In June they'e giving their last concert for the coming three years, reasons enough to interview the keyboard player, Flake Lorenz.
QUESTION: To go straight to the point, what's the story behind your succes?
FLAKE: It comes bit by bit. When you'e getting to be known in Germany, the rest of Europe and the VS will follow sooner or later. We didn't get it easy, we had to work hard for it. The first time in New York we were playing in a little club at 4 o' clock in the morning and no one would look at us. There was no dressing room, so we had to change on the street.
The fire is the first thing people notice, so the next time we played there, we were 'that band with the fire'.
QUESTION: Beside the show, there are allso your awkward lyrics. How do they come out?
FLAKE: Our singer, Till Lindemann, writes a poem. But then you don't have a real lyric with a refrain and couplet. So then the band will finish the lyric together. Sometimes it takes 6 months to finish it, because the singer don't want his poem to be changed too much, which leads to many discussions.
QUESTION: You're from East Germany. The East German security police, Stasi, made at the end of WW 2 a file of all German inhabitants. How did you think about that?
FLAKE: They made a Stasi file about me wich I could see for 6 weeks. They wrote down every concert I went and in wich bands I played. The only way to avoid that was to play in churches, where there was no Stasi suprvision.
QUESTION: What do you do to relax beside Rammstein?
FLAKE: I go out for a walk or am going to see a movie. I also like to see other bands. Johnny Cash is great, just like the last song System Of A Down brought out. Coldplay is allso very good, we did a great tour with them last summer in Australia. PJ Harvey and Placebo were there too.
Beside that I relax a lot in my hometown Berlin. Wherever you go, whatever you see, you know that the place you'e from, is the most beautyful. Berlin smells good, the people are nice in an honest way and it's an open city, open for new idea's.