Celebrates pyromania on their new album!
Rammstein the industrial rockers from east Germany are back
with their fifth studio album. Okej got to talk to the drummer Christoph
Schneider.
Rosenrot is the follow up to last year’s Reise, Reise.
The song Rosenrot was one of the songs that was left over
from the last recordings, and is an epic story that is inspired from Goethe’s
poem Heidenröslein and the brother Grimm’s fairytales.
Rammstein thought it and many other songs that was left over
after the recordings of Reise, Reise were too good to waste, so they decided to
to release Reise, Reise vol II, that now has changed name to Rosenrot.
Rammstein have always
used a Swedish producer Jacob Hellner. Does that mean that you spend a lot of
time in Sweden when you record?
-
No, not that much. The Albums are mixed in
Sweden, but the music is recorded in different studios around the world, like
for example Spain and Berlin.
Tell us about
Rosenrot?
-
We have tried to vary our sound more. Sharleen
Spiteri from Texas is on it as a guestsinger, and sings a duet with Till in the
song Stirb Nicht vor Mir. It is a popsong with lyrics both in German and
English. The songs are also longer than usual, and we have experimented with
different muscic genres. In Te Quiero Puta you can hear a South American mariacchi band.
The lyrics are a mix
between black humour, anxiety, perversions, romance and poetry. How do you come
up with subjects for your lyrics?
-
It’s Till. He always writes poems, and then he reads
them to us. If they don’t fit in to the song, we change the structure.
The tour came to a
sudden end when Till hurt his knee, and shortly after that Flake got the mumps. Will you continue the tour when
everyone has recovered?
- Till’s
injury was not that bad. Flake ran him over ( Flake is the only keyboardist in
the world who has keyboards with wheels and an engine ) Flake on the other hand was a lot worse, when
you catch a child illness as an adult it can be dangerous. He has problems with
his hearing and we are all worried it can be permanent. We don’t know when we
will tour again. First of all will we take a long break, and after that we will
see if we go back in the studio or play a few Festivals.
Rammstein are famous for their fantastic live shows. The latest was
funnier than ever before. With Till and Flake doing some kind of Laurel and
Hardy routine. Are you turning in to a comedy band?
- I
think we might have gone a bit too far this time. We were funnier when we
didn’t know we were funny. We wanted to be hard and extreme when we started.
Now we want to show that we are not so evil and that we can laugh at ourselves.
We are only human, and I think we should explore the hard with the romantic in
the future.
Don’t you have anything controversial on the new Album like Mein Teil,
about the internet cannibal Armin Meiwes that filmed himself eating a willing
victim?
- Yes!
Benzin is a celebration of pyromania, and Mann Gegen Mann challenges homophobic
attitudes in Germany.
You have always played with the homoerotic.
- Yes,
it is an important aspect of our band, and we are happy that Till wrote a song
about it from an interesting perspective. We are also looking forward to the
video. It will be directed by Jonas Åkerlund. He has a very good idea for the
video, and it will be controversial.
What kind of music do you like?
- I
don’t really listen to anything anymore. It’s not that I am not interested, but
after listening to popular music for 20 years it feels like nothing is new
anymore, and I don’t have time to keep track of all the new bands. Of course
there are quality bands like The Killers and even Coldplay.
Lastly, how have you managed to keep your private life so secret in a
world obsessed with pointless gossip?
- We are private people. We
don’t go to celebrity parties on our free time. None of us talks a lot about
what we do outside Rammstein. It is the band and the music that is the most
important!
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