Their songs are usually in German, but they have also performed songs entirely or partially in other languages such as English, Spanish, French and Russian. As of 2009, they have sold over 15 million records worldwide. Rammstein's live shows are famous for their pyrotechnic performance and theatrics, earning them awards from many countries. Rammstein's entire catalogue is published by Universal Music Group. Since their formation in 1994, Rammstein has had no changes in their band line-up. Although widely believed that the band was named after the Ramstein air-show disaster, the band has denied this and said that their name is inspired by the giant doorstop type devices found on old gates, called Rammsteine . The extra "m" in the band's name makes it translate literally as "ramming stone".
The New York Times described Rammstein's music as a "powerful strain of brutally intense rock... bringing gale-force music and spectacular theatrics together". The members have not been shy about courting controversy and have periodically attracted condemnation from morality campaigners. Till and Flake's stage act earned them a night in jail in June 1999 after a liquid-ejecting dildo was used in a concert in Worcester, Massachusetts. Back home in Germany, the band has faced repeated accusations of fascist sympathies because of the dark and sometimes militaristic imagery of their videos and concerts, including the use of excerpts from the film Olympia by Leni Riefenstahl in the video for the Depeche Mode cover "Stripped". MTV Germany studied the lyrics, talked to the band and came away satisfied that Rammstein are apolitical. "They aren't in any way connected with any right-wing activities," Peter Ruppert, then head of Music Programming at MTV Germany confirmed. Such criticism is unavoidable for a band that draws inspiration from German culture. Their cover of their debut album Herzeleid, released in Germany in 1995, showed the band members bare-chested in a style that resembled Strength Through Joy in the eyes of some critics, who accused the band of trying to sell themselves as "poster boys for the Master Race".Rammstein have vehemently denied this and said they want nothing to do with politics or supremacy of any kind. Lorenz, annoyed by the claim, has remarked it is just a photo, and should be understood as such. Herzeleid has since been given a different cover in North America, depicting the band members' faces. The clip for the song Amerika shows people from different nationalities throughout the video and Rammstein members taking photographs with them at the end of the clip.
The song "Links 2-3-4" (Links being German for "left") was written as a riposte to these claims. According to Kruspe, it means, "'My heart beats on the left, two, three, four'. It's simple. If you want to put us in a political category, we're on the left side, and that's the reason we made the song".
According to the German online music magazine "laut.de" Rammstein, with this song, positioned themselves on the side of Oskar Lafontaine, co-chairmen of The Left Party and former chairman of theSocial Democratic Party of Germany, who had used the expression "the heart beats left" before. They write:
Rammstein embed the Lafontaine saying My heart beats left into their lyric and cite a line of an old Hannes Wader workers' song ("Left, 2, 3, 4; left 2, 3, 4; where your place is comrade, line up into the Workers' United Front, if you are a worker").
Lorenz stated that the song was created to show the band could write a harsh, evil, military-sounding song without being Nazis.
In October 2004, the video for "Mein Teil" ("My part") caused considerable controversy in Germany when it was released. It takes a darkly comic view of the Armin Meiwes cannibalism case, showing a cross-dressed Schneider holding the other five band members on a leash and rolling around in mud. The controversy did nothing to stop the single rising to No. 2 in the German charts. Meiwes (who was convicted of manslaughter in 2004, then retried in 2006 and found guilty of murder) brought a law suit in January 2006 against the band for infringement of rights to the story.
The band's own views of its image are sanguine: "We like being on the fringes of bad taste", according to Paul H. Landers, while Christian "Flake" Lorenz comments "The controversy is fun, like stealing forbidden fruit. But it serves a purpose. We like audiences to grapple with our music, and people have become more receptive".
The video for Pussy was released September 2009. It features graphic scenes of nudity along with women engaging in sexual activity with body doubles of the band members. It is the third Rammstein video to include nudity.
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