Friday Release # 138
"Zeit", "Rammstein's" 8th studio album, which comes 3 years after the last and excellent "Untitled" album (with the match painting), released in 2019.
The album was unplanned and recorded as a result of a postponement of the band's tour, in the face of the Covid-19 lockdowns. "Rammstein's" seventh "Untitled" studio album was released in May 2019 and ended a long hiatus of the band, during which Till Lindemann and Richard Kruspe were occupied with their side projects - "Lindemann" and "Emigrate".
The band planned a long tour of several years in support of the "Untitled" album, which was to include two legs in Europe and one leg in the US. However, after the first European leg of the tour was over, Covid-19 came and forced the band to postpone the next two legs of the planned tour.
The band took advantage of the lockdowns and the long hiatus from live shows, to create new and spontaneous material that gradually crystallized into a full album. The name of the album "Zeit" ("Time") perhaps refers to the time that became available to the members of the band and enabled its creation. Keyboardist Christian "Flake" Lorenz noted that the sessions were spontaneous and that the lockdowns gave the band members more time to think about new ideas with fewer distractions. "Rammstein" recorded the album in late 2020 and early 2021 at the "La Fabrique" studios at the "Saint-Rémy-de-Provence" studios in France, where their previous album was also recorded.
It is interesting to noteת that the first person to listen to material from this album was the French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, commander of the International Space Station. Drummer Christoph 'Doom' Schneider was the one who played excerpts from the album to Thomas while he was at the station. He noted that it was the dream come true of a little boy talking to an astronaut in space.
Another very interesting fact has to do with the album cover, taken by none other than Canadian rocker Bryan Adams. "Rammstein" members asked Adams to take a photo of their album cover showing them standing on the steps of the "Trudelturm" aerial research monument in Berlin. Bryan Adams has photographed various artists in music throughout his career, including Rod Stewart, Mick Jagger, Robert Plant, "The Who", Lenny Kravitz, and more.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music