I have just watched a video for "Deutschland", Rammstein's new single, and I guess I can easily get away with repeating the old Marc Bolan adage: 'If you know how to rock, you don't have to shock'. I mean, what is more to say about Rammstein?..
But - no, wait, people actually care.
Each time somebody brings up Rammstein in a conversation, I always have the same reaction: Rammstein? Come on, you have to be fucking kidding me. Because I genuinely cannot believe that someone in their right mind would listen to them non-ironically. This is like saying Mel Gibson is your favourite filmmaker. This is like going to a Laibach concert - only worse, because at the very least those Slovenian guys don't take themselves too seriously.
I do remember kids from my school telling me about Rammstein for the first time. We were going home after classes, and God knows that name sounded dangerous. As did the music. When you were twelve, there was something intriguingly disturbing about those German vocals and pounding drums (even if I never fell for either). One guy from my class bought a T-shirt, another played computer games to "Du hast", someone else listened to them in class, on a cassette player. But really - we were twelve. We had no concept of subtlety and, on our way home from school, you could blow us away with a firecracker.
Later, I lost every last vestige of interest in them, and was surprised to read about the huge uproar surrounding the clip for the new single "Deutschland" which was apparently too edgy for some. Well, I saw the video, and it bored me to tears. The schtick is tedious, the sense of humour is deplorable, the lyrics are one-dimensional, the melody is rudimentary to the extent where a Soviet realism painting has a greater chance of revealing its hidden depths. Yet somehow there are people who are actively enjoying the aesthetics that wear thin after about ten seconds.
I have always felt that the saddest part is that Rammstein are not even the worst band in the world. That would at least be an achievement of sorts.
