By Carl Begai
For non-German-speaking Rammstein fans that have wondered what frontman Till Lindemann has been singing about for the past 20 years, the Lindemann debut Skills In Pills will answer that question. May whatever deity you bow down to save your soul if you’re a prude.
It’s actually not as bad as all that provided your sense of humour is plugged in along with your earbuds. If you enter Skills In Pills expecting emotional depth and moral introspection you’re most certainly in the wrong place. There are a couple such moments, but you need to weed them out amongst done-for-fun tracks like “Praise Abort”, “Ladyboy”, “Golden Shower”, “Fish On”, “Skills In Pills” and “Fat” (which spawned the title of this story). Settling in to discuss the new record with Till Lindemann and Pain / Hypocrisy frontman Peter Tägtgren, it becomes clear within the first 30 seconds that the duo had a riot putting it together. The share a mutual respect as musicians and friends, and their chemistry is that of two high school punks up to no good and looking forward to the repercussions.
To be clear, Lindemann is not a solo project. Peter Tägtgren is an equal partner, but most folks outside of Scandinavia can’t pronounce his surname properly so the duo went with the next obvious choice.
BraveWords: For those that haven’t heard the Lindemann material yet, your sound is a mix between Rammstein and Pain, which should come as a surprise to exactly nobody.
Peter: “Oh yeah, it’s definitely a mix of the two.”
Till: “Call it PainStein-ish (laughs).”
Peter: “You’ll always hear Rammstein in there because of Till’s voice, and the keyboards and chugging guitars are definitely me. But, it was put together in a different way and I did things that I’ve never done before on this album. There are two ballads on the album, for example. At the beginning Till was talking about doing one and I was like, ‘No, I don’t want to do a fucking ballad…’ but somehow he convinced me (laughs). We were writing a piece and it turned into something else, so what we accomplished as the final album turned out to be very fresh.” Continue reading BraveWords Interview: LINDEMANN – “Your Giant Boobs Are Just Wunderbar”