rammstein – liebe ist für alle da (2009)

one widespread and generally agreed upon assumption about rammstein is that either you love or hate them, no matter where your usual music preferences tend to. that is to say: you don’t have to be a big fan of industrial to like their (let me put it this way) minimalistic music.
i myself belong to said category. add to that the fact this album still follows the path set by their previous works from mutter on, and you can skip the following bunch of lines to land straight to the final, full 8 i just had to award it.
there’s a simple reason for that: the album deserves it. after the sheer disappointment brought about by the video for “pussy” (which turned out to be the worst song of the pack), my expectations were honestly not that high.
liebe ist für alle da took care of rapidly changing my mind about that. and from the very first songs already. “rammlied” is nothing but a true hymn to the band; a sort of link to the now old “rammstein” is surely to be heard, though filtered through the band’s more compact sound of late. later on in the album, “haifisch” is a tribute to the fans, in a way that reminded me of “ich will” – that is, a song you’ll wanna sing along to and, needless to say, a perfect fit for a concert. the softer tones are also to be found, and those of you who prized the likes of “ohne dich” will surely meet “frühling in paris”, as well as “roter sand”, with pleasure. “mehr” is probably the biggest hint at the band’s oldest stuff, still with a post-mutter feeling to it. “liebe ist für alle da” explicitly hints at “feuer und wasser” instead, which is also made evident by the lyrics.
for a quick word about the lyrics: just as always, they’re written in a very plain style encompassing several possible levels of reading. the infamous “read between the lines”-kind of lyrics à la rammstein is thus very well present. i guess those who hastily brand rammstein as “simplistic” or something of the sorts will continue to do so in spite of whatever i might have to say on the matter, so let there be quiet. just let me remark once more how “much” lies hidden behind such apparently high school-level german lyrics.
on to the heavier stuff now. “ich tu dir weh” is yet another nice example of combining heavy rhythms with melodic lyrical lines, which rammstein had already gotten us quite used to. “b********” is some steps closer to the “hilf mir”/”dalai lama” kind of songs, namely a slow tempo, quasi-recited “march” with a darkened sound and a dim atmosphere. it all becomes even grimmer with “wiener blut”, where we’re literaly welcomed “into the darkness” by lindemann‘s trademark gloomily low notes, and a thick instrumental combo giving way to dim (again!) keyboards and diquieting samples here and there. seems like there’s enough to please anyone who grew loving rammstein‘s more “mature” stuff – anything following the first two albums, that is. the same old themes (disturbing stories, and so on) and ways of putting them into music are back again, to the point there’s almost one possible cognate to each of the bands’s classics. not enough? then i should’ve mentioned “waidmanns heil”, the closest thing to “zerstoeren” to be found on this album – uptempo, aggressive, and as someone would say, very “headbangable”.
also a few words about the bonus disc. i’m not sure whether there’s enough on it to justify the much higher price you might find it being sold for. still, as often happens, some of the bonus tracks are actually worth the status of “normal” tracks. suffice it to mention the very good “führe mich” – but they’re actually all worth it.
in a word, liebe ist für alle da presents us with basically the same kind of material rammstein have been busy with in the recent past years. if you already were a fan, this album will keep you bond to a band you loved; if you didn’t like their previous stuff, big chance you won’t find this of your liking either. personally, it was comforting to find out rammstein are still there, and still the same old them (not by chance, it once leaked that they were going to put all the unused material that didn’t make it to rosenrot on a new album… which is in fact to be heard here). same old rammstein, to the bone. hence: very good.

thus spake the cennsor: 8/10