Wagne(r)ammstein

Both polarize. You either love their music, or you hate it. That's not the only thing Richard Wagner and the band Rammstein have in common. With both, the music plunders the depths of the human soul and doesn't shy away from extreme emotions. If you love Wagner, you'll probably like Rammstein. And maybe vice-versa.

Rammstein's songs deal with issues like child sex abuse, cannibalism or necrophilia. With Wagner, it can be about incest or a ship manned by ghosts, damned to permanently sail the seas. That kind of story may sound quaint to us nowadays, but it once had the power to scare. People have always been fascinated with the breaking of taboos.

Rammstein are better known outside Germany than many of the country's top celebrities. And Richard Wagner - another very German phenomenon - is a composer many Germans feel uncomfortable with, but he is perhaps even more highly esteemed in England or Japan. And for sheer adoration of Wagner, no country can compete with France. In the land of "Wagnerisme," the composer is nearly deified.

The character Siegfried, in the opera of the same name by Wagner, wonders about the mother he never knew. Rammstein's song "Mutter" is the dystopia of a test tube baby, where the singer cries to his nonexistent parent: "Mother, give me strength!" Alone in the forest, Siegfried sings, "I wish I could see my mother!" With both, the existential need is dire: on a scale from 1 to 10, this is an 11.

It's the combination of music, text and drama that creates the Wagnerian "total work of art." It's similar with Rammstein, who don't just get by on the strength of their engaging melodies and utterly beautiful harmonies - or their shock effect. It's also the perfection of their videos and their pyrotechnics-enhanced live appearances that complete the formula.

Celebrating their 21st anniversary in 2015, Rammstein released "XXI - Das Notenbuch Klavier" (XXI - The Notes for Piano): 13 songs adapted for a vocalist with piano accompaniment. Just like in the olden days, before records or CDs, when mass distribution of Wagner's music took place through printed editions, so people could play Siegfried's forgery song or the Ride of the Valkyries at home.

For his operas, Wagner wrote his own texts. It's an archaic and more than a bit strange kind of German though, not something you'd recommend as a starter for someone who wants to learn the language. Rammstein's texts, though, are used for just that: "Learn German with Rammstein" is the name of a whole series of internet portals.

In Germany, songs unsuitable for children are put on the "index" and cannot be sold to minors. People have often tried to ban songs by Rammstein, but without success. Accusation of radical-right tendencies or indecency could never be conclusively proven. Wagner, for his part, is on an unofficial "index" in Israel because of his anti-Semitism and the celebration of his music in the Third Reich.