This album has some excellent instrumental work on it, but from my standpoint, it sounds a little too produced. “Mutter” suffers from the same problem as a lot of European power metal; it doesn’t sound genuine. There’s nothing personal about this album, no stamp of its creator placed on it to make it unique. 

For those who may be slightly xenophobic out there, or just for the people who prefer to know the lyrics of an album, this album is entirely in German. Can’t say I didn’t warn you. No part of this album singularly stands out to me.

One of the knocks I have against it is that none of the songs, save a couple, are all that distinguishable from the others. Rammstein, for all intents and purposes, seems to have found one particular sound that they wanted to emphasize on this album, and they choose to not deviate from it except in a scant few places. The song “Mutter” itself bothers me. It’s a power ballad of sorts, and the power ballad is something that Rammstein would have been better served to leave alone. The big thing I have against it is that the rest of the album, while it all sounds similar, tries to be unique from the rest of the genre. After all, there’re not many acts (that you hear stateside anyway,) which try to blend that style of dark-wave industrial with power metal. But “Mutter” is sort of a musical brainfart from that standpoint. It gives up on the industrial, and gives in to the power ballad, in an effort that ends up sounding like every other power ballad out there.

And unfortunately, there are two such ballads on the album. Another detriment to this album is that not only do all the songs sound roughly similar, but the music has no variation within the songs. At varying points, I walked away from a couple songs to go to the bathroom, get some water, whatever it was I had to do, and I found I would sit back down to exactly what I had left. This dismayed me, as it became somewhat impossible to say “well, this song starts out like such, but then…” Another aspect I’d like to touch on quickly…a few songs on the first half of the album make use of orchestration and some female backing vocals. 

The orchestration I’ll come back to when I get to the strengths of “Mutter,” but the vocals I’ll talk about here. Having female vocals to back up the typical singing style of Rammstein is purely ridiculous. It sounds totally out of place. “Rein raus” is three minutes of dead air…just to give you a heads-up. I should stop trying to tear this album down here, because it does have some good points. The orchestration on the first half of the album doesn’t quite fit yet, but if Rammstein works on using that more in the future, it could become a strong point for them.

There are three songs on this which I really liked; “Ich Will,” “Zwitter,” and “Adios” were the ones I found I could really get into. These songs are the rare moments I mentioned where the songs are not generic copies of each other. “Ich Will” and “Adios” have a true metal character to them; they remind me a lot of early KMFDM. I cannot yet confirm if “Adios” is indeed a cover of the KMFDM song of the same name. And “Zwitter” surprised me, as it has an almost German Rob Zombie feel to it, and it rings fairly true. And as I said at the top, the album as a whole, particularly the back half, has some excellent instrumentation, including guitar work, and also flaunts fantastic arrangement. 

In closing, this is a much better album that “Sehnsucht.” Rammstein makes progress here. If they come a little farther, their next work could really be something special. I feel as though I may come off as really hating this album, which is not the case. I can’t say this is an album I’d listen to by choice, but if I heard it somewhere, I would sit and bob my head and be happy. All in all, a five, maybe a six depending on which half of the album you’re listening to.