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Since my copy of Rammstein won't arrive until Monday, I listened to it on Amazon Music, and I am in love all over again. There are a few songs on which I'm undecided, but even they are tilted toward the positive, and I suspect that once my ears grow accustomed to the Deep Purple/Depeche Mode vibe of "Weit Weg", I'll enjoy it, but the lyrics leave me cold. They're just standard power ballad fodder as far as I can tell, and "Ohne Dich" did that better.
"Diamant" is okay, but it's just there, a sonic apertif to give the ears a breather before the album returns to its regularly-scheduled ass-kicking, and it's so tonally different from the rest of the album that I wonder why it was included. Maybe it was a sop to Till after the rest of the band saddled up and decided it wanted to rock this go-round and not subject themselves to another "Fruehling in Paris"(which I love, by the by)or three versions of "Roter Sand" when one would have sufficed, and handily.
"Puppe" is four minutes of Till Lindemann having a nervous breakdown on record, and no one will convince me otherwise. I suspected it was another dark tale of grue and horror before I sussed out the lyrics, and I was not wrong. I sometimes wonder if the other members of the band look at Till and ask themselves uneasily what black hellscape he lives in to conjure such perverse scenarios with such alarming regularity. That said, his vocals are a bravura performance of balls-out immersion that reminded me of Maynard James Keenan from Tool's vocals on "Prison Sex", when he lets the trauma and agony thread his vocals with a steadily-crumbling composure. It walks a fine line between compelling and hammy, and there's a risk that it could collapse into the latter during live performances, but as it stands, it's gold.
I know that Till is not the monster epitomized in any of their darker songs, but "Hallomann" made me wonder if any of the Rammstein tots ever took one look at him and ran screaming. Did little Maxime ever get creepy uncle vibes and hie unto her father for safety? Did he ever get a reputation among teenaged Khira Li's friends of being a creeper? Who comes up with such twisted tales? How can such a thoughtful man project the image and mindset of a pervert and predator so effortlessly? It makes my skin crawl.
Taken as a whole, I suspect that Richard won this creative tug of war because the riffs are harder and catchier and crisper, and there was even a return to their tanzmetal roots. I hadn't realized until I heard it how much I missed it, and I even cut a little chair in celebration.
A, and I can wait for them to take the show on the road.
"Diamant" is okay, but it's just there, a sonic apertif to give the ears a breather before the album returns to its regularly-scheduled ass-kicking, and it's so tonally different from the rest of the album that I wonder why it was included. Maybe it was a sop to Till after the rest of the band saddled up and decided it wanted to rock this go-round and not subject themselves to another "Fruehling in Paris"(which I love, by the by)or three versions of "Roter Sand" when one would have sufficed, and handily.
"Puppe" is four minutes of Till Lindemann having a nervous breakdown on record, and no one will convince me otherwise. I suspected it was another dark tale of grue and horror before I sussed out the lyrics, and I was not wrong. I sometimes wonder if the other members of the band look at Till and ask themselves uneasily what black hellscape he lives in to conjure such perverse scenarios with such alarming regularity. That said, his vocals are a bravura performance of balls-out immersion that reminded me of Maynard James Keenan from Tool's vocals on "Prison Sex", when he lets the trauma and agony thread his vocals with a steadily-crumbling composure. It walks a fine line between compelling and hammy, and there's a risk that it could collapse into the latter during live performances, but as it stands, it's gold.
I know that Till is not the monster epitomized in any of their darker songs, but "Hallomann" made me wonder if any of the Rammstein tots ever took one look at him and ran screaming. Did little Maxime ever get creepy uncle vibes and hie unto her father for safety? Did he ever get a reputation among teenaged Khira Li's friends of being a creeper? Who comes up with such twisted tales? How can such a thoughtful man project the image and mindset of a pervert and predator so effortlessly? It makes my skin crawl.
Taken as a whole, I suspect that Richard won this creative tug of war because the riffs are harder and catchier and crisper, and there was even a return to their tanzmetal roots. I hadn't realized until I heard it how much I missed it, and I even cut a little chair in celebration.
A, and I can wait for them to take the show on the road.