Date: 08/25/25
Mood: trying
Listening to: Waidmanns Heil
Exploring Old Rammstein Fansites #1
A look into past fansites for interesting tidbits, forgotten ideas, old news, and happenings surrounding album releases. In this post, I will largely cover Reise, Reise and Rosenrot era.
I have been spending excessive time going through old R+ fansites. I am hooked and fascinated by the passage of fandom of a bygone time before Instagram. I have found random tidbits and timelines of events. Rumors, gossip, moved release dates... all sorts of weird pieces of a band fandom. They don't fit in any unique post and are too short to warrant a full page. I still find this stuff interesting! Maybe you would too. I scattered random era photos in here. No meaning.
Everything I touch on from the site planetrammstein.com and rammstein-portugal.com is machine TL. I tried to cross compare it to German sources I can sort of parse better to double check it but some archives are broken going further back than June 2004. And many sites are dysfunctional archives in LIFAD era. I don't know why that happened. However, these French and Portuguese sites were very well maintained and often cross-posted what the other German sites said accurately and credit those sites as the origin. So it should be similar.
September 2003: Paul at a Knorkator show
Someone found Paul at a Knorkator concert release show for an album and asked him what's going on with the band nowadays. People accused this of being fake news and discredited it for months, but... pretty much all of it turned out real. So it was really him.
Claims in September:
All of this did happen. I'm sure this Paul moment was legit because of that. Sometimes in the music business, the nuance change of plans happens as you find agreements with production or venues. However, all of his main ideas did come to fruition.
25 songs, 14 narrowed down, the rest maybe singles ⟶ True. Paul mentioned in other RR era interviews that remainder songs may end up as singles in the future. Lending strong credibility he'd say this in 2003. This follows strongly of the narrative that the RR/R sessions were positively felt by the band to be such quality music, they really did not want to waste them. That the plan for singles later turned into the second Rosenrot album instead.
Major festival tour leg ⟶ Yes, the Ahoi tour covered numerous major festivals in Summer of 2005
Autumn tour of Germany ⟶ Yes, they did many shows in December 2004.
DVD with music videos ⟶ Yes, this was announced in October 2003 to be Lichtspielhaus. Which released in the start of December before Christmas as he said. Das Modell's video was removed from the plans though. It does insinuate the video was completed and the label has it, but has continued to wish to not release it. It looks like publishing it was considered though.
What I actually took away from this true moment in 2003? Paul attends Knorkator concerts!
Slowest ever roll out of Reise, Reise
In February 2004, Sonic Seducer tried to suggest "Rosenrot" would be a single.
My theory is this was actually from the era of time when Reise, Reise was going to actually BE called Rosenrot. The studio code word for the album was Rot or the Red Album. It's quite likely this was a false echo of when the album was called this and not a single. It was passed around that possibly this would be the first album where the title and a song did not match. This was confirmed in the public eye in May with band interviews starting to make the rounds that it was conceptually a "red" album and explains why Sonic Seducer found the name Rosenrot leaked around.
In March 2004, GEMA's database showed new songs entered. The album's projection was August or September still.
This isn't 2004, but I found this hilarious May 2009 comment by a fansite owner who said the database is "popular among the Rammstein freaks" and I was laughing so hard. Because it's so true. 80% of search queries to this site have got to be us. "GEMA database" is one of those things you get used to understanding the meaning of in this fandom. If anything happens under their surnames, we know about within a few days. To this very day, we still consult the GEMA database. I swear people are searching Richard's name every week for any changes. I mean, that is how we first caught onto intention with Ramm4 in relation to the upcoming documentary and/or Mexico/Vienna disc. Based on how it looks inside the database, they might end up formally titling Ramm4 as "Ja Nein Rammstein" which is tragic and 99% of the fandom will continue to say Ramm4 (Rammvier). It has been a decade, you can't change the song title now. You should have titled it properly in 2016. The May 2009 comment was about "Seid bereit" and that being discredited as a known demo from Mutter. It leaked online in 2023, I think. Or was it 2022...
Mein Teil was announced for June 14th release. It was again pushed to June 28th from random CD shop listings that kept changing.
This sounds like a terrible rush. The video for MT was only filmed in the start of June. It was announced as being edited on June 11th. Pushing out a single that fast sounds wrong and no wonder it got delayed. Mein Teil as a video started getting played on MTV and Viva etc on July 9th formally. The single was released on July 26th in stores.
R+'s formal website said there was "controversial discussions between the band and record company" as Rammwiki states. For the love of god, I wish Rammwiki would LINK to the goddamn things they reference or magazine page scanned. They can literally host the jpg, sheesh. Sometimes I find myself tempted to ask them to give me an account so I can insert 50 archive links and help them do citations or something. They're good people on that site and hardly ever are wrong. However, they really need to work on citations via link or photo copy. In some cases, they may need to invest in storage for interview snippet clips since Universal keeps nuking YouTube uploads. Or having someone do transcriptions of videos into text format so it stays cited properly.
Release date of the new single "Mein Teil" has been postponed again due to controversial discussions between the band and record company. The single will now be released at the end of July or beginning of August. As soon as an exact date has been confirmed you will find out here! ⟫ Source
I also found that Schneider claimed the issue was also needing to widen the promotion of the song outside of Germany's scope caused delays. I think it's possible both things are true and neither statements are wrong. That the concerning "controversial discussion" the record company dealt with may have been related to the video's contents needing to edit parts to be suitable for certain country's broadcasts. Part of the video does contain a simulated blowjob using a dildo. Which I know cannot be on American MTV or VH1 with that there. Who knows. I find it strange how they're filming a video and releasing a single in a 30 day span though. It makes things feel rushed for what shouldn't be. No wonder Rammstein physical releases are riddled with 50 printing errors and typos.
You thought the delays were over? No, Amerika also had a bunch of strange single delays. It was once September 6th, then 13th. With Reise, Reise itself pushed to September 27th to adjust for this when originally meant for the 20th.
March 2005, Los or Amour's "lost" single
It was reported on a Hungarian TV interview that Paul described Los as a possible next single. Then described a music video idea. (Driving in a Trabant around in various places in Berlin.) This interview has been lost to time. I found no copies of it. But I did find the proshot TV reel footage used in the background of the report. No Paul clip. It does suggest it existed and wasn't fansite fiction. This potential of a Los single was also mentioned in a magazine interview, so it's not a total mystery.
What IS a mystery is... this Amour single??? If the interview was real (seems so) and Paul spoke it, I want to believe it's true. However the main question I have is why would Amour be a single when they literally played it live one time in public in 2004 and dropped it from the set? Odd choice. (All other plays of it were fanclub shows.) Why never have something on a set if you wanted to make it a single later? How strange. (Edit: I found the interview.)
By June that was scrapped. Paul is by far the most interactive with fans for this stuff. Seriously. People find him and he just blabs the entire band's projection for the next year. I can't imagine him doing this anymore lol. On May 26th, a special fanclub show was put on for Fanarea members in Vienna. Fansite rammstein-austria.com had women on the scene. They had the pleasure to converse with Paul after.
He mentioned: RR won't have any more singles. The new album was completed in Berlin. A new song coming is Benzin. He described it; "the song is hard, like Mein Teil. so that everyone knows we're back." It was also said they wanted to take a year off vacation after this.
I like to imagine these things. I really do.
The Benzin game
They made a freaking Benzin flash game.
The goal is to crash into everything and every animal within the time limit to get a high score. There was apparently a contest of high scores to get prizes (merch like shirts apparently) from Universal. Amazing times we lived in.
March 2005, Ebay bootleg sale
The news article for this is not archived, but a snippet says that a teenage daughter who lives in the BW area of Germany, obtained a bootleg live recording from a physical shop. Then at some point later on chose to resell it on eBay with her parent's account. They were sent a legal threat in the mail from Universal Music. Sheesh.
This was such a dark time for Rammstein in terms of PR, online culture, alienating fans, and feeling commercially aggressive. This was both a career good point and great album era, and also the most commercialized and corporate. For better or worse that's how it was for a time.
February 2006, charity auction
I found no other fansite mention this somehow. But Paul had done a charity auction of a few of his award plaques. Including two Mutter ones from Norway and Russia. Plus a special promo image plaque for Reise, Reise signed by the band.July 2005, Rosenrot preview
After the Nimes show, Emu apparently let a Spanish fansite person attending the after show listen to Te quiero puta. Where the owner talked about it online and got people interested in Rosenrot. At the time, still called Reise Reise 2.
October 2005, Rosenrot leak and first mention of Volkerball
Rosenrot leaked online about three days before release date in October. It was likely from a physical CD shop receiving shipments in order to prepare display areas. And some guy taking one and ripping it digitally. A lot of leaks in the mid-00s were for reasons like that related to stores.
I also found allusions to Volkerball around October. Universal Denmark had a CD+DVD and 2DVD+CD listing they put up for December release. There were legit production delays on Volkerball, so it's quite possible it was meant for far earlier or even early 2006. I found one Polish fansite who said Universal Music once listed Volkerball as March 2006 as well. Then shortly after, it was announced as delayed until September. At this time, the third photobook edition was never mentioned at all.If I remember right, the photobook being cleared was a part of the issues. The site notes the problem in March to be "lack of time to prepare promotion". Who knows? It sounds like they didn't get everything in order with permissions about photos and this took too long. I mean at this point in time, the book version doesn't even get mentioned once as existing on the plans. All the way in August 2006, there is still zero mention on any fansite about the book version. Sure does look like the book was the delay cause. You can't announce a version of something you aren't even sure you have the clearance for yet. Additionally, I found Paul mention a book and photographs in November 2005 that shows the book was always intended. Yet until the very last minute after numerous delays upon delays, they never announced a book version until that point. I do suspect something about the book was holding things up.
Rosenrot fake track lists
Nothing is more funny than leaked album track titles and lists. Especially in hindsight, they get even funnier.
Here's some random samplings of some I've found and my commentary about them.
1. Wehrmauer ⟶ "Defensive wall". Sounds like a broken distortion of Stein um stein's demo title...? That is lyrically what this song is about. An emotional/physical wall being built between two broken lovers. I wonder if this was once a working title for this song in some mannerism. It's so oddly specific to a known song's themes, and yet why is it being applied to a new song? Odd.
2. Rosenrot ⟶ real
3. Feuer und Wasser ⟶ real
4. Benzin ⟶ real
5. Ahorn ⟶ "Maple"??? The title of this suggests a singular tree and not plural like a forest.
6. Ich sehe was & Claudia ⟶ "I see something" / "I see what". Existed in the GEMA list and thought to be from Mutter era. This is plausible because Mann gegen mann's lyrics existed during Mutter (but not the composition) in a draft. As well as Ohne dich also being fully done during Mutter and then dropped. So pulling from Mutter's ideas is viable. May be related to "Claudia" also in the GEMA list and got rumored around this time. We have no idea what this is. Some adjusted lyrics from GEMA's entry once suggest this may be related to Moskau. In that case, this may be a released song by now and reworked. That's why I was so curious about Stein um stein's correlation to Wehrmauer's phrase. And if Ich sehe was / Claudia and Wehrmauer are false echoes of RR demos.
7. Hin und her ⟶ Really exists. Theorized to be Vergiss uns nicht in another title because GEMA overwrote the title with that one.
8. Meine Floss ⟶ My Raft? This can't be real lmao. Nooooo.
9. Schwuhla ⟶ Very likely the working title of Mann gegen mann
10. Wo bist du? ⟶ real
11. Eisenmann ⟶ A real demo "iron man". A redone version leaked in 2010 from LIFAD sessions. I am listening to the version that is 3:28 long and the only good part is 1:21-40 and 2:25-36. I don't know if it's intentional machine sounds meant to be like this (because of the lyric meaning) but some of the guitar work sounds like false starts of a lawn mower (0:43) [maybe this was meant to be a chainsaw actually lol] or a car's engine (0:55) turning over. I can't understand it. There's just a lot of weird things about this demo that reminds me of Waidmanns Heil. I am extremely convinced for years this song was remade into Waidmanns and that's why it vanished forever. Whereas pretty much every other LIFAD demo or leak has been published in a final form. Except this one. Allegedly...
Maybe we should tell the Rammwiki people to consider this option for the fate of this song as the only LIFAD demo that "never" found a home. I can make a very strong argument for being WH if I were to type it out. It's because of the part I singled out as Paul noise being listen-able good at 1:21 and 2:25. It's pretty much like Waidmanns thing he does on open string drop D. The feeling, rhythm, and noise is similar. That is why I found it listen-able and not an offense to my ears like the rest of the demo's machine noises. I recognized it felt familiarly good and like something I've known before. The original song that came to my head was the riff of Keine Lust, actually. I realized I felt a connection to Keine Lust's work from him because I was recognizing the drop D akin to drop C making me click with the lower tones. Then I remembered Waidmanns is basically Keine Lust Redeux for Paul. Convoluted. I know. It's how I work.
The verses changed the Richard noise in 5sec intervals to fancier Flake in 7sec intervals instead. Actually in WH Reesh's Eisenmann lawn mower noise was put into it at 0:09 one time exclusively like a reference...? And I think Paul's very unique Waidmanns "solo" moment (1:11) was also a reference thing back from the terrible car revving idea in Eisenmann that is a very rare thing from him to do in a song. In WH proper, the revving awful thing is instead replaced by what is emphasized live with the fretboard being played upward by both guitarists as a transition. In this song Till ends up yelling "mannnnnnn" that fits the same melody of the WH chorus and "sterben". I can make a very strong argument...
12. Ich bin ⟶ Some of these lyrics mentioned by Paul ended up in a Till book later on. Some of the music was reused for Te quiero puta he said too.
13. Holz ⟶ "Wood". Which is sort of like the Ahorn maple idea of a tree. I wonder if there's any correlation to explain how that came about. This song legitimately existed in the GEMA list. Nothing is known about it outside of that.
Fanreport: February 18th 2005, Leipzig
In 2005's tour leg, some cool fangirls wrote a blog about being at a backstage after party thing. They chatted with Paul and Flake. We respect fangirls in this house.
It was supposed to be "only" a great concert experience for us all, but everything turned out quite differently than expected...
We met in the forums as Rammstein fans amongst one another. You write about various things and meet like minded people. Our trip was out to Leipzig, as was the case for some of us forum members. Bosch22B provided us with buttons [of the logo] so that we could recognize one another. That's how it all started.
From various different corners of Germany, we made our way to the birthplace of the great lyricist [Till] and singer of the band Rammstein to share in their work. Our stories are rather different, but I will bring it all down to our common thread.
At 13 [1pm], I (Big Blue) was standing at the front of the arena in the freezing cold. Frosthummel, Phoebe, and another friend they knew joined me around 14 [2pm]. Despite my cardboard with the Rammstein Austria logo, we didn't find anyone else at first. We went to the hot show after being half frozen. As per usual, Rammstein gave it their all on stage. But that's not what this report is about.
Completely independently of one another, we got backstage passes. Frosthummel, Phoebe and myself got ours handed to us somewhere while being scattered at the front row. While Bosch22B and Andromeda had received theirs back during entry. So all six of us met up in the backstage area. First thing was music and drinks. In general, it was a pretty diverse group of people there. Women, men, older, younger, hardcore fans, pretty ladies, everyone was well represented. [This is pretty standard at many after parties lol. Even in the future.] Soon after, some band members like Flake, Olli, and Paul arrived. Flake joined us first, later by Paul. We had a lot to ask and talk about. It usually came about in small talk.
Bosch22B told Flake about the Messer event at Eichborn Verlag, which led us to end up talking about the forum. He wanted a button immediately. So Andromeda gave him her own. Obviously, we didn't forget to mention to him the world's biggest Flake fan, Lady G. We also talked with Paul. He told us about seven songs that were really good tracks, but didn't fit the length of Reise, Reise. We can only recall him mentioning ones titled Ein Lied and Wo bist du. He sang a bit of one song, but then decided it's better off that Till sings it.
Of course we had to ask about a new [concert] DVD. To which Flake replied to us that it would probably not be recorded at Wuhlheide but perhaps Spain in the summer. He is tempted by the idea of filming the whole thing in a bullring [arena]. According to Flake, a next single might be either Los or Amour. Paul also got a button of course, as you can see in the photo.
We got to watch the full version of the new Keine Lust video. Flake: "You have to see it now!" I discussed my interpretation of this video with Paul. He appreciated it and was quite interested in what fans see in their music videos. However, they didn't seem to put much stock in it themselves. Either way, especially Paul, seemed to be quite proud of this music video. They singled out Flake because one of them is supposed to stand out visually in their videos, like Christoph in Mein Teil.
Do they ever view our forum? Paul probably does. He was the only one who noticed rammsteinfan.de was shut down. Flake no longer seems to have internet access but probably has someone read stuff to him from forums from time to time. Paul said they had been considering making the Fanarea free to everyone without charge starting in September [2005] onward.
Flake shared a few more ideas. For example, he doesn't like it when the press writes random non-sense. They should refrain from writing anything if they don't know any better. He wouldn't write a dissertation on the study of birds, you know. Rammstein's songs have also saved people's lives but you don't hear about that in the press...
He always smashes a real keyboard to express his disgust for guitarists as self-expression, he told us smiling. All the great guitarists always smash pre-cut guitars because it's not easy to smash a real one.* Why doesn't he wear the mask in Till's cooking pot anymore? Many people seem to not believe it's really Flake sitting in that pot. Besides, it's dangerous. He could barely see in the mask which is important when everything around you is exploding and burning. Just recently something happened unexpected. When he was wearing that mask, he burned his hair during a show. He wouldn't have noticed at all if it hadn't smelled so horrible.
The two of them graciously gave us a signing of our Reise, Reise covers. You've already seen that photo [in the forum].
Unfortunately, we only saw the other Rammstein members briefly, if much. They all arrived in casual leisure clothes. Only Richard was still a bit stage dressed when he walked past us. Olli looked very shy. [So true. He never looks comfortable there when people find him.] Till was only there a short while, and if my eyes weren't mistaken, he wore a black R+ jacket. Sadly, we didn't get a chance to talk to any others. We didn't see Christoph at all.
And sadly, Apocalyptica didn't get to play Ohne dich with Rammstein this time due to an illness. However, they still put on a great show and got the crowd going. Much respect to those Finnish guys!
Finally: Paul isn't that short! At 176cm [~5'9"], he towered over the tallest of us!
Thanks again to both Paul and Flake for taking the time to chat with us. You are both wonderful and lovely! Keep up the good work.
*This word "angesägte" is weird???? The hell is this? Did she typo? Did she mean abgesägt? (Literally, "sawed-in" or perhaps "cut-in".) I think the concept in English would be what we'd call pre-cut or perforated lol. I am sorry if this is non-sense. The sentences really got difficult for me here to phrase this whole paragraph.
Hey! >According to Flake, a next single might be either Los or Amour. That's just like how Paul said the same thing in February in a Hungarian interview too that overlaps this same Leipzig moment. They both agreed Amour was a possible single independently of one another. Someone tell the Rammwiki they forgot Amour's possible missing single lol.