RAMMSTEIN: SEHNSUCHT

SCORE: 98/100

Rammstein managed to create their own genre in the form of Neue Deutsche Härte, and this album is a strikingly good time of an example of exactly what the genre is all about. The dark and heavy (yet danceable) sound of Rammstein is shown off incredibly well throughout 'Sehnsucht', and the mixing and matching of sounds here is what the band is all about.

This album is a lot more driven on synths and catchy sounds than one might expect just hearing the heavy 'Du Hast' beforehand, but songs like 'Engel' and 'Tier' showcase a side of Rammstein that is more built on synth-heavy industrial sounds that feel suited for the most gothic, vampiric of dancefloors. 

'Sehnsucht' is a groundbreaking achievement for German music - showcasing that German bands truly hold industrial music on the tips of their fingers (with KMFDM following suit alongside Rammstein). This album is the first and only album entirely spoken in German to be certified platinum via the RIAA (in the United States), and it will more than likely be the only album in history to achieve this feat. 

Despite this album starting off on a more synthy note, after track 5 this album explodes into something much more heavy - something almost brutal in its deeply precise rhythms and relentlessly heavy sounds that don't let up for more than a minute or two at a time (in the stronger cases of the album); if at all.

It's incredibly slinky, steamy metal at times - with 'Bestrafe mich' feeling like the kind of song you would want to dance like no one is looking to; slow and hot with precise movements in the center of a smoky club. This atmosphere is held incredibly well throughout the entire album - and it's something both metalheads and fans of synthy industrial can bond over due to the meshing of sounds that comes out as one explosively enjoyable album through and through.

There's a bit of a roughness to the amount of experimentation throughout this album that leads to some songs that feel like outliers (with 'Klavier' being a particular example), but it makes the album feel much more fluid in the way it goes from sound to sound without staying within a boundary that you may come to expect.

The sounds of this album are dark and sinuous, with winding melodies and memorably riffy guitars that make this album hugely unique from the massive crowd of 90s and 2000s industrial albums that preceded and followed this album. Rammstein showcase just how essential they were to the scene with this remarkably salient album. 

For a 90s album - 'Sehnsucht' still feels incredibly fresh. It's a refreshing album for industrial music that changes up the sound enough to make this album stand out by a very wide margin - and the end result of these experimental sounds and the band's established (and dark) style make this album one for the books.