Rammstein's 10 Biggest Controversies

In March of 2019, Rammstein released their first new song in eight years with the lead single from their seventh album. Deutschland’s music video however was more like a short-film, clocking in at nine minutes long and taking the band’s storied history of fantastic videos to a new level. It was cinematically shot and took us through a very opaque history of the band’s homeland: the witch hunts, the Hindenburg, the holocaust, the Berlin Wall and more.

And so yet again, the press found themselves swept into a frenzy. Not only did the band dare to cast a black woman as Germania (the personification of Germany) but the group themselves star as both Nazi oppressors and Jewish concentration camp prisoners. Some suggested yet again that they were sympathising with the far-right, others cried that it was a call to learn from mistakes. On one side, it was argued that such imagery used the tragedy for entertainment and the other instead celebrated the band for showing Germany’s history so ruthlessly and honestly.

The lyrics pre-emptively confront this split in opinion. “Will dich lieben und verdammen” (“I want to love and damn you”) and “Meine Liebe kann ich dir nicht geben” (“I cannot give you my love”) are very strong and clear statements that Lindemann bellows throughout the track. Deutschland remains a very honest look at a country with such a chequered past and all of the complex emotions that come with warmth for that very same soil.