The performance begins when Lindemann sets himself on fire- literally, not figuratively-then sprays flames into the air with handheld rocket launchers. Soon the entire stage is ablaze. In the band's early days, if fans were insufficiently attentive, Rammstein doused the dance floor with kerosene and set that alight as well. It got them hopping every time. An unfortunate accident put an end to that practice, and now the band's pyrotechnics are coordinated by professionals.

When Lindemann sings "Bestrafe Mich"-"Punish Me"-he flagellates himself with a whip. He punctuates "Du Hast"-"You Hate"-by firing a gun in the air to a jackhammer rhythm.36 During a rendition of "Ich Will Ficken"-"I Want to f.u.c.k"-he sports a monstrous black d.i.l.d.o that shoots something viscous over the audience (what precisely it shoots is a matter of controversy among Rammstein scholars, with hypotheses ranging from yogurt to yak s.e.m.e.n), and follows this drollery with a performance of "Buck Dich"-"Bend Over"-in which he simulates the a.n.a.l violation of his keyboardist, Flake Lorenz, who prostrates himself on the floor with a mask on his face, a prisoner's chain round his neck, and a ball gag in his mouth. Lorenz then smashes a fluorescent light tube against Lindemann's chest. All the while the auditory a.s.sault is relentless, machinelike, a musical moving Panzer division. In 1998, Rammstein was invited to the United States to open an event billed as the Family Values Tour. Authorities in Worcester, Ma.s.sachusetts, watched the show, then threw the two men directly into prison on obscenity charges.37 This is martial music. Without the music, the lyrics might be misinterpreted as expressions of adolescent angst. But these are grown men performing: they are in their late thirties and early forties. Separated from the music, the power of the lyrics is severely diluted. Try reading them again, this time nurturing a vivid image of Stuka dive bombers swiftly obliterating the Polish Air Force while eight motorized and six Panzer divisions slice through Poland. Imagine the Wehrmacht marching toward Warsaw as German tanks steamroller Brest-Litovsk and Storm Troopers slam shut the escape routes across the Vistula. Envision women and children streaming terrified into the roads, attempting to flee the unrelenting, indiscriminate German bombing. Then you can skip the music. You'll already have something of a feel for it.

Rammstein's performance of "Ich Will" is particularly evocative. When the insane pounding and relentless march of the drums and the orchestra cease, there is nothing but a hypnotic melody from an acoustic guitar and a warbling, unnerving whistle from the synthesizer. Lindemann hisses: Then the hypnotic lull is over, and the musical tanks roar back into action. Lindemann's voice swells to a ma.s.sive imperative, dominating the thrashing guitars and the booming ba.s.s. He thunders to the audience: The enormous crowd roars back, in frenzied but perfect unison, a stadium of synchronous German voices: It hardly needs be pointed out what this scene resembles. Joseph Goebbels would have found much to admire in it. "Propaganda," he advised, addressing the Nuremberg Rally in 1934, "must be creative. It is by no means a matter for the bureaucracy or official administration, rather it is a matter of productive fantasy. The genuine propagandist must be a true artist. He must be a master of the popular soul, using it as an instrument to express the majesty of a genuine political will." 4 The most effective performance and propagandist techniques displayed in the n.a.z.is' ma.s.s rallies embodied this appeal to artistry, this aesthetic sensibility-from the grand, theatrical displays of power to the relentless marching rhythms, from the repet.i.tive, emotional sloganeering to the idolatrous celebration of masculinity. Hitler also began his speeches softly and slowly, his voice growing louder, then booming, the ma.s.ses aroused to an intoxicated frenzy.

Lindemann proclaims himself to be baffled, hurt even, by the way certain fans are inspired to respond to these capers with n.a.z.i salutes. "Our tour manager," he has said, "is required to come up on stage as soon as the fascists start using the Hitler greeting." 5 There is not much the tour manager can do about the fans on the Internet, I suppose: hi ,, im a big rammstein fan ,,, my name is kersten , and is great to share our own feeling about the band ,,,because when u are sad or angry R+ is like my drug ,,,, rammstein means power ,,proud,,nasionalism,,connect my soul to a different world,,,and th e meaning of rammstein is the old germany ,, das reich,, what will happen if rammstein where not germans ,, all that respect will be trash,,, so be proud of rammstein ,of germany ,and our leader adolf hitler ein volk ein reich ein fuhrer38 Keyboardist Lorenz shares Lindemann's bewilderment about the persistent charges that in Rammstein's performances there is a hint of the old Volk, Reich, and Fuhrer. "How silly can they get," he complains. 6 Lorenz holds-with a straight face, I've seen this-that only silly, joyless martinets would read bloodl.u.s.t between those lines, or find nihilism in words like this: In fact, Rammstein's members proclaim themselves to be incensed by the persistent intimations that their music and performances have any political resonance at all, no less a disturbing one. Their publicist has set the matter straight: "There is no political content whatsoever to their music. Their songs are about love."7 This rejoinder, the band feels, should have been the end of the matter. Yet some critics seem determined to perceive something sinister in the spectacle of Rammstein performing "Weisses Fleisch" before 10,000 drunken Germans, each with his fist raised. "There is a perfect explanation for this," Lindemann has remarked of the critics' animadversions. "Narrow-mindedness."8 Guitarist Paul Landers shares his indignation. "Absurd," he has exclaimed.9 But, he has added helplessly, "if some of the journalists want to stick us in the n.a.z.i corner, we can't help it."10 Well, actually, Paul, you probably could help it, if you really tried. Here's my first suggestion: Don't use Leni Riefenstahl footage in your promotional clips. Narrow-minded though it may be, when your videos feature scenes from Olympische Spiele-Olympics Games, a doc.u.mentary commissioned by the n.a.z.is in 1936 as "a song of praise to the ideals of National Socialism"-journalists will be apt to stick you right in that n.a.z.i corner. "We are not n.a.z.is," they protested again in an official statement, adding that they simply chose the film because it was a "visionary work of art."11 There are a lot of visionary works of art in the world, Paul. But that one has a particular meaning. If you're looking for visionary works of arts without those connotations, I commend to your attention Henri Cartier-Bresson's dignified portraits of the elderly Gandhi. If you need any more advice, just give me a call.

Given the musicians' propensity to feel saddened by these hurtful accusations, quite a number of their aesthetic choices seem hard to fathom. For example, the cover art of their debut alb.u.m, Herzeleid, resembles to no small degree a n.a.z.i propaganda poster, the six shirt-less band members-enormous, muscular, iron-jawed-looming into the camera lens in what appears to be an archetypal celebration of the Master Race.12 For the portraits in Sehnsucht, the Austrian artist Gottfried Helnwein photographed the musicians in facial bandages, their lips and eyes stretched wide apart by hideous medical instruments. There is an echo of Trakl, again, in these "cold metal straps." But it is unreasonable, the musicians protest, to think that images such as this might evoke obscene historical memories. "It's just reverse discrimination because we are German," says Lorenz. "If we were Spanish or Dutch, there would be no problem."13 Then again, it is hard to conceive of a Spaniard or a Dutchman composing "Links-Zwo-Drei-Vier," meaning "Left-Two-Three-Four," and performed, exactly as the t.i.tle suggests, to the rhythm of a vigorous goose step. A crooning verse is followed by a furious, even apocalyptic chorus, accompanied by the unmistakable sound of metrically precise marching jackboots. A crowd-in perfect synchronicity- screams "Hi!" after each refrain. It's quite close to the sound "Heil." It's close enough, in fact, that critics on Internet chat sites devoted to restoring pride in the Aryan race find the similarity quite pleasing.39 Then, in a growling ba.s.s whisper, Lindemann urges the audience: "Mit dem Herzen denken!"

Think with your heart!

The National-Socialist Speaker's Corps was instructed to use those words exactly when addressing its audiences. Hugo Ringler, for example, an official of the Munich Reichspropagandaleitung, recalls. .h.i.tler's rise to power in this essay, published in 1937 for the edification of the n.a.z.i Party's propagandists: [He] spoke not to the understanding but to the heart. He spoke out of his heart into the heart of his listener. And the better he understood how to execute this appeal to the heart, the more willingly he exploited it and the more receptive was the audience to his message. One could not at all at that time persuade the German people by rational argument; things worked out badly for parties that tried that approach. The people were won by the man who struck the chord that others had ignored-the feelings, the sentiment or, as one wants to call it, the heart.14 Lorenz has declared that he has no idea how Rammstein has acquired its neo-n.a.z.i reputation. "Just because we play hard German and martial music doesn't make us n.a.z.is. We are definitely not n.a.z.is and the song 'Links' should help to end this stupid gabbing."15 Why he believes this is unclear.

A FAMILIAR SCENE.

Now let's watch a Rammstein video. In fact, let's watch the video that accompanies the song "Links." Shot in black, white, and brown, the animated video depicts ants. To the sound of the jackboots, a giant ant pumps his right feeler in the air. We see the giant ant on stage, before thousands of ants, all identical, all returning the salute, like pistons. Ants swarm out of tunnels. The colony surges. For an instant we glimpse something in the background that resembles a storm trooper's helmet. We see a series of insinuated swastikas, although we never see the real thing: What we are seeing are permutations on Rammstein's insignia, which itself is a variant on a Nordic rune, and very much like an Iron Cross.40 A pseudoswastika mutates into a headless stick figure. Performer and leader, it conducts the audience, pumping its arm into the air. A ma.s.sive ant-audience pumps its feelers in unison to the sound of the jackboots. We see two shots-impossibly brief-of white pseudoswastikas mutating against a grainy black background. The effect is like a wartime propaganda film.

We cut to the band members. Swastika-ant becomes Lindemann, his ma.s.sive swimmer's physique looming. The footage is grainy and stuttering, as if shot in the 1930s. His eyes are full of madman's ecstasy, his body thrashes in time with the music. Flash now to the ants, so closely packed that we see only the tops of their carapaces, like helmets. Flash back to Lindemann-an expression of glee on his face, now for just one second sporting a short black mustache, so briefly it could be a trick of the lighting.

The ants organize themselves into columns, pulsing in time to the jackboots. They pour out of tunnels by the thousands, throbbing. We see an image from the sky: The ants converge before a ma.s.sive tower. They form a giant, pulsating pseudoswastika. They part in columns again. Row after row of ants pump their fists in the air, and the chorus says, "Hi! Hi!" Anyone who has seen Triumph of the Will will recognize this scene. It is the Nuremberg Rally.

Like Riefenstahl's film, this video is a masterpiece: It is intended to arouse very particular emotions in the viewer, and it does.

JUST DOING WHAT COMES NATURALLY.

Another video. The single "Mein Teil," which may be chastely translated as "My Part," treats the true saga of the cannibal Armin Meiwes, who recently slaughtered and ate a forty-two-year-old Siemens engineer from Berlin. Meiwes videotaped the entire event. The advertis.e.m.e.nt Meiwes placed on the Internet, searching for a victim, forms the song's epigram: "Suche gut gebauten 18-30jahrigen zum Schlachten "

-Der Metzgermeister "Looking for a well-built 18-to-30-year-old for slaughtering"

-The Master Butcher The song begins with the sound of a knife being sharpened.

The video was directed by the brilliant Zoran Bihac, who also directed the video for "Links." Originally, the band had hoped to use Meiwes's own footage of the event, but to their disappointment, the police would not release it from their custody. Several other treatments were proposed and rejected. Here is one rejected concept, according to keyboardist Lorenz: We also had an idea involving war weapons, some kind of World War I scenario, with a battle going on and people dying and bombs exploding; all that would be happening in the background, whilst up close you'd see these generals bent over a map, dividing up territory, saying "that's my part," "that's my part," "that's my part"... 16 In the end, the band decided upon another approach. Guitarist Kruspe-Bernstein, who founded the band, explained the creative process to me when I spoke to him in Berlin: The interesting part was, like, people were, you know, how can we do this video? Someone came and said, you know, you know what we do-you guys are getting in there, everyone by himself, and perform, for two hours, whatever you want to do from listening to the song. That was really interesting. We wouldn't know what the other ones were doing, you know? I don't know, for me, it was like . . . well, this is the song, like obviously I could kind of do a dance thing, but I wasn't in the mood to dance, so I thought of masturbation, then you know. . . . I feel like fighting against myself. That's what I did. I was wrestling with myself. That's what I did for two hours. Like a double. Like a wrestler. I was wrestling. And everyone did something else. It was really interesting. It was the first time to perform, to act, to do something that we felt. Normally what we do is act. We play-act, in a role. But this time we were really doing something that we felt. It was weird. That was different.

What, then, did the members of the band spontaneously think to do when given this chance to do what they really felt? Lindemann, eyes wild with rage and l.u.s.t, teeth rotting out of his head, sodomizes an angel, then dons a fanged mouthpiece and rips the feathered creature apart with his teeth and bare hands. Lorenz dances in ballet shoes. Schneider dresses as Meiwes's mother and, clutching a handbag, takes the rest of the snarling, snapping, nearly naked men for a walk on leashes. There are brief shots of each of the men howling, their faces contorted with pain and terror. Kruspe-Bernstein shovels the angel's feathers into his mouth and, as he said, wrestles with himself.

The video was controversial in Germany, although not for the reasons one might expect. Critics focused on the grotesque treatment of cannibalism, completely overlooking the far more astonishing images spliced into the film. Shot in black-and-white, they are portraits of Riedel, Rammstein's ba.s.s player. He is skeletal and naked but for a filthy rag wrapped around his waist. He is writhing on the ground and screaming in agony. His ribs are protruding, his eye sockets are sunken, and his skull appears hollowed-out. His head is shaved. He appears more dead than alive. When told to "really do something that he felt," Riedel's first impulse was to reenact a nightmare of Auschwitz.

It is hard to say which possibility is scarier-that the makers of this video realized this consciously, or that they didn't.

"WHAT'S NATURALLY IN THE MUSIC IS WHAT MAKES IT SO GERMAN"

I met the members of Rammstein for the first time, in Berlin, on the day American military action commenced in Iraq. Looking for my hotel, I saw graffiti on the street: Out, America, occupiers!

Out, America, terrorists!

Out, America, inventors of the atomic bomb!

Out, America, inventors of anthrax!

I saw antiwar demonstrators carrying signs likening President Bush to Hitler. The ma.s.sive protests had shut down the center of the city.

When I'd called Rammstein's managers to ask whether I might meet them, they were initially enthusiastic. Then Donald Rumsfeld said Germany was part of "Old Europe." Rammstein staged a diplomatic counteroffensive. "Maybe we are all a little over-hysterical these days," their press secretary wrote to me, "but the situation really is bad and going worse. . . . After I learned last week that 'French fries' are no longer 'French fries' but 'freedom fries' I would not be surprised to see German bands banned in the US or whatever. . . . All seems to be possible right now."

I rea.s.sured her that as far as I knew, Rammstein had nothing to fear from an enraged American street. Feelings were soothed. Feathers unruffled. I could meet the band as scheduled.

I met the band in a discreet office above a gloomy, anonymous warehouse in east Berlin. This is the neighborhood where Rammstein met and played before the fall of the Wall. To deter fans, there was no sign on their door. In person, they were bland and pleasant, clean-shaven, tall and handsome, dressed in neatly pressed chinos and cotton polo shirts. I had heard that journalists who asked about Rammstein's politics were apt to find themselves ejected from the interview, but after a bit of small talk, they held forth marvelously.

Why, I asked, did they think Rammstein's music inspired such controversy?

"People take the lyrics out of context," Kruspe-Bernstein offered. "The romantic, lyric quality gets a bit lost in translation."

A good translation, then, should clear up any confusion? I read out loud, in English: My black blood and your white flesh

I will always become hornier from your screams

The cold sweat on your white forehead

Hails into my sick brain

Your white flesh excites me so

I am just a gigolo

My father was exactly like me

Your white flesh enlightens me.

Well yes, said Kruspe-Bernstein, there is that. But he held that this sounded much more romantic in German. Landers, the second guitarist, wasn't sure. "The lyrics are scarier in German," Landers insisted. The two musicians debated the proper translation of the word geil. My translator believed it to be correctly rendered as "h.o.r.n.y."

"Our music," said Kruspe-Bernstein, "is German, and that's what comes through. What's naturally in the music is what makes it so German. We are simply trying to make the music that we are able to make. The cla.s.sical music, the music of our ancestors, is pa.s.sed down in a certain way. We have a feeling for it. American music, black music, we don't know how to do that-"

"We have no soul," interjected keyboardist Lorenz.

"And we know how to play on the beat," added Kruspe-Bernstein. "We know how to make it straight, how to make it even."

"Angular and straight," echoed Lorenz with satisfaction.

"We like it heavy, bombastic, romantic. Like the direction that Wagner takes," said Kruspe-Bernstein. "No other Germans do it the way we do it. We're the only ones who do it the way Germans should. The others try to imitate the English and the Americans. We're almost too German for Germany." The thought seemed to pain him. "The Germans are a bit ashamed of their nationality. They've had a disturbed relationship to it since the Second World War. We're trying to establish a natural relationship to our ident.i.ty."

Would this anthem, I asked, be an example of a natural relationship to German ident.i.ty?

The fire purifies the soul

And remaining is a mouthful of

Ashes

I will return

In ten days

As your shadow

And I will hunt you down.

"Well," replied Kruspe-Bernstein, "one cannot prevent people from interpreting something negatively."

Landers agreed. "It's time to stop being ashamed about what comes out of Germany and to establish a normal way of dealing with being German."

Secretly I will rise from the dead

And you will plead for mercy

Then I will kneel in your face

And stick my finger in the ashes.

The abnormal way of being German must be mind-boggling. Come to think of it, it was.

Kruspe-Bernstein informed me that the band's essential good nature had been misunderstood. "If people don't understand the lyrics, their interpretations can be more gruesome than is actually the case. Fantasy can be at work. It can make things more intense, worse than things actually are."

Again, I read out loud, in translation: You can, you want and will never forgive

And you condemn his life

You drift in the insanity from

Rage, destruction and revenge