It took me a long time to warm up to Rammstein.
While their live shows were always exciting and a source of great amusement, their music was apart from a song or two uninspired, dull and forgettable. Show me one riff on the first two albums that wasn't a watered down Ministry rip off and I will explain in detail just how deluded you are.
I was probably way off, but to little ol' me it just seemed like the band simply used various on-stage antics (such as setting themselves on fire) so that no one would notice how poor the songs were.
But somewhere around the third album Mutter in 2001 something happened - Rammstein suddenly wrote proper songs. Mutter, still regarded as their best album by many fans, displayed a new-found maturity in the songwriting. Their material was now, for lack of a better word, open, fresh and dynamic. A big reason for this was Till Lindemann actually singing instead doing his Hitler impersonation. And above all it was the band's bigger step thus far towards an own identity.
The songs breathed a bit more, and the album as a whole just feels a lot more alive, probably because many of the "industrial" elements were replace by a much more organic sound. For the first time Rammstein sounded like five warm blooded humans as opposed to two yodeling androids and a drum machine.
Their perverse sense of humor with more puns and double entendres than you can shake a stick at also became increasingly prominent. Which was nice. Also, their blatant flirtations with Third Reich imagery has always been highly entertaining and is not to be overlooked. You'd think being German the last thing you'd wanna do is purposely make people suspect you of fascism, and for Rammstein to embrace it and exploit it for both laughs and provocations in equal amounts takes lead-plated balls.
By the time Reise, Reise was released three years later I was a devoted fan, and while I greatly enjoyed 2005's Rosenrot (which largely contained material written for Reise, Reise) and last year's Liebe Ist Für Alle Da as well, this for me is the pinnacle of their discography. This is the album where almost everything clicked.
Still, Reise, Reise is not without its flaws - the single Amerika is just silly, and letting Amour finish the album was a big mistake. It's a good song, but the album clearly should've ended with the epic penultimate track Ohne Dich, one of the Rammstein's best songs period.
The video for Meil Teil:
1 comments:
For the first time I agree with you in almost everything. The best thing that could happen to them was that Lindemann actually begun to sing melodies.
By the way, in my opinion "Dalai Lama" is Rammstein's best song.
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