Rammstein concerts have been a reason for increased attention in Germany for a long time. It’s not just the die-hard fans who look at the gig. On Wednesday (June 7th) it was even more violent: After the allegations against Till Lindemann and the band, the first of several concerts in Munich became the topic of the day. Would Rammstein respond to the allegations? What is the singer saying? Is the set changing?
The answers in brief: The Berliners delivered their show without giving a damn; Till Lindemann was a bit more talkative for his standards and gave subtle hints that he was happy about the support of the fans (“Munich, thank you for being here. Thank you for being with us”) and in fact something changed in the composition the songs.
“Ohne dich” was released as a full band version for the first time since 2019. A sign that the band now, together with their followers, wants to stand together? But even more important: “Pussy”, for many years one of the most important pieces of a Rammstein concert and most recently the successor to “Ohne dich” shortly before the first encore, flew out of the program, as did the accompanying penis cannon.
“Pussy” deliberately mixes sex and violence
So why, of all things, without “pussy”? Rammstein may want to demonstrate that they take the allegations of numerous women, who also include sexual or physical abuse (keyword: knockout drops) seriously in several cases. As is well known, the play is a rather explicit affair. The name says it all, it’s all about sexual intercourse and how it comes about and how it works. “You’ve got a pussy, I have a dick, ah/So what’s the problem? Let’s do it quickly.”
In the canon of trashy songs about dirty love this line may cover almost exemplary what Rammstein is all about. Of course, the text is deliberately clumsy and mixes the band’s ironic war rhetoric, some deliberately caricaturing Germanism and crude eroticism: “Blitzkrieg with the meat gun!/Schnaps in your head, you lovely bride/Steck bratwurst in your sauerkraut.”
“Pussy” was released in 2009 on her sixth studio album “Liebe ist für alle da” and as a single hit like a bomb. If Rammstein and their music are something like a mirror surface for celebrating BDSM, sadomasochism and a “rough” sexuality that is not always put into practice but is illustrated in ideas, then this song is probably the national anthem of this sometimes dark, but for also many fascinating continents of thought and body. It was already being discussed at the time whether it was primarily “male fantasies” (Klaus Theweleit) that were leading the way and were accompanied by uncanny masculine compulsions that made healthy sexuality impossible.
The associated “Pussy” video by Jonas Åkerlund actually attracted even more attention than the song, as it shows the band in concrete pornographic acts. The clip was banned in many countries, in most of which it was only shown late at night or in a censored form. According to the tenor of the publication, Rammstein and especially Till Lindemann feasted on a porn fetish, which also became more and more obvious because the Internet via Youporn in 2009 (and of course a few years earlier) for almost everyone around the o’clock meat inspection provided. For a few years, flirting with porn was downright chic. It was the time of Terry Richardson, who could even turn fashion photography into a babel of sin without anyone taking offense.
sex as war
The penis cannon, in which Lindemann simulated a strong ejaculation at concerts in a kind of leisure pool variant (and thus also symbolizes the cumshot, which in porn developed primarily for the male gaze – and that’s almost 98 percent of all available films, whether amateur stuff or not – it has to be done almost by necessity), then remains as a martial variant at Rammstein’s concerts in the room, a kind of war version of the act of love. Maybe that’s why it was deleted. Apparently, Lindemann no longer wants to play the hyperpotent macho in front of everyone, at least after all the allegations that have become known.
If you take a look at the release of the “Till The End” porn, which shows the singer having excessive oral sex with numerous women and having rude, violent sex, one can certainly get the impression that Lindemann is no longer just with the fascination with pornography (ironic), but has itself become part of this visual spectacle. Maybe that was also adaptive at the moment when amateur pornography became professionalized with OnlyFans and also on Pornhub with its own porn influencers.
This musician then wanted to become part of the business himself (appropriately enough, the porn was reason enough for the publishing house Kiepenheuer & Witsch to part with its poet Lindemann, also because a book by the musician was misused there for sexual acts); he seems no longer able to face his own pose with critical self-distance.
Do Rammstein only say clearly what others are surreptitiously implying?
If you come back to “Pussy” again, it becomes clear that this is the starting point of Rammstein’s turn to violent sexuality, which is repeatedly hinted at in numerous songs. “Mercedes Benz and autobahn/driving abroad alone/journey, driving pleasure/I just want to have fun, not fall in love,” it says at the very beginning of the song, as a perverse rewrite of power plant auto-eroticism, as a possible indication that this band always on the journey, that the lust of her lyrical self is always one of wandering and one of boundless fun without real love.
more on the subject
One might defend Rammstein for the fact that their singer only very openly expresses something that other musicians and bands do in their sexually charged pop hits, i.e. celebrating pure hedonism in their beds, but you relate all of this to one to Lindemann’s sexual needs that are now in the air and are said to have been revealed, which appear to be closely intertwined with the fans of his band, then “Pussy” is very much the fully conscious instruction for what was supposed to have taken place in a dark room below the stage. And that’s why it’s only logical that Rammstein not only forego the row zero and after-show parties, but also this macabre, playful, over-explicit one signature song.
Because they take the allegations seriously? Or because they don’t just want to define themselves as a band through the lustfulness of their frontman?