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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As well as with reasonable consistency over the last seven years and intermittently throughout the last half-century-plus, King Crimson have been on tour since late July for a run that’s been dubbed ‘Music is Our Friend.’ Perhaps needless to say given the parties involved in the lineup and their level of expertise at their respective crafts, but yes, music is very much their friend. It’s nice to have friends.

I do not know what touring in the age of Covid at the amphitheater level might entail in terms of precautions on the back end. Most of the concessions at the PNC Bank Arts Center — which I think I was last at for Deep Purple quite some years ago; it’ll always be the home of my teenage Ozzfests in my heart — were shuttered, but merch was open and cans of water were five bucks at the bars, so commerce was happening at some capacity. The venue holds 17,000 people. It was not full and I wouldn’t expect it to be. Frankly, if the show was sold out, I probably wouldn’t have gone. Every time I was around more than five people, even outside, the mask went on. So it goes.

That is underselling the apprehension I felt in being among other humans to such a degree, but music, it turned out, was my friend too and offered some comfort. Still, I’ll admit to some light disenchantment in finding out that openers The Zappa Band in fact contained no Zappas. Nary a Zappa. Not a Dweezil or an Ahmet or maybe even a next-generation Zappa being introduced at this point. One could imagine them setting up family franchises, spreading the legacy of the mighty Frank like the Marleys for weirdos. Alas. The cast of Zappa veterans and and a couple Zappa Plays Zappa types were not a hardship. You like xylophones? They got ’em. I’ve never been a big Frank Zappa guy, which I assume is because I don’t play guitar, but the band was tight and earned the bow they took when they were done.

Speaking of earned, King Crimson earned all three of their drummers. Pretty much immediately. You think three drummers is excessive? You’re right. It’s damn near Blue Man Group at times. But, Jeremy Stacey, Pat Mastelotto and Gavin Harrison — the last of whom I once saw with his former band, Porcupine Tree, at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park supporting 2005’s Deadwing; a surreal thought 16 years later — were no less intricate in arrangement than they were spectacle at the front of the stage, beginning the showon their own while waiting their cue on risers behind were jack-of-many-trades Mel Collins (sax, flute, various keys, etc.), bassist Tony Levin, vocalist/guitarist/keyboardist Jakko Jakszyk and of course, founding guitarist Robert Fripp, seated off to stage left before sundry keyboards, Mellotrons, mysterious consoles, and so on: his quiet, should-probably-be-knighted presence understated and crucial in kind.

It was a ’70s-heavy setlist, with “Pictures of a City” from 1970’s In the Wake of Poseidon following the opening drum solo, “Hell Hounds of Krim.” Jakszyk, who has been with King Crimson-proper since they started touring again, did nothing but nail parts on the older songs, which was especially satisfying as they dove into “The Court of the Crimson King” from the prog-genitor 1969 debut, In the Court of the Crimson King. A signature piece if ever there was one — “21st Century Schizoid Man,” the encore, notwithstanding — I have memories of listening to it flying back from my honeymoon, my first international trip as an “adult,” at the age of 23. That sweep can’t help but call to my mind orange and pink sunrise over the Alps from the air looking out the window; still one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, 17 years after the fact. They haven’t played it every show, and I was nervous they wouldn’t at PNC. They hit it early. After that, everything was gravy.

Even better, gravy with Mellotrons.

The precisely-how-I-feel-about-commercial-air-travel-despite-the-noted-memory “One More Red Nightmare” from 1974’s Red led into the brief, maybe-improv “Tony’s Cadenza,” a bass solo from Levin, who is the second-longest tenured member of the band. It is no mystery why he has remained as others have come and gone. He is a genius, and he plays like a genius. If you’ve ever seen someone who has found their natural purpose: Babe Ruth swinging a bat. Simone Biles doing backflips. That is Tony Levin holding and playing a bass. You could not imagine who this person would be not holding or playing a bass. I’ve never seen him play before, in our out of King Crimson. It was a joy to behold, spiritually. With a bassist like that in your rhythm section, you need three drummers.

“Red,” from Red (duh), followed and its heavy-adjacent push brought about much nodding from the seated audience, grinning in their largely-unmasked it-digging. The subsequent “Islands” was, well, a bit much, and sent a slew of nodders off to the restrooms, to refresh beers, whathaveyou. If that was a gimme, so be it. They did touch on the ’80s-era odd-time deep-dive fare as well, in “Neurotica” from 1982’s Beat leading into “Indiscipline” from the prior year’s Discipline, which was Levin‘s first LP with the band. “Epitaph,” also from the first record, was a bonus later in the set, following the all-out-we’re-a-seven-piece-band-and-every-single-one-of-us-is-unfuckwithable “Radical Action II,” which gave way to “Level Five” from 2003’s The Power to Believe. That left “Starless” to turn the lights red, as it apparently will, thus capping the regular set with its build, gradual to the point of you don’t know it’s happening until you’re consumed by it.

And the aforementioned encore? Well of course. What do you do with that other than absorb it? My first time seeing King Crimson, probably my last if their retirement is to be believed (never say never), and I left feeling like I’d just received the classiest ass kicking I can remember. As many acts as their work has inspired across generations, and continues to inspire, if some of the young heads in the crowd were anything to go by, they’ve never been duplicated, and how can you credit that to anyone other than Fripp at this point? He was the maestro, all night, up there on the stage, serene but not at all inactive. The venue didn’t have the big screens on the side turned on, and photo/video was strictly prohibited, but even from where I was sitting up in the cheap seats you could see the man in his element. It was humbling in one way, righteous in another. I walked back to the car with The Patient Mrs. and even tired as I was, couldn’t help but feel rejuvenated.

King Crimson, “Starless” from Radical Action to Unseat the Hold of Monkey Mind (2016)