When America loved the Rammstein

When Rammstein released their second album, 1997’s Sehnsucht, it turned them inti one of the biggest bands in Europe. What no one expected was that the rest of the world would embrace them.

America’s love affair with Rammstein is an old-fashioned tale of opposites attracting. After all, when this close-knit gang who grew up in the former Communist East Germany arrived armed with uniquely aggressive songs sung entirely in their native tongue and a reputation for spectacular, explicit shows that literally set the stage - and their frontman - on fire, there was little to suggest the largely English-speaking, socially conservative population would welcome them. And yet their rise in the US was meteoric.

Less than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in September 1997, the band landed in New York for showcases at the CMJ music industry conference. Already successful in their homeland and across Europe, and having released second album Sehnsucht a month earlier, here they were starting again from scratch. The shows were attended by Wayne Pighini of London Records, who would later release Sehnsucht as their US debut, but his first experience of the full production would have to wait until a concert in Las Vegas that December, when they were touring in support of German industrial band KMFDM.

With Sehnsudit imminently due out in the US, Wayne contacted his friend Michael Arf in, a New York based booking agent he’d met in college. On the excellent documentary Rammstein In Amerika, Michael admitted to having reservations about the band (“My initial instinct was this would never, ever work in America”), but Wayne convinced the label bosses to fly him to the west coast to see their LA date at the Palladium.

“That show was pretty crazy” Wayne says. “Halfway through he turned to me and said, ‘Dude, I’m in?”

The live extravaganza, he says, was key to their appeal to the US market. In the land of supersizing, a band willing to go so far over the top every night had a head start.

“With them it’s the whole package,” he says. “The fire’s just part of it. It’s the costumes, the lighting, and they are so tight musically. It all works perfectly. Everybody sees flames shooting up to the sky and you can feel the heat on your face, and it’s crazy, but it wouldn’t work if the music and the lights and everything didn’t fit with the fire. And they also have Till, who’s this massive, hulking man. He’s strong and imposing, and he commands the stage. He’s maybe the best frontman I’ve ever seen. They suck you in with the antics and the pyro, but once you start to really look at it, you realize there’s a lot more going on.”

After the release of Sehnsucht the band toured like demons, first with KMFDM, then as headliners, and eventually as part of Korn's multi-band Family Values tour. But they scored another ace, soon after the album came out, when MTV ran with the video for Du hast.

With nu metal on the rise, opening doors for heavy bands of all stripes, and the reputation of Rammstein's colossal live show spreading like wildfire, America was hooked. Sehnsucht eventually went platinum on the Billboard chart, unheard of for a German-language act.