One has to wonder if Rammstein‘s April 2022 album, Zeit, would exist were it not for the covid-19 pandemic. In 2019, the long-running industrial metal — though to to be fair, if you had a keyboard in your band in the ’90s somebody was calling you industrial, but Rammstein leaned into it more than many — six-piece from Berlin released their untitled/self-titled-by-default full-length as their first studio album in a decade since Liebe Ist Für Alle Da expanded their sound in style and melody, albeit with mixed results. At that point, the band had been on a run since 1995, and though they continued to tour and put out live records through the 2010s, up to the 2017 Paris 4LP box set, Untitled was clearly conceived as a comeback. Tours in Europe and a return to North America were booked, and what’s been speculated as ‘one more go’ for the band seemed set to play out. You know what came next, early in 2020.

The last time Rammstein — vocalist Till Lindemann, guitarists Richard Kruspe and Paul Landers, bassist Oliver Riedel, keyboardist Christian Lorenz and drummer Christoph “Doom” Schneider — put out two albums so close together was between 2004’s Reise, Reise and 2005’s Rosenrot, and after a decade’s drought, the turnaround is all the more striking. It’s entirely possible the band had two albums’ worth of songs going into the studio in 2019, and all they had to do for the 11-track/44-minute Zeit was put them to tape and start work on the by-now-requisite cinematic-style videos that have always helped make their singles a success, and it’s possible they wrote new tunes to have something fresh to take out on tour in 2022, when they could finally return to the road after waiting for two years.

If the latter is the case, it doesn’t cheapen Zeit‘s impact at all; Rammstein is a professional band operating at a plays-stadiums scale. Their material is crafted, hammered out, refined and produced, even unto something so willfully dumb as “Dicke Titten,” so to think that a record would be made to complement the tours already booked (and delayed) doesn’t seem unreasonable — it seems like a bonus for fans, honestly. And the quality of the work on Zeit (‘time’) is at least in league with the 2019 release’s presentation of who Rammstein are more than 25 years since their outset; mature as performers and songwriters, heavier in guitar, with a focus on material that, in the tradition of their finest output, is catchy and memorable enough to overcome any language barrier to the (mostly) German lyrics.

And it’s more than just Lorenz‘s keys peppering dance lines into songs like “Giftig” and opener “Armee der Tristen.” Whether it’s the vocal layering in the emotional apex of “Meine Tränen,” the choir filling out the big hook of “OK,” the piano underscoring the big chorus in the title-track and the subsequent “Schwarz,” the banging-on-a-metal-thing percussion sound in “Angst,” or  the string sounds in “Zick Zack” sending up notions of grandiose glamour, the vaudeville circus music of “Dicke Titten,” fourth-wall-breaking use of Autotune in “Lügen” or the swaps between English, French and German in the farewell closer “Adieu” (not to be confused with “Adios” from 2001’s third album, Mutter), Zeit is executed like a collection of pop songs, varied in structure, intent, aggression and mood, but still almost entirely accessible.

There are ‘ballads’ in the sense of departing from intensity of songs like “OK” or “Giftig” or “Angst,” and they help further the dynamic of the release as a whole, adding to the flow between individual pieces while emphasizing the writing-singles approach that’s served Rammstein so well since they CD-era frontloaded 1995’s Herzeleid and 1997’s Sehnsucht, their first two full-lengths, for maximum audience impact. Clearly those efforts worked, and they still do on Zeit. You can’t argue with good pop.

As to the material itself: no, I doubt there was much urgency of expression behind “Dicke Titten” (‘big boobs’) or “OK” (a song about unprotected sex), but “Zeit,” time and the passing of it, getting old, are themes to which the band returns, be it in that song, “Zick Zack”‘s video-ready sendup of plastic surgery and the culture of youth-worship, the nighttime paean “Schwarz” or in the actually-about-dying-and-saying-goodbye-for-the-last-time “Adieu.” Clearly these aren’t the kinds of things Rammstein would’ve been writing about in 1997 — the big boobs aside; they’ve always had a certain delight in pushing propriety, to put it mildly — but, and I believe this is confirmed, it’s not 1997 anymore. “Angst,” about race-based fear, can coexist next to “Dicke Titten,” and somehow Zeit feels most like Rammstein getting to the core of what they do and what they’ve always done, even as they do it in new ways and toward different ends.

Early last month, I went to see the band at Metlife Stadium in my beloved Garden State of New Jersey (with my mother and sister; it was a family outing), and the show was stellar. Very much a performance, choreographed unto the pyrotechnics and the band being pushed on inflatable rafts over the crowd from one stage to another — it was a whole thing; I’d recommend this video as a representative example of the tour — but enough to drive me back into their discography for the last six weeks for a deep-dive. Listening to the CD of Zeit in my car reeks of pure nostalgia, but at least it’s something new, of this moment, rather than trying to capture one that’s long since gone, or even just a couple years old. Not every band would make the effort to produce something new at all for touring that was booked and delayed by outside circumstances.

If Zeit is to be the final chapter — an almost inevitable-feeling live album would then be epilogue — of Rammstein‘s studio discography, “Adieu” is a fair note to leave with, and the album as a whole encapsulates the journey of the band’s craft, their collective ability to take simple-seeming beats and riffs and build so much from them, Lindemann‘s inescapable frontman presence and the interplay between electronic and organic hard rock elements that helped make them not only a commercial success, but a lasting phenomenon unto themselves. They were never for everybody, and I suppose they’re still not, but I remember hearing “Rammstein” and “Heirate Mich” alongside David Bowie, Nine Inch Nails and Angelo Badalamenti on the Lost Highway soundtrack in 1997, I remember seeing them for the first time at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York in 2001, and I know I will fondly remember this album, this show as well. Maybe that makes them unforgettable.

As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

—

Something different, there. Maybe that’s me doing myself a favor, I don’t know. It’s been a rough week. After seemingly spraining my knee last weekend at Høstsabbat in Oslo, the days since have been sore and lumbering, and I have felt old and out of shape (both of which I am) and generally pretty rough. Yesterday I went back to bed after putting the kid on the bus to school — he goes 12:30-3PM to pre-K; I don’t love the schedule, but it’s only this year — for about an hour and a half, and I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason I was able to be remotely present for the rest of the day that followed.

I turn 41 next week, which feels like a total non-event, but I’ve done myself a few favors as regards what I’ve lined up for coverage, including a full stream of the new All Souls that I feel lucky to be able to host. There’s other stuff too. Another week to roll through, but it’ll be cool. That’s me telling myself as I punch out early.

New Gimme show today at 5PM. Thanks if you check it out.

I also hear there’s a new merch drop coming soon, though I’m not sure when. I’m sure you’re holding your breath.

And have a great and safe weekend. Watch your head, hydrate, have a good time. Back on Monday for more.

FRM.

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Tags: Berlin, Germany, Rammstein Zeit Rammstein, Universal Music Group, Zeit

This entry was posted on Friday, October 14th, 2022 at 9:32 am and is filed under Bootleg Theater. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.