Remember Rammstein? You know, the bulky German industrial-aggro band whose claim to fame was the ominous-yet-catchy, late-'90s hit single 'Du Hast?' If that doesn't jog your memory, how about the band's insane onstage pyro -- or their homoerotic antics, which featured singer Til Lindemann playing with dildos and the band's keyboardist?

Nevertheless, guitarist and backing vocalist Paul Landers exclusively told Noisecreep, via a translator, "While it is not necessarily a good thing to praise oneself, the band is definitely topping itself with this record." He would not reveal the album's title, but did admit that Rammstein teeters on the verge of total collapse -- and that the four-year chasm between this new album and 2005's 'Rosenrot' was due to the need to get away from one another.

"When things are difficult, the best art develops and we had a lot of things to get through for this album," Landers revealed. "Each guy in the band has different reasons for what he does, but the band had one year of free time. There were situations, while working on this album, where certain members could not work with each other, so we needed on year to sort out those problems and get everything harmonious again and get rid of the tensions instead of constantly confronting each other. It took a year before we were creative again."

Rammstein are functionally dysfunctional, but they managed to get it together. Landers also revealed, "After all of the years together, there was the tendency for band members to work together in smaller groups and then contribute ideas to the whole. [Drummer Christoph 'Doom' Schneider] issued an ultimatum, that we needed to work together or not do it at all."

The demand was an alarm bell, even though the tension amongst the members has turned out to be a catalyst for creativity and crunchy, industrial-tinged metal. "The only reason to be in a band is because you are creative," Landers said. "Luckily, we have a band that makes good music, even though there may be times when we were about to throw everything away."

As for why there is so much tension, it's no different than siblings or longtime lovers. "When you get older, people in bands become more tolerant to opinions of others, but also strangely less tolerant of other opinions, so internal differences tend to develop. This time, we were close to the edge of things falling apart. But we have a good number of members with six, so if at any given point and time, if two are in a general bad mood, there are four other guys to balance out."

The band's new album will be issued by Vagrant.

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