You see, when we were in college we started our first stint wid the likes of heavy metal goliaths like Metallica, megadeth, iron maiden, faith no more etc...tht was in first year...then we experimented a bit with grunge metal and soon Nirvana emerged as the favourites..
over the years like a good wine, our tastes mellowed and we kindof went back in time to the 60s..listening to elvis, bob dylan, jimi hendrix, the beatles, doors etc...and that retro feel was accentuated with long highway rides on bikes, jeans, guitars and the usual hippy stuff...it was almost like a been there done that situation...it was then few of us felt that it was time to grow up..so they did...now they do a 9 to 5 and come home and watch NDTV!!
But me...it seemed like time had freezed upon me...i just couldnt let go...the passion simply wont fade..it still lingers on...so I experimented a lot wid industrial, gothic, punk and then came numetal....and sadly I wasnt amused...it was this aching feeling that this is not the way BIG BAD ROCK was supposed to come to an end...
And just when I was about to go back to glory days, here came a BAND from a land of the machines...and that reflected in their style...like a fast paced march of an army, speaking a high pitched angry language..and I almost had the visions of Hitler...all the good for it...
and I knew they are gonna be the next big thing, even if they didnt sing in a language the world at large understood!!On the contrary i’d say tht if they happened to sing in english, they wudnt have made the kindof impact, they made by sticking to they mother tongue....and look, even the americans are grooving to the tunes of ’’we’re all living in amerika..!!’’ ...what a joke, those thick heads dont understand that the song is a pun on their culture and their political misadventures..!!
Nevertheless, coming back to HErzeleid, their first complete album, and need I say that a debut album of this magnitude kicks and rocks??! Right from the first track ’Wollt ihr das bett in flammen sehen’ to the nerve wreaking fast ’DEr meister’...boy, these guys can keep stomping your brain even after you dare to take out the disc!!
I personally dont like the third track, ’Weises fleisch’ that much but that feeling is fast erased by the brilliant brilliant track, ’Asche zu asche’....this is one of my personal favourites in the album...it simply is irresistible..my advice, if you have a 5.1 or ’something like that’ surround system, crank up the volume and let the manic sound engulf you...but be warned, dont try this if you live with parents or a nagging neighbour!!
That impulse is soon undercut by another melodic ’Seemann’...and this simply shows the bandwidth of Rammstein’s creativity....after this, again the tempo is pushed up by the fast paced ’du riechst so gut’....and this in one song you cannot stop ur foot from tapping to.....another of my favourite!! Then we have ’Das alte leid’ which though not very fast paced, is very thick and the shrill sounds from the rear surrounds you and gives you goosebumps!!
Heirate mich is more conventional but nevertheless true german, then comes another foot tapper, ’herzeleid’...meaning heartache..but boy, they make ur heart feel good!!
The least interesting song in the album is ’laichzeit’....and then we have ’Rammstein’..the self named song which describes the horrors of an air show disaster that happened at Ramstein air base...the place from which the band gets its name!!
The moral of the story, turn up the volumes and you’ll not miss a single instrument which blend so well with the hot angry but brilliant vocals!!