'Needles, Pliers, a Blunt Saw': Rammstein Album Riles Censors, Finally

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The genre was called "Neue Deutsche Härte" ("New German Toughness") when it emerged in the mid-1990s. Rammstein, who were viewed as Nazis without actually being Nazis, used this ambivalence alongside their lyrics all the other horrible aspects of life. The lyrics were usually written from the perspective of the perpetrator, and when critics claimed that the killers in the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado had listened to Rammstein, the band was quick to argue: It wasn't us! It's just art! It can be interpreted in many ways!

It is probably Rammstein's greatest achievement that it has managed to sustain its cynical and amusing double game for so long. The provocateur needs taboos as much as he needs the freedom to be allowed to violate them.

Despite the derision it heaps upon liberal Germany, Rammstein makes the kind of music in the West that it would never have been able to make in the East. It has had the kind of success it could never have had in the East. And it has traveled the world, a freedom that no East German band would have enjoyed. Without the fall of the Berlin Wall, Rammstein would never have been able to produce its puppet show of horrors as convincingly as it has.

The Rammstein boys have become East Germany's aesthetic revenge on the West. Steeled by their struggles against the East German authorities, they embodied the kinds of German villains that no longer seemed to exist in quite the same form in the softer West. Ironically, with this concept they managed to successfully link up with Western pop culture, which, until this very day, sees Germans as responsible for evil.

'Music to Invade Poland to'

East German fans can identify with the notion of using whatever one has to fight the system. As Rammstein member Lorenz recently said in an interview: "This is how I fight the system. I take away their money." West Germans are attracted by the seemingly manly and rebellious stance of a band that insists: We will not be prevented from speaking. The rest of the world can feel the pleasantly spine-tingling sensation of watching the Berlin band behave like some heavy-metal rockers, setting stage sets on fire with its pyrotechnics (a Canadian Internet magazine described a Rammstein concert as "music to invade Poland to").

More than any other German band, Rammstein has managed to convey the impression that it steps beyond the confines of art with its music, thereby affecting real life. But this is nothing but an ancient strategy of subculture, as practiced by radical left-wing and right-wing bands, or in gangsta rap and porno rap. The 1980s Austrian pop and rock musician Falco (whose song "Jeanny," which dealt with violence committed against a girl named Jeanny, was boycotted by radio stations even without being indexed) pursued the same strategy, as did the Berlin-based punk band Die Ärzte, which addressed subjects like sodomy and incest.

When Die Ärzte was indexed in 1987, it almost spelled the band's demise. For Rammstein, on the other hand, the censorship will probably mean nothing more than some lost revenue in the domestic market -- nothing that can't be offset by overseas sales.

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• Part 1: Rammstein Album Riles Censors, Finally
• Part 2: 'It's Just Art'