The Designer’s Drugs

Medium: Album
Stimulus: Rammstein – Liebe Ist fur Alle Da
Anno: 2009

It’s a rule as old as the bonus tracks from Rammstein’s breakthrough album, Sehnsucht, released over a decade ago. Rammstein and English don’t mix. Throughout the band’s history Till Lindemann has roared out tunes in almost every major European language, yet in the English tongue, his words lose the savage, flowing cleverness that mark his usual Deutschland vocals. It could be argued that this is because not knowing the meanings of lyrics covers a multitude of poetic sins, but if that’s true with Rammstein, it is a small truth.

The evidence on this album comes in “Pussy,” arguably Rammstein’s most pop song to date. Sung mostly in English and occasionally regressing to German, the song satirizes sex tourism with absurdist lines such as “I can’t get laid in Germany” and “Steck Bratwurst en dein Sauerkraut.” However, this mockery falls flat due to the oft-repeated chorus of “You’ve got a pussy/I have a dick(-ah)/So what’s the problem?/Let’s do it quick.” Knowing the point of the jest doesn’t make these unimaginative lyrics any more palatable, and they would have killed the song if it wasn’t so damn catchy.

Yet Lindemann is largely in his element. Taking another page from the Depeche Mode catalogue, (and okay, Rammstein’s cover of “Stripped” is the one moment when Lindemann’s English vocals really worked,) the band struts and synths in “Haifisch.” While Christoph Schneider bounces the beats and Flake Lorenz interjects with brief New Wave keyboard beeps, the vocals scoff and roll in trademark synchronicity. The album’s major key ballad is “Fruhling in Paris,” where Lindemann’s whispers swell alongside the slight obnoxiousness of a squealing synthesizer. “Roter Sand” winds down the album with subdued guitar and distant booming coaxing damned but hopeful words.

The remaining tracks are as harsh as anything Rammstein has produced. Schneider’s drums undergo the most noticeable shift in direction; on “Waidmann’s Heil” and the album’s title track, he uses bursts of speed to break up his usual methodical beats. Methodical, however, hasn’t grown stale. The album’s two best tracks, “Buckstabu” and “Wiener Blut,” are vintage Rammstein, the former a crawling, twitching monstrosity that features some of Lindemann’s most scathing vocals to date, whereas the latter is a bipolar whirl of whispers and berserk rage.

The leadoff single will undoubtedly garner this album its greatest attention, and if the special edition release which includes dildos cast from the band members is any indication, Rammstein welcomes the notoriety. Nonetheless, infamy doesn’t lessen the solidity of Liebe Ist fur Alle Da, which stands among the year’s best metal offerings.