Flicking through the Sentinel Daily listing of new albums coming out I came across the new album from StahlmannBastard.  It immediately piqued my interest, what with the band being very similar in sound and style to Rammstein,which happens to be a guilty pleasure of mine.

Bastard has a typical industrial metal sound; driving beat, heavily distorted guitars putting out crunching riffs and keyboards adding the melody, all the while being sung in German.  The German language really fits beautifully with this genre of metal.  However it can be a hard act to make it sound different to what has gone before.

The opening track Leitwolf is your typical techno metal track; up tempo beats before breaking in to some heavily distorted riffs and a cool little bass lick. I find my head nodding and toes tapping right from the outset.  This is followed quickly by Judas which is a top notch track, starting off with a weird techno scream and then really reminding me of Zerstören from Rosenrot. Next up is the title track, Bastard.  The track has a nice driving beat with almost spoken lyrics before getting right in your face with the chorus and this really sets up the album nicely.  The next track is the haunting Nichts Spricht Wahre Liebe Freiwhich is in the vein of Ohne Dich off Reise, Reise.

From there though, the rest of the album loses it way a bit and I find it all starts sounding very similar with no real stand out tracks.  Dein Gott (Your God) is the best of the rest, which are all reminiscent in varying degrees of Rammstein’s work, which when I look at it, is what drew me to the album originally.  Unfortunately I find my enthusiasm waning as the variety that Rammstein is able to instill into its offerings is not available through Bastard.  In saying that, the album is worth a listen for the first four tracks alone, but after that it becomes a bit to formulaic for me.

Stahlmann is:

  • Martin Soer: Vocals, Programming
  • AblaZ: Bass
  • Frank Herzig: Guitars
  • Maximilian Thiele: Drums

Bastard is available now, having been released through AFM on April 28.