Rammstein: “We are not an unplugged band. Hallelujah!”
Two years ago, on April 29, 2022, what remains the last album of the band was released Rammstein, “Zeit”. A curiosity about the album: the cover photograph is the work of the Canadian rocker Bryan Adams. And what you can read below is our review of the album.
Rammstein's previous album, an untitled album released in 2019, arrived ten years after “Liebe ist für alle da”, therefore there were those who did not expect the arrival after just three years of a new work by the German sextet composed of Till Lindemann (vocals), Paul Landers (guitar), Richard Z. Kruspe (guitar), Flake (keyboard), Oliver Riedel (bass) and Christoph Schneider (drums). The pandemic thought to speed up the operations for a new work, making the tour in support of the album impossible, giving time to work on other things, so today we can enjoy “Zeit”, the eighth chapter of their musical novel. The Berlin band is a reality with over twenty million copies sold despite the language that could have hindered the diffusion of their projects on the main reference market in the world which is the English-speaking one. On the contrary, as can sometimes happen, this very exoticness (let's put it that way) turned out to be a strong point that worked in their favor.
Even in “Zeit” the goodness of their musical formula which mixes metal and electronics, adding here and there influences from the Germanic tradition, proves successful and confirms the fact that Rammstein are a group that is anything but banal. The lyrics of their songs do not know the meaning of the word mediation, they aim to provoke a reaction in the listener and lend themselves to multiple interpretations. The great master of ceremonies of the performance is, as always, Till Lindemann who with incontrovertible charisma interprets each piece in the best possible way, varying the vocal register as desired and as needed.
The epic pace of “Armee Der Tristen”, the march of the hopeless, opens the dance.
The inexorable passage of time ('Zeit') is invoked in the title track, the definitive piece supported, in the background, by a moving chorus of Morriconian memories. “Schwarz” is an elegy of the night and the dark side, as is “Giftig”. But Rammstein's lyrics have more than one interpretation. “Zick zack” is nothing other than the sound of the scalpel that alters the features of our body to make us something that we don't even know what anymore. Of the pop metal of “Ok” it is enough to know that the words 'without a condom' are repeated several times. 'I still live with my mother', this is how “Meine tranen” begins. A mother who can also be identified more universally with the shell, with the difficulty and fear of facing the otherwise. Theme is also present in “Angst” ('Anguish'), the most distressing song of the entire album. “Dicke titten” ('big tits') opens with a march from the dawn of radio (which returns later in the song) to immediately give way to metal guitars, while Till tells us about a man's desire to have a woman who does not possess any particular talents other than large breasts. “Adieu” is the closing of earthly time, in the perfect, perhaps sublime, moment of death. For a moment it flashes in my head that it could be Rammstein's farewell, saying goodbye with a song called 'Goodbye'. Well, they're just thoughts.
The German band, which has almost thirty years of life behind it, with “Zeit” demonstrates that it is more vital than ever, that it has not yet lost its capacity for lyrical and musical expression, that it is ready to go on tour to present the new live songs. So if you can, don't miss the only event reserved for our country this year, July 12th in Turin. Theirs are among the most spectacular shows you can ever witness because, as stated by drummer Christoph Schneider, “We are not an unplugged band. Hallelujah!”.
