The Ripple Effect: The Music Commentary Radio Show  

No doubt about it. This is it.

Anyone who, like myself, fell under that absolutely brutal spell that was the Gothic industrial masterpiece of Sehnsucht knows what I'm talking about. I first heard that album at a listening station at the now defunct Tower Records. It didn't take more than a minute of the opening title track and a few seconds of the following track "Engel" to know that I was hooked. Like a junkie in desperate need of a fix, Rammstein raced through my veins like an I.V. infusion. Sehnsucht was every thing I needed at that time in my life. Pulverizingly brutal, with some of the best riffs ever recorded on a industrial metal album ("Du Hast"), ramrodded through a punishing production that brought out the ultra-metallic sound of the guitars, married to Gothic overtones, snippets of operatic vocals, and the whole thing wed to a back beat and bass that could keep the strobe lights flashing on the dance floor. Throw in the guttural German vocals and lyrics that spoke to unknown disasters that I couldn't understand, and I was transfixed. White matter-meltingly brutal and grooving at the same time. Jesus. Line me up. Tie on the tourniquet, find a vein and inject me full. It was the album I'd been waiting for.

For about 2 years, that album became my signature war cry. Playing center defense on a competitive soccer team, hours before each game you knew where you could find me. In my beat up pick-up truck, terrorizing my speakers with Sehnsucht at full volume. My head whipping into a frenzy with the mania of the guitar crunch, my neck whipping like an uncoiled spring in time to the industrial drums. To play at my best, I needed to be mean; angry; pissed-off and ready to do battle. I pitied the poor fool who tried to rush the ball through the center of my field after my Rammstein pre-game ritual. Blood was spilled. Bones shattered. Red cards flew.

But let's be honest. As much as I ingested Sehnsucht, the follow-up albums have been a mixed bag. Not that Mutter, or Reise, Reise, or Rosenrot were bad albums, they were just . . . lacking. They didn't have that special X-factor that Sehnsucht had. The brutality married to the beat. The crushing blows to the midsection married to the loving kiss upon the lips. I bought em, I still own em, but I don't listen to em. When I want to hear Rammstein, I'd always go back to Sehnsucht.

Now, I have another album to play.

more . . . http://www.redgage.com/blogs/TheRippleEffect/rammstein--leibe-ist-fur-alle-da.html