Pearls

There's something very frustrating about Rammstein. Their work has been described as 'music to invade Poland to', the live show with 'Rammstein don't play, they burn', or something like it, but both are fairly trite and inadequate.

Rammstein's music, live show, and public life are authored to fuck with the programme. On the latest album there's a heartfelt Piaf tribute about the deflowering of a young man, a very poppy pop song about European sex tourism, and a heavy anthem about Rammstein and its fans. If you got the bonus disk you can listen a very pretty track about the rape of a goose-girl, and a operatic piece centred around the image of conjoined twins. The live show includes as much drama and choreography as any classical ballet, and a foam canon dressed up as a cock. The front-man only opens his mouth to sing and otherwise stands back and stares, and their lyrics are almost entirely German. Yes, fuck the programme. Let's just confuse the uninitiated and drive our fans to distraction, shall we?

To me Rammstein resemble nothing so much as a grain of sand in an oyster's shell. Consider the grain of sand. It gets into the oyster shell and irritates the shit out of the oyster. The oyster is forced to protect itself by coating the grain with crystalline calcium carbonate, and the end product is a pearl, and an overwrought oyster.

Despite the fact that their albums are coherent, thematic, and well-balanced Rammstein manage to avoid fitting into any pigeonhole you might care to invent for them. The tracks are distinct and disturbing, the hooks and riffs keep your body involved, even if you stop consciously listening, and that's without considering the actual meaning of the lyrics, around which this site is built.

Rammstein's stock in trade is their live performance, which I have never experienced. If they don't come down this way I expect to turn out a lot of pearls. Please support this Facebook group, and save me a lot of frustration.