Rammstein’s Richard Z. Kruspe calls on Till Lindemann and Tobias Forge for his third EMIGRATE album.
A million Degrees SPINEFARm Rammstein guitarist shifts course to sail close to the edge
RichaRd Z KRuspe is the human face of Rammstein. While his bandmates play the roles of impassive Teutonic strongmen to the hilt, the guitarist is the one who is most likely to take off the mask and go rogue. Emigrate are a case in point. This sporadic side-project gives him a chance to flex muscles that don’t normally get flexed, mix it up with a different crowd of people, and generally not have to worry about the stifling democracy of the mothership.
Emigrate’s self-titled 2007 debut album and its 2014 follow-up, Silent So Long, found Richard slipping his moorings and drifting off with the currents. A Million Degrees is still bobbing out on the ocean, even if the shore is still in sight. You don’t have to listen hard to hear Rammstein in the stentorian crunch of opening track, War, while the title track and the breathless Lead You, featuring singer (and Richard’s partner) Margeaux Bossiuex, pulse with an electronic heartbeat. Potentially more divisive is You Are So Beautiful, which bites so hard on U2’s chiming stadium rock that Bono and The Edge have rushed off to the nearest A&E department to have a pair of German teeth surgically removed from their leather trousers. Of course, being a member of Rammstein does have its perks. It means you can pull in the likes of Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge for a duet on the pulsing I’m Not Afraid, Billy Talent frontman Ben Kowalewicz for the electro-glam rave-up 1234 and, well,
Till Lindemann on the Anglo/German-language Let’s Go. The thump of the latter skews close to Rammstein, though it has a light touch that band would never dream of invoking.
It’s clear that Emigrate will never escape the shadow of Rammstein – certainly not with that band set to return in 2019 – and you suspect that’s not what Richard Z Kruspe wants anyway. But if nothing else, it’s one last chance to shake loose before the juggernaut shudders into life once more.