Rammstein: Reise, Reise : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Already a smash hit in Rammstein's native Germany, Reise, Reise pulls together sleek industrial stomp, raw kraut-rock power and Wagnerian choruses with iron precision. The only English chorus on the band's fifth album effuses a growing European sentiment: "We're all living in Amerika." Over here, the album should sound both scary-funny and familiar to metal-attuned ears, though this sextet -- best known stateside for its 1997 single "Du Hast" -- backs up its cartoonish clout with a decent-size bag of tricks. "Amour" augments its syncopated riffage with a processed choir, "Los" burns ahead with a groove that's minimalist and surprisingly sexy, and the synthy, elegiac "Ohne Dich" could be end-credits music for an apocalyptic Bruckheimer flick. Overkill is always a problem with music this unrelentingly dark, but displaced Slipknot fans could do worse than Rammstein's meticulous pomp und drang.