10 Most Shocking Rammstein Lyrics | Revolver

10 Most Shocking Rammstein Lyrics

Who knew the German pyromaniacs were singing about *that*
rammstein 2019 PRESS, Jens Koch
Rammstein, 2019
photograph by Jens Koch

Rammstein aren't shy about their love for shock value. From the jaw-dropping pyrotechnics and overtly phallic props of their live shows to their sex-and-violence-packed music videos — including a straight-up porno that's not even available on YouTube — Rammstein fans know these dudes are fucking freaks. But unless you speak German or are able to translate their Neue Deutsche Härte bangers into your native tongue, then you probably have no idea how unimaginably twisted their lyrics really are.

The most perverted song on their new album, Zeit, is a cheeky ode to "big boobs," and those lines read like children's nursery rhymes compared to the utterly unhinged shit they've sung about in the past. From occupying the fucked-up minds of pedophiles and cannibals, to offering detailed prose about a man who's sexually fulfilled by torturing a woman to death, Till Lindemann and Co. go places that most brutal death-metal bands would feel too squeamish to capture on a mic.

Below, are the 10 most shocking — and mind you, these are extremely NSFW — lyrical tidbits from throughout their entire catalog. Have your barf bags at the ready.

10. "Pussy" (2006)

Beautiful woman, want some more?
Blitzkrieg with the flesh gun
Schnaps in your head, you lovely bride
Put bratwurst in your sauerkraut

Nausea level: Low

"Pussy" is one of Rammstein's most unvarnished attempts at offending puritans, mostly due to its controversial music video that features close-up shots of actual sexual penetration between men and women. The lyrics aren't quite as eye-popping as its visual accompaniment, but it's still a gratuitously perverted ditty about a sex tourist who travels abroad to get it on with anyone who will take him. It's pretty ridiculous on its surface, but the underlying implication is that he's venturing to countries with low ages of consent and rampant prostitution, so the more you think about it, the more fucked-up it becomes.

9. "Heirate Mich" (1995)

Have kissed your cold mouth
I tenderly take you into my arms
But your skin tears like paper
And parts fall from you

Nausea level: Medium low

Lindemann is as much a poet as he is a metal lyricist, and "Heirate Mich" is a prime example of how his allegorical prose can be both heart-wrenching and gut-churning. The song begins by conjuring a great deal of empathy for a lonely man who visits his dead lover's grave site, but eventually the melancholy turns to horror as he begins digging up the woman's corpse to feel her skin and kiss her lips, and ultimately go one necrophilic step further. Yuck.

8. "Stein Um Stein" (2004)

Without clothes, without shoes
You watch me working
With your feet in cement
You brighten up the foundation

Nausea level: Medium high
 
"Stein Um Stein" is the kind of fairy tale a child would stumble upon in a dusty basement before some fucked shit happens in a horror movie. It's sung from the perspective of a possessive lunatic who traps his victim in the foundation of a house and builds it up around them to keep them inside, eventually stabbing nails into their body and assuring them constantly that no one will hear them if they scream fort help. "I wall you in, stone by stone/I'll always be with you" goes its maniacal hook.

7. "Hallomann" (2019)

Hello little girl, how are you?
I'm fine, do not talk to me
Just get in, I'll take you with me
And I'll buy mussels with French fries for you

Nausea Level: Getting queasy

One place Lindemann will go that even most of the trvest of metal vocalists won't is into the mind of a pedophile. Not to endorse their behavior, of course, but to inhabit their debauched psyche and expose their moral failings from the inside out. "Hallomann" is a truly disturbing cut about a horrid man courting a young girl for his own nefarious desires, and it's probably based on reality. The weirdly specific food he offers is most likely Tillemann's subtle reference to infamous serial killer/rapist Marc Dutroux, who hailed from Belgium where mussels and French fries are a common pairing.

6. "Weisses Fleisch" (1995)

My black blood and your white flesh
I get endlessly more horny from your screams
The cold sweat there on your white forehead
Hails into my sick brain

Nausea Level: Reaching for some ginger ale

"Weisses Fleisch" goes where even "Hallomann" doesn't. This is a significantly more graphic and violent tale about a child abuser who stalks the schoolyard for a juvenile victim, and Lindemann actually delves into detailed descriptions of the depraved sexual pleasure the pedophile feels from viciously torturing the girl and himself in a twisted game of sadomasochism. The above lyrics are just a sampling of the horror that ensues.

5. "Puppe" (2019)

While my kid sister indulges in the work
The light in the window is red
I watch through the keyhole
And someone clubbed her to death

Nausea Level: Back to medium

"Puppe" is a song that's more profoundly sad than it is gut-churning, though the concept is truly sickening. It's about a person whose younger sister locks them in a room with a doll while she works as a prostitute in the next room over, and it's written from the point of view of the detainee, whose naivete about their sister's vocation suggests that they are very young and/or have some sort of intellectual disability. After recouting several nights of mental agony, the song culminates with the narrator finding their sister murdered by a client. It's not gory, but it's morose enough to ruin your mood and maybe your appetite, too.

4. "Halleluja" (2001)

The young man is allowed to stay with him
The sin nests above the leg
So he gladly helps to exorcize it
To music and candlelight

Nausea Level: Welp, back to the bathroom

"Halleluja" is a B-side from the Mutter years that many fans speculate was too controversial for the band to include in the actual tracklist. A criticism of religion, the track follows a holy priest who sexually abuses a young choir boy and rationalizes it as a twisted form of Christian piety. It's a spine-tinglingly perverse premise that's written in gag-inducing detail to expose the priest's wicked hypocrisy: "He is the true Christian, and knows what charity is."

3. "Spiel Mit Mir" (1997)

Under the naval in the branches
A white dream is already waiting
Brother dear, come hold tightly
And shake the leaves from the tree for me

Nausea Level: Actively vomiting

Oh, you thought pedophilia was the last course? Hope you saved room for incest. "Spiel Mit Mir" is a fucking repulsive yarn that centers on an insomniac who forces his little brother to give him sexual favors so that he can fall asleep at night. It'd be a revolting tune no matter how it was written, but the way Lindemann describes the acts through foul metaphors is somehow worse and more sickening than if he just spelled the depravity outright.

2. "Mein Teil" (2004)

The dull blade good and proper
I'm bleeding heavily and feeling sick
Although I have to fight to stay awake
I keep eating while in convulsions

Nausea Level: Somehow still vomiting

"Mein Teil" is Rammstein's cannibal anthem. And no, Lindemann didn't spare us the gory details. It's actually based on a true story in which a German cannibal fetishist named Armin Meiwest recruited another man, Bernd Brandes, to voluntarily commit himself to being eaten. The real incident is somehow even more disturbing than Lindemann's portrayal, but let's just say a certain member of Brandes' body was the first to be chopped off, cooked up and consumed by the both of them — which makes the passage quoted above all the more horrifying.

1. "Ich Tu Dir Weh" (2006)

Barbed wire in the urethra
Put your flesh in salt and pus
Needle, pliers, dull saw
Whatever you wish, I don't say no
And insert rodents into you

Nausea Level: No fluids left in body, need medical help

"Ich Tu Dir Wah" doesn't skip a beat diving into gratuitous descriptions of a raging psychopath who thinks he's sexually arousing his female victim by torturing her in the most heinous ways possible. It's written entirely from the man's perspective ("You are the ship, I'm the captain"), and while there are lines that suggest the victim may actually be enjoying the gruesome disfigurements taking place, it's likely that the narrator is just a complete homicidal sadist who thinks he's doing her a favor by ... honestly, we can't even say, these lines are too fucked up to even write out. Yep, this is the winner. Utterly abominable through and through.