I’ll advice you, if you don’t already know the lyrics/song, to read and listen before reading my blog, as I’ll make a lot of references that won’t make sense otherwise.
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| Stein um Stein live-performance. |
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| My absolutely stunning friend Marie, who was kind enough to let me cover her in makeup and try to portray one of the feelings this song can give me |
Stein um Stein never fails to give me goose bumps, it’s perhaps one of the only songs from Rammstein that I’ve ever really felt physically uncomfortable from listening to. It keeps on shocking me, and I can honestly say that it scared me. Not only because of the obvious scare-factor of being trapped alive inside of a concrete wall, but the way some psychopaths are able to actually enclose their ‘victim’ in their own mind. I think it scares me because I’ve encountered it more than once, I’ve seen it from many perspectives. It’s a frightening feeling, the emotion of being afraid of your own shadow. Because it really is what psychopaths can do to a fragile mind. It’s scary how people can benefit on other peoples poor state of mind, and actually use them against themselves. I don’t necessarily view this song as a physical imprisonment, even though the thought is bloodcurdling. When imprisoned in your mind, getting out it not easy; it gets down to everything from behavior to habits, to how you used to think to how you react to certain words, smells and even how people approach you and where they touch you. You slowly decay inside your own mind and become your own worst enemy, even after the person has lost the control over you. Somehow it really paints the picture of an egoist. “ICH habe plane”. Etc. His perfect idea of a relationship, not bothering to look to the significant other in the relationship, but entirely focusing on himself. I love how this song connects my body in a terrifying quiver, all along with surprising me yet again with the atmosphere. One of my friends who has no knowledge of the German language heard the song while it was playing silently in my room, and she actually felt quite uneasy. It was afterwards that she asked me to translate it for her, and she was left just as speechless, even staggered as I. She didn’t like metal and didn’t like Rammstein, but even she had to admit that it was indeed quite amazing that a song could give her such a feeling, even without really having an understanding.
There are a lot of interpretations, and the above is just my personal experience based on subjective opinions. Now, let’s move onwards to the others I’ve been wanting to discuss.
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| Photo taken by me in the German KZ camp Neuengamme. |
Another thing that strikes me, as the history geek I am, is the notorious theme of holocaust. With the words “Stone by stone, I wall you in”, not to mention “I have a plane big plans” + “Without clothes, without shoes, you watch me working. “No one will hear you scream”, and “You will never move out again.”
We associate the Jewish holocaust with the nazi death camps: “And you are to be part of it all.”
This is an aspect that has been interesting to me for a long time. Because Rammstein faces a lot of nazi accusations, and I’m not exactly making it any better. But this is an aspect that I don’t feel should be overlooked, just as I don’t feel that the holocaust should be forgotten. Not that I link it with the people of Germany today, but ‘just’ a reminder, so that it will never happen again. They’ve planned to build a house for them all, but they allow no door nor a window.
Another aspect of the song is the great wall in Berlin. The “Iron carpet”.
If you want to understand this aspect of the band, it’s important to know their background. The entire band grew up in the DDR, the side of Berlin which was heavily influenced by censorship and restrictions. It may or may not have been a protest against the life that they lived as young teenagers.
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