Sometimes, you really are better off not knowing. Now, I understand millions of German speaking Rammstein fans haven’t been kept in the dark like I have as to the lyrics and subjects intoned in that most Teutonic and distinctive of near barks belonging to Til Lindemann, but for myself, the fact his debut solo album Skills In Pills (Warners) is in English means my blissful ignorance of subject matter is shattered, and, much like finding out the contents of your late night kebab actually is rat and dog, I’d rather have not been enlightened.
For Skills In Pills is a forty-five minute juvenile lesson in puerility that makes you wonder as to the mental state of 52 year old Lindemann as his album makes Steel Panther seem erudite and poetic. While the opening title track is childish twaddle about different drugs doing different things, the downhill descent begins quickly with the immature ‘Ladyboy’, before the inane combo of ‘Fat’ and ‘Fish On’, respectively featuring the lines “When I break open your king-size bra, your giant boobs are wunderbar” and “It smells like fish, My rod is stiff” plumb new depths. ‘Golden Shower’ is an excuse to gleefully drop the C-bomb with the relish of a child who has first learnt it in a song that is the polar opposite of subtlety, let alone the crassness of lead single ‘Praise Abort’.
This isn’t a complaint from a position of prudishness, but even my 14-year-old self playing ‘Get In The Ring’ at parent-offending volumes would have dismissed this fatuous nonsense. The biggest shame comes from the fact that Lindemann, musically, ticks every box you’d want from a collaboration of Mr Rammstein and Pain/Hypocrisy’s Peter Tägtgren, and really could be a new Rammstein album, it’s just the lyrics really clash with, and irretrievable detract from, the music.
Had this been a Steel Panther parody, fine, but the fact is there are some epic, powerful musical motions throughout, especially the aforementioned ‘Fat’, with big, dark, symphonic catchy motifs, and grooving guitars. Tägtgren has defended the album, saying it is a “Party album” and the lyrics are ironic and as a result of Lindemann’s poor English, a statement that’s nearly as full of crap as this wasted album.
5.0/10
STEVE TOVEY