Information
Date: May 5, 2001
Title: Marginal music for the masses
Source: Ylioppilaslehti
Translator: English translation from Finnish by
Tierushka
Press Article
The odds are usually minimal for a group like Rammstein to sell a single record outside a small German industrial metal community. But when the group were included on the Lost Highway and Matrix soundtracks, their records went platinum in the United states.
After Kraftwerk, Rammstein is the most successful German band of all time, which is no wonder, since Rammstein, after Kraftwerk, is the other good German group of all time.
On Mutter, their record that came out in April, Rammstein proves they are a metal band that has an exceptional sense of style. Excellent pop melodies are hiding behind Rammstein's monster riffs, guitar walls and industrial noise. Although their delivery is Wagnerishly pompous, their musical ingenuity prevents the whole from going completely overboard.
Mutter is namely an amazing work of arrangement. In Rammstein's rhythm music the beginning of the song knows the end: each sample and choir and string arrangement are fitted exactly in their right places with an engineer-like carefulness. The effect is intimidating.
The German language is the last nut to combine the pieces of the Rammstein-machinery. In the opening track about sandman, when Till Lindemann croaks "Mein Herz brennt," you'll miss mummy. In the few English-speaking experiments they've done, Rammstein has been notably more tame.
Ever since the upside-down-turned crucifix of Black Sabbath, flirting with suspicious things has been a part of the metal genre. However, rarely do we see such a pure in style and clever media manipulation than that of Rammstein.
When the group used clips from the Nazi propaganda film director Leni Riefenstahl's films on the video of their Depeche Mode cover "Stripped", they could be certain of creating a huge uproar.
Of course, they got away with it by referring to the known fact that Riefenstahl was never actually a Nazi, only a director who had worked for the Third Reich.
Naturally, just shocking people does not carry a band far. Rammstein also has a sense of humour and self-irony. The band's future live spectacles are most likely absurd comedy at its best: a testosterone-filled mass of crowd, with raised fists and shouting for mom must be a hilariously funny sight.