Even though my Grandparents would probably not have approved, I consider myself a Rammstein fan.
So many people dismiss this band because all they hear are GCSE German lyrics and imagery that looks like an S&M club from the future emptied into the Nuremberg rally. What they’re actually missing is a cartoonish sense of the profane and a truly grotesque theatrical and sonic spectacle.
Liebe… is reminiscent of the band’s earlier material which was built around industrial riffs rather than the gore soaked fairy tale aesthetic they adopted with the last few albums. Although the sense of twisted whimsy served perfectly to make their audience feel uncomfortable, once again the grinding riffs and occasionally operatic details do equally well, with the entire album united by a perverse sense of dark humour.
Things are delightfully fucked up, in the darkest wittiest way possible: ‘Frühling in Paris’ is a beautiful acoustic song about French prostitutes which references Edif Piaf, while ‘Pussy’, a song about sex tourism, gave the world its first ever fully pornographic music video. This song in particular highlights how clever Rammstein actually are, intentionally rhyming German vocabulary clichés to disorientate their English speaking audience into becoming culpable in their satire.
Then there’s ‘Ich Tu Dir weh’, which features lyrics like:
Wünsch dir was ich sag nicht nein
Und führ dir Nagetiere ein
For the more linguistically gifted among you, this will translate as ‘make a wish, I won’t say no. And I’ll insert the rodents into you.’
People often ask me why I chose to take French and Spanish at school, not German. This is why.
Grade: B
Click here for the ‘Pussy’ video (NSFW)
Tags: Ich Tu Dir weh, Liebe ist für alle da, pussy, rammstein
