Ahead of the release of Rammstein’s new album, you can revisit our feature that ran prior to the release of the band’s ‘Reise Reise’ album.

Just two years ago, ‘Mutter’ may have been RAMMSTEIN’s crowning glory, but unknown to anyone at the time, the band was tearing itself apart from the inside. Terry Bezer asks the kings of Teutonic industrial rock about returning from the precipice with new album ‘Reise Reise’ and how they’re still healing the wounds.

It’s late in the afternoon in the Berlin sunshine and I’ve spent the past half an hour politely conversing with Rammstein drummer Christoph ‘Doom’ Schneider and main songwriter and guitarist Richard Kruspe-Bernstein, in their plush suite inside the Radisson Hotel. Our time together has been polite if occasionally difficult (which we’ll get to in due course), but despite the to-the-point questioning about the band’s somewhat turbulent last 12 months, the chaps seem in fairly high spirits (an incredible feat when you add that this is their first ever interview in English). Which is why Hammer is just dying to throw a proverbial spanner into their works and test the stereotype that Germans have absolutely no sense of humour. So this is the conversation I start as I’m about to leave the room:

Do you reckon it’s fair comment that Rammstein are a band with a large homosexual following?
The pair smirk incredulously at each other as if I have asked them to do a naked rendition of ‘The Birdie Song’ with me.

“What do you mean?” Richard replies quizzically with eyebrows raised.

Well, your debut album has a sleeve that’s orange and features you shirtless and covered in baby oil, your singer has a penchant for buggering your keyboard player with a strap-on dildo during your live shows and your new single ‘Mein Tiel’ translates into English perfectly as ‘My Tool’.

Here the pair raise a wry smile at each other. “Well…” chuckles Schneider. “If that is the case then I am flattered.”

So there you go. Germans do have a sense of humour. In the meantime, we’ll get our coats.

Rewind to May 30th 2002. Rammstein have just completed an extremely successful UK tour that’s climaxed with a triumphant display of hard-hitting anthems – and the sort of explosives that you usually only get when you set light to an ammo dump – in front of nearly 9,000 people at the now defunct London Arena. The record they were touring (their third studio effort, 2001’s ‘Mutter’) has just hit sales of around four million worldwide and they play three sold-out nights at the Berlin Velodrome (Germany’s Wembley Arena).

This is the part where we would normally talk about how much excess and fun the group were having with each other, paying witness to their dreams coming true before their very eyes. Indeed these should have been the happiest days of these guys’ lives. However internal bickering and death in band members’ families put paid to that. Away from their breakthrough success, there was a very different story to tell.

“During the time of ‘Mutter’ we definitely had a lot of tension inside the band,” Christoph confesses. “There was tension while making the album but when it came to touring, sometimes it would boil over and become too much for us all. I was very unhappy within myself. There were times when I completely switched off and while everyone else was doing things I saw myself as just a guest in the band because we were fighting all of the time and I was just so tired of fighting I didn’t want to talk to anyone.’”

“We reached the end of the Mutter tour and we were really tired,” nods Richard. “And we really needed time apart from each other so that we could come back and begin enjoying each other’s company again.”

“We just had to change within the band,” Christoph continues. “The way we were feeling with one another was too aggressive. There are six characters in the band and some are strong and some are weak and we had to start making sure that everyone had a say in the democracy and everyone stopped being so hateful towards each other.”

Then, at the tail end of 2002, came the inevitable rumour which seemed to confirm that all was indeed not well within the Rammstein ranks. The news dropped that the band had decided to call it a day and split up. Only they hadn’t. Well apparently hadn’t anyway. It’s when questions over this alleged split are made that the two band members are drawn in two different directions. One more believable than the other.

“I never really ever felt that the band would split up or that I would no longer be in Rammstein,” says Richard speedily without pausing for breath. “We have been together for 10 years and no one has ever hit each other – no matter what happened between us.”

This is all Richard will offer on the subject. He’s very quick, very assertive and very cold in his tone. Christoph on the other hand, looks far more uncomfortable with the question but is far more willing to elaborate about what went wrong with the band.