Other Projects

Feeling B is the link that explains half of Rammstein’s lineup. Founded in 1983 in East Germany around vocalist Aljoscha Rompe, it featured Paul Landers on guitar, Flake on keyboards and, from 1990, Christoph Schneider on drums. Till Lindemann even took part once, on a single song.

For about a year and a half Rammstein coexisted with Feeling B: the money the punk band’s shows brought in was invested in the new project. Feeling B broke up in the mid-1990s, and what followed is grim — Christoph Zimmermann died in a plane crash in 1999, and Aljoscha Rompe in November 2000. The 2007 reunion, with Grün & Blau, was a tribute to that era.

Before Rammstein, Paul Landers and Flake played in several bands on the East Berlin punk circuit besides Feeling B. Die Magdalene Keibel Combo is one of them.

Very little verifiable material survives from this project: sources mention it without precise dates or a discography. We record it with that caveat stated outright, because an archive also exists to mark its own gaps.

First Arsch formed in Schwerin in 1986, co-founded by Jörg Mielke and Till Lindemann — Till behind the drum kit, not at the microphone. Its only album with the famous lineup, Saddle Up, came out in November 1992 with Paul Landers on rhythm guitar and Richard Kruspe on lead, both already involved in other projects.

In 1993 all three left the band to focus on Rammstein. Bassist and lead singer Jörg Mielke carried on, replacing them with Volker Voigt and Tom Knopf.

Das Elegante Chaos was Richard Kruspe’s first band: he formed it in 1987 and it broke up in 1989. What it recorded in 1989 was only released in 2011, as the album Lyrik. It is the starting point of a chain of projects — Orgasm Death Gimmick, First Arsch, Tempelprayers — that led to Rammstein.

Die Firma was a late-1980s East German underground band, described as new wave and punk with gothic influences. Christoph Schneider passed through it — after Keine Ahnung and Frechheit, his two earlier bands — and so did Paul Landers.

It is one of the least documented stops in Rammstein’s prehistory: the names are known, but no verifiable discography is.

Kruspe founded Orgasm Death Gimmick in 1991, after Das Elegante Chaos broke up. The band released three demo tapes before splitting in 1993 — the same year he, Oliver Riedel and Christoph Schneider started rehearsing together as Tempelprayers.

In 1992 Oliver Riedel was playing in The Inchtabokatables, a folk/punk band. That same year he travelled to the southwestern United States with the musicians who would soon form Rammstein — the trip usually cited as the origin of the band’s idea.

Quartered Shadows is one of the murkiest stops in the band’s prehistory: a Christoph Schneider project with one documented release, The Last Floor Beach, in 1993. By then Schneider was already rehearsing with Kruspe and Riedel as Tempelprayers.

Tempelprayers is not a side project: it is literally Rammstein before it had its name. Kruspe, Riedel and Schneider — roommates at the time — started playing together under that label in 1993.

When Paul Landers and Flake joined in 1994, the band became Rammstein. The full story of that transition is in History and Biography.

Flake is the member who has looked least for a second band and written the most: his autobiography Der Tastenficker (2015) and the novel Heute hat die Welt Geburtstag (2017) are essential parts of the Rammstein bibliography.

His musical life outside the group arrived late and by an unexpected route: two albums of Christmas covers, Flake feiert Weihnachten (2024) and Flake feiert wieder Weihnachten (2025), with singles such as “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” and “Leise rieselt der Schnee”.