Rammstein's seventh album is on its way. Here's what we want from it...
Ten years is a long time. In the time it’s taken for Rammstein to make the follow-up to Liebe ist für alle da, we could have completed senior school. Twice. Still, in just five days the video for Deutschland - the starting pistol for Rammstein’s new album, finally coming out on May 17 – has been watched 20 million times on YouTube. And we were sort of expecting it, weren’t we? Something spectacular, at least, but not… as it came, in all its OTT Teutonic glory. So, with that in mind, here’s what we’d like, but what we don't expect Rammstein to deliver in ways we can imagine…
The world is a very different place than it was a decade ago. But equally, there’s still the same ‘is this really happening?’ real-life horror that fuelled songs about the Josef Fritzl-chronicling Wiener Blut, and Mein Teil, which dealt with the case of cannibal Armin Meiwes from 2004’s Reise, Reise. And so enters Donald Trump. He hasn't eaten anyone, but such a ridiculous man who looks so good when immortalised as a giant blimp-baby and threatened to nuke a foreign power on Twitter – not to mention his alleged rumpo on, ahem, “soggy” hotel beds – is surely ripe for the Rammstein treatment. What’s “pissy mattress” in German?
Our minds were clean until Rammstein came along, and there’s no way you can prove otherwise. Being decent, upstanding people, we’re sure that you, like us, were not even aware of the existence of “jazz films” on the internet until forced to watch the video for Pussy via a grumble website. This, after never being able to look at Snow White the same way after the Sonne clip. So, this time we’re expecting to feel grotty every time we, I dunno, put our bus ticket back in our pocket. Something like that. Something everyday, now requiring the washing of hands every time we think about it…
The only proper way to deal with the saga of Brexit, the Gordian Knot of Britain eating itself as the world looks on wondering what the Hell we’re doing, a national-embarrassment version of seeing your dad on the job, is to laugh. In their offbeat, German-League-Of-Gentlemen way, Rammstein would be the perfect people to roast us on a spit made of sheer banter, while also putting everything into an actual, sensible context. The lion’s share of the work was done for them when the words “Hard Brexit” first passed lips, so this has to be a shoo-in. Possibly. Either that or it’s just an industrial-metal rendition of God Save The Queen (not the Sex Pistols one, the National Anthem), with an increasingly loud and obnoxious laugh track over the top, that somehow crescendos into the Benny Hill theme.
Wit, you see, is all about brevity. Thus, whenever Rammstein have sung in English, like on Pussy or Amerika, the LOLZ have flowed like wine from their short, utilitarian couplets. So, we’d like more of this, please. Obviously this would work best for the Brexit and Trump songs we’ve just made up for the band.
Remember what we were saying about being pure, innocent, puritan-like folk? We needed a lie down after hearing the absolute gutter filth Till and co-conspirator Peter Tägtgren got up to on Till’s Skills In Pills solo album. And, actually [adopts Alan Partridge voice], despite what we said earlier, brevity be damned, every song being in English and going into great, some would say unnecessary detail, about weeing on people, prophylactics, a desire to become a cowboy stripper and pills that ‘Keep my boner steep’, had us slapping our thighs with mirth. If there’s any ribald stone left for Till to turn we’re hoping for that. Although unless it involves, I dunno, Mary Berry’s rolling pin, we have no idea what there is left on this front.
Now, we’re not going to get all Dragon’s Den about this because, frankly, we’re not sure how a person is expected to pitch an idea ‘better than the spurting penis on wheels’. And frankly, we don’t want to know. Just make it happen. But where actually do you go from there? A bigger mobile-member that fires even greater quantities of foamy semen? That’s the prop version of Jurassic World’s “More teeth” mission statement. And look where that got them. Do we want Till Lindemann riding around on an aggressive meat-and-two-veg with fangs? Actually, maybe, but the point stands: it’s the bigger, not necessarily better sequel. So we need a song with lyrics that inspire a grander, ahem, climax to a Rammstein show, that isn’t a cock with gnashers. Get to it, lads…
