IN GERMANY"},"content":{"rendered":"


Rammstein\u2019s new career retrospective Made In Germany 1995\u20132011 finds the band at the apex of its career. The members of the Berlin-based six piece \u2013 frontman Till Lindemann, guitarists Richard Z. Kruspe and Paul H. Landers, bassist Oliver Riedel, drummer\/percussionist Christoph M. Schneider, and keyboardist Flake Lorenz \u2013 share common roots in East Germany\u2019s renegade D.I.Y. punk scene, yet after joining forces in the mid-\u201990s would ultimately become one of the biggest, and most controversial, rock groups in the world. Since then, Rammstein have sold millions of records, with their six studio albums \u2013 Herzeleid (1995), Sehnsucht (1997), Mutter (2001), Reise, Reise (2004), Rosenrot (2005), and Liebe Ist F\u00fcr Alle Da (2009) \u2013 topping charts in numerous countries; according to Billboard magazine charts, they have become the most successful German-language group in music history. Rammstein have also grown into one of the biggest international touring draws, headlining massive festivals and stadiums alike: a 2010 concert at New York\u2019s Madison Square Garden \u2013 Rammstein\u2019s first U.S. performance in a decade \u2013 sold out all of the famed arena\u2019s 20,000 seats in fifteen minutes. <\/p>\n

Rammstein\u2019s initial penetration of American pop culture proved a little more, well, penetrating than most. A featured act on the 1998 \u201cFamily Values\u201d tour, Rammstein stood clearly apart from the other artists on the bill like Limp Bizkit, Korn, Orgy, and Ice Cube: audiences were quickly seduced by Rammstein\u2019s explosive pyrotechnic display and heavy beats and guitars \u2013 only to be perplexed when Lindemann dropped trou to reveal an enormous dildo, with which he appeared to sodomize Lorenz and then spray ejaculate (actually a liquor-based liquid) over the crowd as the band performed the track \u201cB\u00fcck Dich\u201d (\u201cBend down\u201d). Derived as much from absurdist Berliner performance art as it was from shock rockers spanning Alice Cooper to Ozzy Osbourne, these displays violated local tastes not used to such, erm, European sensibilities: following a \u201cFamily Values\u201d show in Worcester, Massachusetts, Lindemann and Lorenz were arrested on charges of indecency and forced to spend a night in jail. It\u2019s no surprise, then, that Rammstein\u2019s first commercial American exposure came via the audaciously twisted oeuvre of director David Lynch, who chose the band\u2019s songs for the score of his infamous 1997 film Lost Highway on Trent Reznor\u2019s suggestion.<\/p>\n

Yes, umlauts be damned, Rammstein decisively demonstrated from the start that theirs was not your grandmother\u2019s n\u00fc-metal \u2013 in fact, Rammstein so defied genre pigeonholes that a new one, Neue Deutsche H\u00e4rte (\u201cNew German Hardness\u201d), had to be coined to encompass the Frankenstein-monster sound the group defined. Such trailblazing followed a national tradition. On the one hand, Germany has served as a spawning ground for totally groundbreaking genres like Kraftwerk\u2019s synth-pop, the krautrock of Neu!, and Einst\u00fcrzende Neubauten\u2019s industrial-salvage grooves; there\u2019s also the country\u2019s custom of perfecting innovations from elsewhere via Teutonic precision \u2013 much as BMW and Volkswagen did for the American automobile, so did Germany streamline the likes of Detroit techno and hard rock (Scorpions, anyone?) for mass production in its own idealized image. <\/p>\n

Rammstein displayed elements of both approaches on its debut album Herzeleid, of which \u201cDu Riechst So Gut\u201d is a key track (and gets subsequently reprised on Made In Germany 1995\u20132011). \u201cDu Riechst So Gut\u201d decisively stamped out Rammstein\u2019s sonic template in surgical steel: heavy-metal riffs contradicted by arpeggiated keyboard lines redolent of industrial titans KMFDM and Skinny Puppy over thumping dance beats direct from Berlin\u2019s all-night clubland. This incongruously appealing formula continued on \u201cDu Hast,\u201d the propulsive hit single (further popularized by its inclusion on the soundtrack for The Matrix) from Rammstein\u2019s international 1997 breakthrough, the U.S. platinum-certified Sehnsucht. \u201cDu Hast\u201d blurred the charging metal guitars of Pantera and Metallica with cinematic trance synths and house-music pianos, and never looked back. Made In Germany\u2026 makes clear Rammstein\u2019s musical identity never stopped mutating, from the Gary Glitter glam beats driving \u201cHaifisch\u201d to post-punk references like the Joy Division-style bassline underpinning \u201cRosenrot\u201d and quotations from Public Image\u2019s \u201cThis Is Not a Love Song\u201d on \u201cAmerika.\u201d On top of this stylistic maelstrom lays Lindemann\u2019s distinctive baritone vocals, memorably described by German writer Peter Richter as evoking \u201ca tombstone with inscriptions carved in Gothic lettering.\u201d Like everything associated with Rammstein, Lindemann\u2019s singing proves a freakish hybrid that perversely challenges the sonic clich\u00e9s of heavy music: instead, it alternately evokes \u201980s new wave angst \u00e0 la Depeche Mode (whose \u201cStripped\u201d Rammstein memorably covered), Wagnerian operatics, the sardonic growl of late-period Leonard Cohen, and the kitschy melodrama of German Schlager pop.<\/p>\n

Indeed, what surprises most about Rammstein\u2019s enduring worldwide fame is the band\u2019s uncompromising commitment to its German heritage \u2013 all while constantly questioning and prodding it, never avoiding its painful benchmarks. The band\u2019s name comes from both the German word for \u201cbattering ram\u201d and a town famous as the location for an air-show demonstration accident that resulted in multiple deaths. The few songs Rammstein sing in English are not coincidental, containing pointed satires of German culture. \u201cPussy\u201d at first appears a crudely humorous sing-along (\u201cYou have a pussy\/I have a dick-uh\/So what\u2019s the problem?\/Let\u2019s do it quick\u201d) before dropping in references to Mercedes-Benz, the autobahn, sauerkraut and \u201cFahrvergn\u00fcgen\u201d (driving pleasure). \u201cAmerika,\u201d meanwhile, rhymes \u201cwunderbar\u201d with war and Wonderbra alongside mentions of Mickey Mouse and Coca-Cola: it\u2019s a critique of the prevalent Americanization of the world mixed with humor \u2013 \u201cI don\u2019t sing my mother tongue,\u201d rasps Lindemann ironically. The jackboot stomp opening \u201cLinks 2 3 4\u201d similarly alludes to Germany\u2019s history of fascist militarism before skewering it resolutely. As well, just from its title alone, \u201cMein Land\u201d \u2013 Rammstein\u2019s new single, and the only previously unreleased song on Made In Germany\u2026 \u2013 clearly probes the tension of blind nationalism and national identity. <\/p>\n

In this confrontational strategy, Rammstein follows the lead of other contemporary German artists from various mediums. The \u201cNew German Cinema\u201d epitomized by Wim Wenders and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, for example, examined the broken psychology of a post-war Germany abruptly severed from its past, replaced with the culture of the conquering heroes. As well, painters like Anselm Kiefer and Gerhard Richter transformed moments of shame from Germany\u2019s history \u2013 in Kiefer\u2019s work, Nazism and the Holocaust, in Richter\u2019s, the bloody terrorism of the Baader-Meinhof Gang \u2013 to guarantee they weren\u2019t forgotten. Rammstein takes this approach to a radical, polarizing extreme \u2013 in their songs, no subject is taboo, no topic too transgressive; S&M, homosexuality, degradation, and all manner and method of violence get explored throughout their repertoire \u2013 often inspired by horrifying real-life tragedies. \u201cThe controversy is fun, like stealing forbidden fruit,\u201d Flake Lorenz explained to U.K. newspaper The Times. \u201cBut it serves a purpose. We like audiences to grapple with our music\u2026\u201d As such, the song \u201cMein Teil\u201d took inspiration from the story of Armin Meiwes, a German cannibal who sexually mutilated his victim before killing and eating him. <\/p>\n

And grapple they do. With sixteen songs, Made In Germany\u2026 surveys all of the elements that have come to define Rammstein \u2013 from the band\u2019s startling beginnings to the present day. It\u2019s not a greatest hits album per se as much as a subjective, opinionated, potentially divisive overview of the band\u2019s recorded legacy: it skips \u201cBenzin,\u201d for example, which was a #1 hit in numerous countries, and features five tracks from Mutter, Rammstein\u2019s challenging third record whose volatile creation almost caused the band to break up. As a microcosm, however, Made In Germany\u2026 allows the listener to trace Rammstein\u2019s evolution \u2013 from the introductory brutality of Herzeleid to the more assured, soaring production of Sehnsucht, through the slick meditations on evil and power on Mutter and the dark, heightened satire of Reise, Reise and Rosenrot, all the way to the most current Liebe Ist F\u00fcr Alle Da, which found Rammstein taking all the ideas they\u2019d explored to that point to their radical end, going farther than ever before. <\/p>\n

In a way, Made In Germany\u2026 is only part of the Rammstein story. It\u2019s hard to divorce a song like the haunting \u201cEngel\u201d from its place as the closer of Rammstein\u2019s relentlessly theatrical spectacle of a live show, where the muscled, sinewy Lindemann straps on enormous steel angel wings that erupt in a blaze of fire (Lindemann is a licensed pyrotechnician \u2013 a fact that\u2019s almost as important to his output as an artist as his singing); conversely, nothing quite tops the fusion of sound and image when Lindemann straddles a massive phallus-shaped cannon that sprays the crowd ecstatically with foam jizz during the concert version of \u201cPussy.\u201d Then there\u2019s the horrifying album art (Mutter features a dead embryo); elaborate, infamous videos (for the \u201cPussy\u201d clip, the band members performed graphic sex scenes with porn stars culminating in money shots); and postmodern bad-taste stunt gags (a limited edition of Liebe Ist F\u00fcr Alle Da came packaged with six dildos allegedly modeled on the Rammstein members\u2019 own penises). Indeed, the totality of Rammstein attempts to violate all of the senses even beyond the ears \u2013 from feeling (the flesh-searing heat of the pyrotechnics is visceral at each concert) to smell (Rammstein\u2019s debut single, \u201cDu Riechst So Gut\u201d \u2013 which translates to \u201cYou smell so good\u201d \u2013 was sold in a perfumed digipak). Music is only one part of Rammstein\u2019s legacy, but its permanent one, and that is what Made In Germany\u2026 succinctly documents: the continued, vital existence of a band polite society never wanted to exist in the first place\u2026<\/p>\n

Source: Universal Music<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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