release date: Sep. 24, 1995
format: cd
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,12]
producer: Jacob Hellner, Carl-Michael Herlöfsson
label: Motor Music - nationality: Germany
Track highlights: 2. "Der Meister" - 5. "Seemann" - 6. "Du riechst so gut" (4 / 5) - 8. "Heirate mich" - 9. "Herzeleid" - 10. "Laichzeit" - 11. "Rammstein"
Studio debut album by German quintet Rammstein consisting of Till Lindemann on vocals, Richard Z. Kruspe on guitar, Paul Landers on guitar, Oliver Riedel on bass guitar, Christian Lorenz on keyboards, and with Christoph Schneider on drums.
Rammstein play industrial metal and what has become known as "Neue Deutsche Härte" ['New German Hardness'], a German variation of hard rock and metal rock often in combination with electronic dance or dance metal. The style of the band seems fostered from several sources of inspiration - most evidently French band KMFDM, American band Nine Inch Nails, Belgian industrial electronic band Front242 and the two Canadian bands, Front Line Assembly and Skinny Puppy; however, Rammstein play its own quite original tight version of industrial metal.
The album attracted international attention, it reached #6 on the national albums chart list - #11 in Austria and top 100 entries in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and France.
I only heard the album after being introduced to the successor Sehnsucht (1997) and never found it a memorable or strong debut, although, it contains a few fine compositions. Some tracks are "just" a collection of very similar sounding tracks of hardcore metal and industrial metal that seem built on more or less the same formula and only expose little complexity.
The album spawned two single releases: "Du riechst so gut" and "Seemann" with the former pointing more to the style on the preceding albums, and together with "Der Meister" they are also the best tracks found on what appears as the uneven but promising debut.
The video for the song "Rammstein" was made with director David Lynch who used the track for a scene to his 1997 movie "Lost Highway", which also feature a scene with the song "Heirate mich".
[ allmusic.com 3 / 5, Sputnik Music 4 / 5 stars ]
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