A sextet of east german sexual-torture fanatics that has been accused of luring the youth of Europe toward communist bliss (and who also appeared on David Lynch's Lost Highway soundtrack), Rammstein have secured Top 10 spots across the continent this fall in part by regularly setting themselves on fire in concert. Their guitars grind like an overbearing ear-bleed machine, locking into Sehnsucht's electronic ticktock rhythms with icy Aryan precision. The Überserious guttural delivery of ex-Olympic swimmer Till Lindemann lends the band a melodramatic sense of melody as muscular as it is mannered. He rolls hard consonants, hiccups like Falco, begs us auf Deutsch to bend over and punish him like a certified son of "Sprockets." Haunted opera-diva counterpoint, morose Moorish gargling and cathedrals of synthesized strings waft out of the blustering abyss, making Sehnsucht a soundtrack less for World War III than for its desolate aftermath. (RS 779)

CHUCK EDDY