I first started listening to Rammstein quite a while ago. 1999 in fact, ten years which look at it now I can’t believe it’s been that long. It was Du Hast on , which was one of the first soundtracks I bought, actually. If I might get all nostalgiac for a moment, I also can’t believe that’s pretty much where it started The Matrix soundtrack. If you could see my iPod now. I wasn’t really a music person you see, so I didn’t really tend to buy much aside from the odd soundtrack here and there. And I was only ten so cut me some slack, I’ve matured since then. Not so much that I don’t still like Rammstein though. For a decade now I’ve been what one might consider a “fan” of theirs.My first album was Mutter, which I quite liked. Why did I buy it you ask? Well, I liked Du hast, so I went to Futureshop and bought the only Rammstein album they had, that being Mutter. I also picked up The Scorpion King soundtrack but we shant go there today or any other. I listened to it on my walkman (those were the days) until the damn thing practically melted, and living in the rather small rural area I was at the time it wasn’t simply a matter of going to the store to find their others. Finding Mutter was a stroke of luck in of itself, so I ordered their others: Herzeleid and Sehnsucht, and Lichtspielhaus while I was at it. All or nothing right? In the interim I picked up the Live Aus Berlin DVD, and later the album, and started to subconciously pick which songs I’d be listening to once the order arrived. When they did (a ridiculous amount of time later, I don’t know how I ever lived without Amazon and overnight shipping) those two joined the rotation and, while I did like them quite a bit, there was something about the sound of Mutter that I liked over them. Not to say they wouldn’t have ranked in the top 100 tracks had I been keeping track back then, but there was just something about Mutter. Reise, Reise and Rosenrot followed years later, and by now I was fully into the band such that I was aware of new releases. You know that point you hit, where you know you’ve become a fan. You don’t even think about it, you just know. Reise, Reise hit me and I was blown away. The sound of Mutter perfected further into a new beast altogether.

Then they announced Rosenrot, which immediately concerned me. Rarely can a band pull off a good B-sides album. All too often the excuse “they didn’t fit with the theme of the album proper” really means “we thought they were shit but your money give it now.” Luckily it proved to be my favorite album to date. Rosenrot, Wo bist Du, Spring, all incredible songs that were the soundtrack to my college years (long story). The double shot of Reise/Rosenrot was just about the best thing I’d heard out of that genre, and it still remains one of my favorites if for no other reason than the personal connection it has to my life at the time, emo though that may sound. Combining the hard sound they’ve had since the beginning and adding a subtle layer of synths and orchestra as the situation requires, the garnish on the side of the dish if you will, they took the production values of Mutter and finessed them, refined them, into a near flawless creature that would have been the magnum opus for a lesser band. But Rammstein isn’t a lesser band are they?

Along the way there was Volkerball, which I bought twice, once the two disc and again on the uber-set with the art book and all that, which now sits atop the “if the building burns grab these things” shelf alongside my Beatles Box of Vision and some Giger books. Not to mention the countless single remixes, the b-sides not given a full album, Lindemann and Kruspe’s cover of Schtiel, and Kruspe’s side project Emigrate which isn’t actually too shabby. All in all Rammstein and its members have been quite busy over the past decade and a half, and they’ve returned to the fray with their sixth studio album Liebe ist fur alle da. But the question that must be asked, as it is asked of every single band ever in history when they release a new album ever and as they always shall be asked for all eternity, is “are they still good?”

I’ve rambled on enough I suppose, on to the album itself!

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