The third time we’ve covered them here, not quite the charm…
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Katherine St Asaph: Much like sword guys, Rammstein exist in their own realm, immune to criticism and good taste and rather embarrassing when dragged into the light. The guttural troll kitsch is nothing the world isn’t consuming en masse nowadays via Game of Thrones. The surging, angry, jingoistic “DEUTSCHLAND” is also a thing, or at least adjacent to a thing, that the world is consuming way more en masse than it should be. I get that this has been Rammstein’s schtick for decades (…yep) and that the song has nuance somewhere, buried without escape in the musicians’ brains, but it presents a lot differently now than it did in 1997. I mean, what do you say, besides “this is a Rammstein song in the year 2019”?
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Iain Mew: With a new Rammstein song I would like something new or at least to feel some force behind it. The contained pace and half-hearted synth dressing leave it falling between the two and failing at both.
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Will Adams: There are gestures towards gravitas here — the anxious opening synth line; Till Lindemann’s reliably deep, Dave Gahan-esque tone; the extended, expensive video — but the lyrics fail to match them and ultimately play it safe. At the center is a militant cheer of “DEUTSCHLAND!”, which just doesn’t cut it as far as effective, meaningful protest music in 2019.
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Iris Xie: Sonically, the song is so friendly and neck-deep in its dedication to their genre that it has the same earnest qualities in its delivery that is present in other acts like Tim Curry in Rocky Horror Show, and the seminal Hex Girls, but “Deutschland” lacks the charm found in both. The contrast of the shredding guitar and the ominous synth chime in the background is atmospheric enough and might make a good waiting song for a Rammstein theme park ride. There’s definite wrestling in the lyrics with Germany as a nation-state, as something personal to them, to love and to hate in the struggle to fight Neo-Nazis, racism, and fascism. Still, though, “Deutschland” is clean and polished to the point where I feel ambivalent and cold. It comes off as a song about a country that is trying to find its own identity, while trying to move away from the tactics of emotional manipulation and energy usually found in its precedent, propaganda songs.
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Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: Wrapping your ambivalent meditation on the history of your country in sturm-und-drang-ish musical trappings that sound more fitting for a nationalist’s march is a bold move, one that could get lost in translation if not for the dread heavy in Till Lindemann’s voice. As it stands, “Deutschland” embraces the contradictions, creating a messy piece of hard rock that can’t easily be appropriated by any political movement without confusion.
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Ian Mathers: Song’s an aimless, ahistorical mess, the video much more so. There’s some heft to it, but I’m reasonably sure there are other bands making music as or more compelling that aren’t trying to sell you on some quarter-baked analysis of power dynamics or w/e out there.
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