Information
Date: March 2000
Title: Playing With Fire
Source: Hit Parader
Translation: Dutch
Press Article
On stage and off, the members of Rammstein present what might best be termed an imposing facade. Vocalist Till Lindemann towers above all who surround him, keyboardist Flake glowers at friend and foe alike, while guitarists Richard Kruspe and Paul Landers power the sound of these Teutonic terrors with their unrelenting six-string attack. Due to their decidedly different bent on the rock scene-- and due to the fact that their look and sound can scare the bejesus out of you at a moment's notice-- in the span of just two years this German sextet (which also features drummer Christoph Schneider and bassist Oliver Riedel) has risen from relative State-side obscurity to a position of true prominence in the heavy metal world. Undeniably, the no-nonsense image that Rammstein projects has quickly earned the respect, and the fear, of virtually everyone who encounters them.
Image and attitude isn't the be-all and end-all of the Rammstein experience, however. At heart, these self-proclaimed "horror romanticists" just so happen to be an incredibly exciting, totally original and amazingly inventive rock and roll band. Their creative use of a quixotic array of bells, blips and beeps to offset and enhance their go-for-the-throat, megadecibel musical outings have made them stand out like a sore thumb amid the cookie-cutter rap/metal merchants that are proliferating on the late '90s rock circuit. Thanks to the breakout success of their most recent studio disc, Sehnsucht, and the chart-topping status of their current in-concert collection, Live Aus Berlin-- as well as their headline-grabbing involvement in the 1998 Family Values tour-- Rammstein now find themselves as one of the most recognizable and successful hard rock bands in the world.
Perhaps most amazingly, they've managed to accomplish all of their recent success without sacrificing any of their cultural and musical integrity. They still sing (and conduct interviews) only in German. They still play a brand of highly-charged, Euro-techno-metal that's guaranteed to send chills down the spines of the more sensitive members of the contemporary music community. They still light themselves on fire during their nightly on-stage pyrotechnic displays. Despite the fact that many American media scribes predicted a quick demise for this unit due to their avowed unwillingness to conform to perceived State-side "standards." It seems quite apparent that these Berlin natives will have the last laugh on everyone. Indeed, Rammstein may well be the most unusual hard rock band currently inhabiting Planet Earth, and in a musical domain filled by sundry freaks, geeks and weirdos that's certainly saying something!
"When we tour America, so many people try to describe what we do and try to analyze it," Flake said. "We don't understand why they do that-- they should just accept it for what it is. America seems to need to place things into convenient packages that they can relate to. We don't fit into any of those packages. Rammstein isn't like any other band, and we're not trying to sound or look like any other band. We are Rammstein."
Unquestionably, Rammstein is Rammstein-- and no other band on the current music scene seems either willing or capable of filling this band's fright-night role in the hard rock universe. Success has come quickly and it's come in an extra-large dose for this "ramming stone," but already some have begun to question whether the band's success is due more to their quirky "novelty" than to their true rock and roll acumen. What happens, these skeptics ask, when that novelty begins to wear off? What happens when teen-aged American guys decide they actually want to understand what their favorite band is singing about-- even if that is a somewhat misguided notion in the scream-until-your-ears-bleed domain of heavy metal?
While the members of Rammstein have already heard such questions many times before, they still don't see the need to have ready-made answers for any of them. In fact, they apparently haven't even taken the time to consider the consequences of any potential State-side backlash against the arrogantly Aryan ways they come across in their music and through the press. In all honesty, since these guys never truly sought out American success in the first place, any sudden changed in their commercial fortunes on the side of the Atlantic would probably be treated with all the severity of a lost paper clip.
"We enjoyed playing in America," Lindemann stated. "But as we traveled around we were very surprised to realize how different parts of your country are. In Europe it's not like that. In America, what one city likes is not necessarily what another city likes. It's strange. But we didn't try to make America understand us or like us. They had to accept us for what we are. It's rewarding that it seems as if many of them have."
Despite their steadfast refusal to admit it, it would seem evident that the wonders of the American landscape have had at least some small impact on the day-to-day perspectives of the Rammstein brigade. After all, having grown up behind The Wall in communist-era Berlin, experiencing all-you-can-eat buffets, all-you-can-buy shopping malls and all-you-can-earn concert extravaganzas for the first time would tend to warp anyone's sense of reality just a little bit. But, you've got to give these guys credit, as shown throughout their Live Aus Beriln disc-- as well as on it's accompanying home video-- these rockers remain as staunchly Teutonic as ever. Yet one must wonder if the myriad of experiences and influences that have crept into Rammstein's once-sheltered world over the last two years won't begin to rear their ugly heads when the band next enters the recording studio.
"That's gonna be very interesting," said a long-time Rammstein supporter. "They grew up in a very closed society-- and their look, sound and attitude reflects that upbringing. But now they're being exposed to the entire world-- and at the same time the world is being exposed to them. There's got to be something that rubs off. I'm not saying that they're gonna start crooning in English on their next album, but things might be a little different. They'll still be Rammstein, that's for certain, but it might be Rammstein with a twist."