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Sex-O-Matic Rammstein – Rock Sound

Rock Sound May 2001

Famed for their latex outfits and dildo spurting antics, German metallers, the mighty Rammstein even managed to upset Korn fans on their Family Values tour. rock sound pick up some handy tips on partying.

Coke-snorting latex-clad Snow Whites OD-ing? Cowering dwarves most ill-treated? Cruel bouts of flagellation? An abundance of Big Power Tools? No, it’s not the rock sound office after hours but the video for ‘Sonne’, four minutes of pulsing beats, steroidal riffs you wished Metallica still did; epic synth grandeur and guttural, Teutonic theatrics. It’s also the first single to be taken from ‘Mutter’ (‘Mother’), the new album from industro-metallers, Rammstein. For some uptight programmers on our fair isle, it’s just not cricket.
"We’ve had to ‘blur out’ a lot bits, so they’ll play the video in England" grins ‘Stein skinsman Christoph ‘Doom’ Schneider, sitting with guitarist Paul Landers in the Offices of their label Universal. "Germany and the US have no problem with it!" Rammstein are possibly the only German band since Kraftwerk to make such an international name for themselves, but if you’re trying to place the name, it’s not really surprising since the band have only played one small show in London four years ago. And despite headline slots at Holland’s Dynamo festival and appearances at the Big Day Out in Australia, it’s the US where Rammstein have made their biggest mark, managing to shift an impressive one million units of their ’98 album ‘Sehnsucht’.
Although they had been trying to expand their profile outside Germany for sometime (Rammstein formed in ’93), it wasn’t until a rather unexpected break came courtesy of Blue Velvet/Lost Highways director David Lynch that things started to take off.
"We got a letter from David Lynch’s office asking if he could use two of our songs for ‘Lost Highway’," says Paul, "Naturally we said no". You said no?! "We were joking..." (see, they might be German, but they do have a sense of humour, however dry).

Vorpsrung durch technik
As the success of the "Lost Highway’ soundtrack far surpassed the film, the band began to acquire a status in the US, and before you could say ‘vorsprung durch technik’, they were remixing for Faith no more, Rob Zombie and Korn, before being offered the penultimate slot on ‘98’s lucrative Family Values tour.
"It was...an experience", considers Schneider on sharing a stage with the likes of Limp Bizkit, Ice Cube, and the Bakersfield Five. Just how did a stage show involving tight leather, tighter industrial beats, simulated penetration and hi-powered ‘ejaculating’ dildos go down with a US rock crowd more familiar with loose, downtuned, hip hop-based grooves and with a generally less than open mind to sexuality?
"The loved it!" says Schneider, although Paul notes that singer Till Lindemann’s foam-spraying, audience-soaking strap-on was beginning to upset hardcore front-row Korn fans who kept getting drenched with its contents at every show. "They had been waiting at the front for Korn since the show started at 3pm and they really didn’t like it", he says, "So Till stopped doing it". But if they had to hold back a little on their stage behaviour, they made up for it with an impressive bout of pre and post show partying.
"Korn’s was the biggest party, and then ours was," remembers Paul. "All the bands would play during the day and go and have their parties, and we would go to all of them, because we were on last before Korn" he explains "When we got the photos back from the tour, we saw in all the pictures that out of all the bands, we were the most glassy-eyed!" Still some good German-US relations were forged during those excess-athons, with nu-romo metallers Orgy, in particular. Their daily drunken greeting to the Germans was a very slurred "Hey Faggotshh..." apparently. A bit rich coming from a load of men in nail polish and glitter you might think. The band laugh. "Yes!" says Paul, "They used to shout that at us, so we shouted back the German equivalent of ‘faggot’. So they started shouting that at us as well..."

Pyromaniac Stunts
Rammstein are one of the few bands who are very much defined by their live performance. Although they impress on record with their ultra precise banks of riff-stomping mechanics and powerful songs, and although the darkly camp style is pretty obvious (‘Mutter’ is about the Oedipus complex), you’re just not going to forget a band who set their frontman on fire, who simulate sodomy with the keyboardist and are generally quite ridiculously theatrical. Kiss certainly didn’t, when they invited them on their South American tour, a tour where incidentally, Rammstein met their match with the audience. Paul: "The whole time we were onstage, the crowd threw things at us, and we came off thinking they must have hated us. Then the promoter came up and said, "They didn’t throw any dead goats onstage – they really liked you!" We thought that was quite unusual". Enough of all these tales of goat throwing, German metal excess you say: when on earth is all this pyrotechnic, homo-erotic, leather-fixated riff extravaganza going to come to the UK? Well, it won’t be next week, that’s for sure, as once ‘Mutter’ is released, the band will be embarking on a major tour of Europe, particularly Germany, which they haven’t paled for three years, due to the demands of Rammstein canvassing elsewhere. And they do like to take the full Rammstein dildo-spurting experience to whoever seems them. Well, as much as they can carry anyway. "We have a wind machine which we had to leave behind in Australia", laughs Paul referring to the recent Big Day Out appearance, although he notes there are probably little (and not so little) nits of Rammstein on every continent. "We’ve done shows in just out underwear too", he adds (unless the translator is mistaken) "But it wasn’t really ‘us’. You know the ‘show’ element is almost essential to the Rammstein experience. To understand us, you have to see us, you have to see us, I think" So will any greater method of ‘understanding’ Rammstein make its way over here? Paul and Christoph are hopeful . "We have Universal behind us both here and in the US now, but it’s taken a long time to find someone who is willing to believe in us and support us" Dust off the asbestos suit now, you have been warned....

© 2005 Sue Lindemann