The band achieves this by doing precisely what I suggested; they more or less abandon their infatuation with power ballads, and just focus on instrumentation and arrangement. Regrettably, after listening to their albums over the years, I cannot help but feel like Rammstein, despite their best efforts, will never be more than a pale cousin to their fellow countrymen, KMFDM. Of course, that might not be a totally fair comparison. Listen to KMFDM, and then listen to Rammstein, and you will believe that with rare exception, they yearn to attain a totally different sound. Still, there is enough residual evidence to suggest that they at least share the same audience. 

Unlike Mutter, I find myself starting with the best parts of this album first, a testament to the progress Rammstein has made since their previous effort. Perhaps the best part of this album lies in its stark simplicity. While I credited Rammstein for their liberal use of orchestration on Mutter, it is a tactic that they use sparingly here, and I find it becomes an asset to the album as a whole. Seeing as how I stressed that as far as Mutter was concerned I criticized Rammstein for trying too hard, I give them a lot of credit for getting back to the basics with this album. The songs here can be hard to get into because the lyrics are in a foreign tongue, so the listener has to look past them to the music, which in this case, is exemplary. 

Rammstein does not really push the genre’s envelope in terms of creativity, but they sound very tight as far as band harmonics are concerned, and this album is commendably produced. The music is well mixed, sounds fluid, and the songwriting is good enough where the album flows well in and out of transition. Rammstein makes progress here overcoming a major fault they’ve had over the course of their career. Previously, readers may recall that I pointed out how Rammstein fails to create any variation between their songs, and especially within their songs.

While they haven’t come so far that I’d say every song is a separate masterpiece, there is some variation here, enough so where I could pick out the songs if I heard them randomly. What works for this album is that Rammstein concentrates on just playing some guitar-driven, well paced songs with a great beat, and the best pure rhythms I’ve heard from this band thus far. The pacing is somewhere in the medium range; they make no attempt to crush you with guitar shredding like Slayer, but they don’t let it linger like Type O Negative either. It’s consistent, and it keeps the head moving by letting the guitar dictate the pace.  

The songs here can be hit or miss, but there are many more hits than misses this time. Songs like the title track, “Reise, Reise” and “Mein Teil” kick off what is a fairly impressive first seven songs on the album. With only two weak links in the chain of seven, this album really impressed me from the get-go, by doing nothing but some serious metal ass-whooping, which has been sorely lacking in America since about 1996. And the two weak links aren’t bad per se; they just are surrounded by even better songs. 

I feel like the best song on this album is “Keine Lust,” which just has this incredible guitar riff, and the band lets the guitar do the work. The lyrics for this song, and for the other really good selections on this album, are almost secondary…they serve as a part of the music, as opposed to the center of it. I have to take a moment to point out the American single on this album, “Amerika.” It’s a good song, has a decent message, good musicianship, and so forth. But putting all that aside, this is the best guilty pleasure on the album. I can’t get by the lyric “ America ist wunderbar” without smiling; it just sounds ridiculous the way it’s sung.  

The last three songs on the album leave a little bit to be desired, as it Rammstein couldn’t go an entire album without a little bit of the over the top dramatics that I chastised them for on Mutter. They’re not horrible, but the songs are kind of dry, and sort of boring. They commit a lot of the same transgressions that Rammstein has a habit for, so I suppose I can’t discredit them for staying true to themselves. 

The over dramatization and the chorus that the band brought in for backing vocals just gets a little tiresome after you hear it too often. I commend Rammstein for their superior effort on Reise, Reise. It’s not perfect, at points it’s still a little uncreative, but they’re gone from a band I used to think very little of, to a band I have a respect for. They’re progression has been somewhat impressive, and they deserve accolades for this one. I’d easily give it a 7, although not much more than that.