Musical Style and Influences
Although Rammstein is often generalized as Neue Deutsche Härte, their music spans a variety of related styles, including heavy metal, industrial music, and groove metal.
The band have a flair for costumes of all sorts, both in live shows and in videos. In the "Keine Lust" video, all members except Lorenz were dressed in fat suits. In the "Amerika" video, all members of the band wore space suits. Live, the band experiments even more with costumes. In the Völkerball concert, among others, Till changed costumes between songs, dressed accordingly for each. For example, in "Mein Teil", he was dressed as a butcher, in "Reise, Reise", as a sailor. The rest of the band each wore their own preferred costume, but none as outlandish or themed as Till's.
Rammstein's style has tended to divide critics. New Zealand's Southland Times (December 17, 1999) suggested that Till Lindemann's "booming, sub-sonic voice" would send "the peasants fleeing into their barns and bolting their doors", while the New York Times (January 9, 2005) commented that on the stage, "Mr. Lindemann gave off an air of such brute masculinity and barely contained violence that it seemed that he could have reached into the crowd, snatched up a fan, and bitten off his head." Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic commented that "their blend of industrial noise, grinding metal guitars, and operatic vocals is staggeringly powerful." "We just push boundaries", said Till Lindemann in an interview with rock magazine Kerrang!. "We can't help it if people don't like those boundaries being pushed."
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