With recent news that RAMMSTEIN is officially back in the studio for the next album, I couldn’t help but reminisce about the first time I heard the band.
The time was 2001, and I was enjoying my summer break the only way I knew how, by playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 the whole time. My dad, on the other hand, had his sites set on some father-son bonding and decided to peel me away from my paradise of pixels and combos.
The time was 2001, and I was enjoying my summer break the only way I knew how, by playing Street Fighter Alpha 3 the whole time. My dad, on the other hand, had his sites set on some father-son bonding and decided to peel me away from my paradise of pixels and combos.
Now, I don’t know how you bonded with your respective old man, but for me it was usually car rides. Long, boring car rides. As an adult, I now know it was probably tough for my dad to ‘get' me a lot of the time. We’re talking about a German native who moved his life to the states, and let’s just say his upbringing involved neither Dragon Punches nor Hurricane Kicks. But there was one safety net that connected us: music.
Most of my music taste came from my parents and my dad was the first person to introduce me to metal. Dio, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motörhead… the list goes on. And around the time of said car rides, my taste in metal was fairly grounded to what was big in the states, so mostly what was played on the radio and whatever I could find in Metal Edge Magazine.
With all the background, let me get back to the point: car rides and German metal.
Most of my music taste came from my parents and my dad was the first person to introduce me to metal. Dio, Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motörhead… the list goes on. And around the time of said car rides, my taste in metal was fairly grounded to what was big in the states, so mostly what was played on the radio and whatever I could find in Metal Edge Magazine.
With all the background, let me get back to the point: car rides and German metal.
So my dad is taking me on one of his infamous cruises down the coast, talking me about, like, stuff and whatever. At some point, he could tell that our precious bro time wasn’t creating the desired result and that music was likely his only choice to get things back on track.
Back against the wall, my old man throws out: “Hey, so there is this band I like a lot from Deutschland.”
“Cool…” I said whilst, staring out the window.
“I think you will really like them as well” he proclaimed with a cocky attitude.
“Sure, put em on but-”
Before I could finish, the mouth of the beast opened and Till Lindemann voice echoed out with:
“Du
Du hast
Du hast mich!”
That was the most metal way of saying “you have me” I have ever heard in my life at that moment. Credit to my dad, I loved that goddamn band. We spent that whole car ride listening to Sehnsucht, bonding over some of the most awesome and most inappropriate music ever… and creating a car ride that I wouldn’t change for anything.