Herzeleid

Herzeleid (“heartache”) is the starting point. Recorded with Jacob Hellner, the debut album introduces six musicians from former East Germany; four of them had won the Berlin Senate’s amateur band contest (Metrobeat) in 1994, before Paul Landers and Christian Lorenz came on board. Their sound — heavy industrial guitars, cold synthesizers and Till Lindemann’s deep voice singing in German — was christened Neue Deutsche Härte (new German hardness).

The original cover, with the six shirtless members among flowers, drew controversy over its perceived aesthetic; a second edition replaced it. Musically, “Du riechst so gut” and “Seemann” foreshadow the formula the band would later perfect: melody and brutality in the same song.

It wasn’t an immediate hit outside Germany, but it planted everything that followed.

Recording

It was recorded in Sweden in 1995. The band started at Polar Studios in Stockholm and, after a week, moved to Jacob Hellner’s own studio. Hellner and Carl-Michael Herlöfsson are credited as producers; Ronald Prent did the final mix at Chateau du Pape in Hamburg.

In Germany it entered the chart at number 99 in October 1995. Its highest position, number 2, came in December 2020, with the anniversary reissue. It is double platinum in Germany, for more than a million copies.