Rammstein Albums for song lyrics and biography.

Rammstein are a German band whose musical style, which they have dubbed Tanzmetal, or "Dance Metal", incorporates elements of metal, industrial and electronic music. Rammstein takes its name indirectly from the western German town of Ramstein, site of an airshow disaster. The band's signature song, the eponymous "Rammstein", is a commemoration of the tragedy that took place at the Ramstein Air Base. The extra "m" in the band's name means that it translates literally as "ramming stone", or "battering ram". Even though the lyrics are not in English, the band has enjoyed success outside of Germany, and with the album "Reise, Reise", they became the most successful German-language band of all time. The band's members all come from the former East Germany, specifically East Berlin and Schwerin. Richard Z. Rich Kruspe-Bernstein, Christian Flake Lorenz, Heiko Hiersche, Oliver Ollie Riedel, Till Lindemann, and Christoph Doom Schneider. Riedel, Schneider and Kruspe-Bernstein were the original founders of Rammstein, following an attempt by Rich to compose American-influenced music with a West Berlin band called Orgasm Death Gimmicks. As Kruspe-Bernstein put it, "I realized it's really important to make music and make it fit with your language, which I didn't do in the past. I came back and said, 'It's time to make music that's really authentic.' I was starting a project called Rammstein to really try to make German music." He invited Till Lindemann, a basket weaver and drummer for First Arsch, to join the project. The four entered a contest for new bands and won, attracting the interest of Paul Landers. Flake Lorenz was the last member to join. He had played with Landers before in Feeling B and was initially reluctant to join Rammstein, but was eventually persuaded to join.

Rammstein's lyrics and style are difficult to clasify. Although it cannot really be said that Rammstein stick to any particular genre of music, they are most often described as an industrial band. Rammstein is also often associated with heavy metal and hard rock. Some have categorised them with the controversial Neue Deutsche Härte movement. Despite their brutalist image, they do show a sense of humour in their lyrics. Rein Raus, for example, is clearly tongue-in-cheek. Zwitter is a bizarre take on narcissism. Some of their songs show some unexpected influences. Du Hast is a play on German marriage vows, but it can also be understood as You hate, which would be written Du hasst. Also, "Dalai Lama" is an adaptation of the famous poem Der Erlkönig by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The band almost always sings in German. Explaining why, Oliver Riedel comments, "German language suits heavy metal music. French might be the language of love, but German is the language of anger."

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Rammstein's style has tended to divide critics, some of whom have responded with memorably dismissive comments: Jam Showbiz described Mutter as "music to invade Poland to". New Zealand's Southland Times suggested that Till Lindemann's "booming, sub-sonic voice" would send "the peasants fleeing into their barns and bolting their doors". The New York Times commented that on the stage "Mr. Lindemann gave off an air of such brute masculinity and barely contained violence that it seemed that he could have reached into the crowd, snatched up a fan, and bitten off his head." That said, Rammstein has also attracted praise for their inventive lyrics and their uncompromising style. Within only a few years of starting their career, Rammstein soon caught the attention of Hollywood for their explosive stage performances and energetic music. The directors David Lynch and Rob Cohen appear to be particularly strong fans, and set the first 10 minutes of xXx in a Rammstein concert in Prague. Rammstein has also appeared in Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, Lost Highway, Wing Commander, The Matrix, How High, Resident Evil, Lilya 4-ever, fear.com, and Resident Evil: Apocalypse. Rammstein's videos also tie in quite closely with films as they frequently quote from movies, including Quentin Tarantino's classic Reservoir Dogs in "Du hast" and From Dusk Till Dawn in "Engel".

Rammstein has achieved particular fame not to mention notoriety for its hugely over-the-top stage show, using so many pyrotechnics that fans eventually coined the motto "Other bands play, Rammstein burns!", which is a quip at Manowar's Kings of Metal: "other bands play, Manowar kills". The heat is so intense that on occasion, people have been carried out of Rammstein concerts suffering from heat exhaustion, and lighting gantries have been seen glowing red-hot from repeated fireball hits. The variety of the pyrotechnics can be seen in a recent concert playlist, which includes such items as "Lycopodium Masks", "Glitterburst Truss", "Pyrostrobes", "Comets", "Flash Trays" and "Mortar Hits". The band' has also used head-mounted flamethrowers, Lycopodium Masks or Dragon Masks, while playing, and Till Lindemann sang an entire song while on fire. Simulated sodomy and a liquor-squirting dildo have been seen at Rammstein shows, not to mention exploding drumsticks, drums, microphones and boots, Flake Lorenz being roasted in a giant cauldron by Lindemann, rockets fired along cables strung above the audience, Flake Lorenz destroying a keyboard in the style of The Who, and band members surfing the crowd in a rubber boat. Rammstein's shows have become increasingly elaborate since their early days when their effects were confined to pouring kerosene around the stage and setting it alight. After some unfortunate early accidents the band took to employing professionals to handle the pyrotechnics, and Lindemann himself is now a licenced pyrotechnician.

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The band's costumes are equally outlandish. During the current "Reise, Reise" tour they have worn lederhosen, corsets and vague military uniforms with steel helmets, while during "Mutter" the group kept to the themes of the album artwork and descended onto the stage from a giant uterus wearing diapers. According to Kruspe-Bernestein, the on-stage wackiness is entirely deliberate. The aim is to get people's attention and have fun at the same time: "You have to understand that 99 percent of the people don't understand the lyrics, so you have to come up with something to keep the drama in the show. We have to do something. We like to have a show. We like to play with fire. We do have a sense of humor. We do laugh about it, we have fun... but we're not Spinal Tap. We take the music and the lyrics seriously. It's a combination of humor, theater and our East German culture, you know?"

Rammstein have so far released four albums: Herzeleid, Sehnsucht, Mutter, and Reise, Reise. While Herzeleid was well-received and is still the favourite album of the band, Sehnsucht is widely regarded as Rammstein's breakthrough album. The production of the follow up album Mutter was an experience fraught with difficulty for the band, which nearly broke up as a result of the strains that resulted. However, the differences were resolved by the time Rammstein produced Reise, Reise. At the moment the band are working on a follow up to Reise Reise. From the production period of the last album, there are several songs which did not find a place on their latest album due to dramaturgical reasons. The band performed the song "Benzin", from the new album at 4 shows in Wühlheide Park, Berlin. Concert goers have stated that the song was on the same hard level with "Amerika". Althought the song is somewhat political, it is also has the same twisted sexual attitude found in most of their songs. It has been predicted that the first single will be "Rosenrot" (Rose Red).

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Rammstein's songs have been covered by a number of other artists, notably the Pet Shop Boys (Mein Teil) and Nina Hagen with Apocalyptica who covered Rammstein's Seemann. More unusually, the German composer Torsten Rasch has produced a classical opera cycle entitled Mein Herz Brennt, based on the album Mutter. They've also done several covers themselves including Das Modell by Kraftwerk, Stripped by Depeche Mode and Pet Cemetary by The Ramones.

Rammstein have not been shy of controversy and have periodically attracted condemnation from morality campaigners. Their stage act earned them a night in jail in 1999 after the infamous giant dildo was used in a concert in Worcester, Massachusetts. Back home in Germany, the band has faced repeated accusations of fascist sympathies due to the dark and sometimes militaristic imagery of their videos and concerts, including the use of extracts from a propaganda film by Leni Riefenstahl in the video for Stripped. Also, when the album Herzeleid originally came out in Germany, the band was met with accusations from the media and critics that the band was trying to sell themselves as "poster boys for the Master Race". Rammstein have denied this vigorously and the members of the band have said that they want nothing to do with politics as well as supremacy of any kind, citing that vocalist Till Lindemann takes offense to accusations of the sort because his mother is Jewish. The song "Links 2 3 4" was written as a riposte to these claims. According to Kruspe-Bernstein, it means, "'my heart beats on the left, two, three, four.' It's simple. If you want to put us in a political category, we're on the left side, and that's the reason we made the song." Of course this is a two-sided thing, since "Links 2 3 4" is the usual command in marching practice in the German army, "Links" referring to the left foot in that case.

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Following the tragic conclusion of the Beslan school hostage crisis in Russia in September 2004, the Russian authorities claimed that the hostage-takers had "listened to German hard rock group Rammstein on personal stereos during the siege to keep themselves edgy and fired up." The claim has not been independently confirmed, and the Russian authorities are known to have been concerned that Rammstein was too appealing to "undesirable" elements in Russian society. A Rammstein concert in Moscow scheduled for July 19, 2002 was cancelled due to fears that it would attract skinheads. In October 2004, the video for "Mein Teil" caused considerable controversy in Germany when it was released. It takes a darkly comic view of the Armin Meiwes cannibalism case, showing musicians of the band being held on a leash by a transvestite and rolling around in mud. The controversy did nothing to stop the single from rising to #2 in the German charts.

The band's own views of its image are sanguine: "We like being on the fringes of bad taste," according to Paul Landers, while Flake Lorenz comments: "The controversy is fun, like stealing forbidden fruit. But it serves a purpose. We like audiences to grapple with our music, and people have become more receptive."