"Appalling" just isn't strong enough.

Rammstein - Liebe ist fuer alle da

Release: October 16, 2009
Genre: Neue Deutche Härte
Label: Universal Records, Vagrant Records
Length: 46:07

Nick's Rating: 2/5


Earlier today, I was listening to Emerson, Lake & Palmer's Black Moon, wondering why "Paper Blood" from that album and "Knife Edge," its obvious ancestor, from their self-titled, didn't get covered by many bands. Then I found a cover of "Knife Edge" by a doom-metal band and learned why. The use of doom tones and death metal vocals killed the whole thing. Bands like Dream Theater seem like they could really make it come to life. Or maybe Lyriel. I'd suggest Nightwish, but no. Lyriel could probably handle that better. They do use legitimate stringed instruments and not Disney-inflected keyboards. I kind of thought about the idea of the song in the hands of Rammstein, then, who might be able to pull it off with a little more temperance in the vocals. You know things are bad when you think of Till Lindemann as the more tempered, refined, restrained, etc. voice of two voices.

So, uh, Liebe ist fuer alle da. Except for this album.

So, I guess I'll get right down to it. Two out of five is more than enough for this album. If this were a proportion of songs I like vs. songs I don't, that'd be a massive overestimate. Okay, not really massive, but you get the idea. This album sucks out loud (please wait to shoot me until after the review).

I think I'll tackle this in list form, since it'll be more fun that way. The appropriate place to start is with #1, which brings us straight to almost the end of the album.

My favorite song on this record is "Mehr" -- those playing the home game may recognize this as being German (no shit!) for "More." I dunno what the lyrics mean or have to do with anything, and don't really have it in me to look up what they say or what they mean. I think it's generally the arrangement and vocals on this song that make it enjoyable for me -- after having spend much of the album, and even my favorite songs, comparatively monotone, Till proves that he does actually have some vocal range in him! A tiny, insignificant amount of vocal range! Isn't it a cute little vocal range? As far as the rest, the song is drenched in keyboards, and very obvious keyboards at that, harking back to earlier albums a little, albeit not entirely (because, of course, that would be REGRESSIVE and that's not cool for a band like Rammstein -- I consider them "stealth prog," or I would had I not just made up that term right now). Is Till showing some emotion in the song's lyrics? Maybe he's just trolling us. Rammstein seem like the closest thing to a band of trolls in some time while (probably) not actually being one.

Really, it's the two (to my ears, which are pretty shoddy, I guess, probably from listening to this album too much in headphones -- it is mastered loud, which makes sense, but it's just painful) most-keyboard-heavy tracks are my favorites, because, while you can accuse the rhythms of "Haifisch" of being too poppy, it does have a sound that reminds me more of my childhood glimpses of Rammstein (which I may or may not have described in my review of Porcelain and the Tramps' quasi-real EP: English, if I recall correctly, and imported in the era of Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson), which is food enough as far as I'm concerned. "Haifisch" means "Shark" in German. The lyrics basically state, if I recall correctly (the chorus, anyway; the verses are just a bit odd and slightly posturing-focused), that even sharks cry, but nobody notices this because they live in the water (and I think that the rest says something about this being where the salt in the ocean comes from). Another fun note: those chorus lyrics are based on the lyrics to "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" from The Threepenny Opera! No, really! I think this makes Rammstein's lyrics more "Brechtian" than the Dresden Dolls', but I'm not much of a Brecht expert, so I don't know worth a crap. I should try explaining this to my mother, who once described "Du hast" as resembling "a wedding march for the Third Reich," but I'm not sure what she'd say. I would call this somewhat intelligent in its own way (with a fair bit of bullshit philosophy thrown in for good measure), even if it's not to the point of borrowing from writers/etc. like Ayn Rand. In fact, let's not have them do Rand; Rammstein honestly don't need more shit piled on them after the infamous "music to invade Poland to" jab and everything else.

So, on the rockier side, there's "Waidmanns Heil" and the title track to cover that. Despite how overly energetic and noisy the former is, it's actually one of the less noise-encrusted rockers on this album, which is pretty depressing. Just so we're clear, I'm okay with noise music sometimes. However, it doesn't fit in Rammstein's Œuvre very well, as in songs like "B********" -- which apparently means "Buckstabu," some made-up word by the band, which is the first step to turning into a shittier version of Magma.

To be fair, this may be an improvement.

But, anyway. The title track is more stropped-down and a lot less noisy, but still loud and, now that I think about it, also with a fair bit of keyboard to it and is just generally very catchy, something that every other song on here lacks, because most of that is buried in noise out the ass. Which is unfortunate, because most of them could probably be rearranged into something slightly decent if they weren't plagued by so much horrific crap.

I guess, besides those, there's only one notable track, that being called "Pussy." That should already bring up red flags. The song had a pornographic video released for it and featured perhaps easily the bands raunchiest, least subtle, and dumbest lyrics ever. Is this a parody or something? I was always led to believe that parody needed to be a little smart.

I guess "Ich tu dir weh" is a little important, too, but it's not a very good song. I like the single cover, though.

So, in the end, that's four decent songs, one that's a TRUE piece of shit, and six that are so shoddily produced that I can't tell if they're good. Even the four I like don't really stack up among Rammstein's best. But when that list includes songs like "Sonne," "Moskau," "Spring," "Der Meister," and "Spiel mit mir," how can they? In my very first review of this, never published, written aroung the time of the relieas,e I'd suggested, jokingly, that listeners invest instead of Love Is All Around, an LP by War recorded in the late 60s and featuring Eric Burdon on lead vocals. Now that I get a chance to really think about it, I was being completely serious then. By the way, at the time of the release it was somewhat common to compare the album to Mutter. That's complete bullshit. Even though Mutter took the longest time for me to get to like, I can absolutely recognize that album as great, and having a very different sound from, this abomination -- it has quality, where this... doesn't. To say the very least. What's worse is hwo this album seems to get really good reviews. This thing is almost more overrated than Skyrim!

Lastly, here's a picture of a singer whose band released a way better album in the same way that was, by an "amusing" coincidence, that band's worst album ever, too.

You could have spent the time reading this review listening to "The Glass Prison."