Review: Rammstein – Liebe Ist Für Alle Da
The amount of enjoyment you get out of any Rammstein record depends primarily on your ability to ignore certain factors that define their sound. First, there’s the whole foreign-language thing: the lyrics are almost exclusively in the band’s native German. But that shouldn’t be a deal breaker – most heavy metal lyrics beg to be ignored anyway. Then there’s the creepy cabaret element that functions as a backdrop to all of their tunes. The band can pulverize with some truly explosive riffage, but, even at their most forceful, everything is accented with dance floor-ready keyboards. And finally, you gotta decide how you’re really gonna process this shit. A very German sense of sick humor fills the nooks and crannies of Liebe Ist Für Alle Da, and at points it can overwhelm what are otherwise quite striking compositions. So the question is: do you come to Rammstein to fulfill your basic headbanging needs, or do you view them primarily as a curiosity (albeit, an incredibly melodic and powerful one)?
I personally go both ways. I was introduced to Rammstein, along with pretty much every other casual metal fan, when their breakthrough hit “Du Hast” infiltrated MTV and radio in 1997. Since then, I’ve kept very loose tabs on the band – I got a lot of mileage out of Sehnsucht upon its initial surge of American popularity (especially after David Lynch used their music prominently in his film Lost Highway; a David Lynch connection is a very cool thing for any creepy-ass metal band to have), but the language issue – along with the fickle tastes of adolescence – prevented the kind of emotional connection from which true fandom is forged. So as they released new records over the years, I’ve taken note but mostly kept my distance. And that’s not going to change with Liebe Ist Für Alle Da. It’s a generally pleasing experience, and I can’t say I’ve been truly bored while listening to it the last few days, but there’s just too much pure novelty-for-the-sake-of-weirdness in the band’s attack for me to ever make them part of my regular listening diet.
For instance: the guys have included an English language track called “Pussy” on this record and it is, hands down, the worst thing I’ve heard all year. It’s sophomoric in all the wrong ways and the chorus (“You have a pussy / I have a dick / So what’s the problem? / Let’s do it quick”) just begs to be translated into any other language. I much prefer the amiably goofy French romp “Frühling In Paris,” which starts with some surprisingly gentle finger-picked guitar and a truly dulcet melody before exploding into the kind of sweeping chorus that tends to bust charts internationally. Since I’d rather assume these guys are joking around (and succeeding) than have them prove me wrong by dropping the language barrier, incomprehensibility accounts for much of the charm when the record really gets its odd mojo working.
“Rammlied,” for instance, kicks the record off with a swell of pure atmospheric synth cheese that any band without a sense of humor would never indulge in; lead singer Till Lindemann starts intoning weird shit that sounds extremely grave until he barks the band’s name and the big guitars kick in. (About those guitars, BTW: They often are so processed and manipulated that any sense of organic instrumentation is lost, and this is probably my favorite aspect of the record. The shinier and dancier this stuff is, the easier Lindemann’s constipated vocal approach goes down.) That pretty much sets the pattern for the rest of Liebe Ist Für Alle Da – they set the stage with absurdly gorgeous atmospherics and then offset all that beauty with huge riffs. It’s a good formula, as formulas go, but it’s only truly effective for about fifteen minutes at a time. Rammstein have cultivated a unique flavor that tastes best in bite-sized nuggets. I recommend that instead of purchasing the entire record, you hit the iTunes store and select any three songs at random (with the exception of “Pussy,” unless you’re into that kind of thing) and savor those for the cool, exotic rush they initially deliver.
Liebe Ist Für Alle Da is an accomplished and well-made record, especially for a band closing in on the second decade of their career, but it feels too lightweight to satisfy a real urge for heavy metal carnage and too off-handedly pervy for mass consumption. It’ll probably sell like hotcakes overseas, but with America experiencing a metal renaissance at the moment (spearheaded by truly innovative bands like Mastodon), I can’t imagine too many people stateside embracing the extremely foreign brand of schlock Rammstein continues to peddle.
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Your blog is very metal, and even to fear ..
I like!
Coming from Denmark I’m so lucky I was taught more than my own language at School. For those who does not understand German I can tell that Rammstein almost always writes lyrics with humor. Black as the night, sarcastic and ironic. But humor it is or else I think they would be arrested for insinuating stuff about pedophelia, rape, murder in several ways and sex in public places. So trust me. They have humor. Also in the song: We All live in America.
Yeah, I understand that it’s humorous (I mentioned that in the first paragraph) but it’s the kind of humor that’s very unsettling to Americans. We like our bands nice and earnest. I get off on some of the sick stuff (check out the uncut video for “Pussy” if you haven’t yet) but the sexual stuff mostly plays out as sophomoric (which I also mentioned). Nobody’s denying that the guys are humorous; my argument is that they’re not necessarily funny.
You seem to have the idea that Rammsteins songs can’t be both humourous and earnest. The video to “pussy” could look like a publicity stunt, but trust me; they don’t need a publcity stunt. It is instead a parody on a lot of other bands and singers, a lot of them from America, that uses the sexual aspect to gain publicity. It is very earnest. And yes, it is provocative and sick, but thats the whole idea. Rappers and pop culture artists makes videos and texts that aren’t so far away from what Rammstein has shown us here. Rammstein is trying to make us realize how sick a lot of musical products are.
Besides that, the song fits into the theme of the cd; Love in various extreme and sick forms.
A lot of americans doesn’t understand the themes and ideas behind Rammsteins songs. And there is a reason for that. A lot of their songs, including “Amerika”, “Ich Will”, “Keine Lust”, “Pussy” and many more, are written with american and “americanized” european culture in mind. Themes like sex, advertising, controlled pop culture and so on are being sneaked in to the minds of ordinary people, with the abuse of media. But when the ordinary people are confronted with some of these themes, in this situation by a european band, they tend to make a distance to it. All this about the abuse of media isn’t something I just dish out. I see a lot of american television and compared to most european television, the situation described above is in fact real.
And last, but not least; when you say “nice” I have to say shallow. It is imposibble to avoid american music and a lot is in fact nice to hear. But a lot of it is completely without mening, very much like the example made in “Pussy”. I assume you doesn’t speak german, but I can say that the texts made by Till Lindemann and the rest of Rammstein, are not shallow. I haven’t heard one song that doesn’t have a very earnest meaning below the sometimes shallow metal look.
Your argument is well-reasoned and persuasive, Martin. I appreciate the feedback and I will definitely spend a little more time with the record. It’s very possible that the joke is on me.
Fruhling contains chops from Bob Dylan (It ain’t me babe) while other parts sound like Nina Hagen’s Abgehauen (and infact a few other songs sound like rips from her album “Freud euch”. If you made a Rammstein best of none of the tracks on Liebe would be on it. Red Sands, worst shit ever, just a poor attempt at a C&W ballad. Marty Robbins will kick their ass everytime. They were Rammstein and now they are 6 try-hards who have forgotten the groove.