Legendary guitarist of iconic metal band, Rammstein, Richard. Z. Kruspe is set to release a second album with his new band Emigrate and it’s not what you’d expect.
Silent So Long will drop next week and holds many surprises, including collaborations with a diverse group of artists like Lemmy, Peaches and Marilyn Manson.
Speaking to Glam Adelaide from Berlin, Kruspe said the album was inspired by his love of collaborating before the Wall came down.
“In 1988 when I came to East Berlin we had tons of bands coming up every week and there was a lot of collaboration going on in the underground scene and I really, really liked that,” he says. “But after the Wall came down, a lot of that was lost. People were just too scared because all of a sudden their whole culture was gone. One of the reasons I created Emigrate was because being in Rammstein for 20 years, I missed that collaboration idea of being an open source let people come in and work with me.”
Singing, song writing and playing guitar on this album, Kruspe took a chance by asking some big names to record with him, which paid off.
One such chance was with Lemmy Kilmister on ‘Rock City’, a song that started out as an acoustic pop tune but went in a new direction when the band started to jam. “All of a sudden there was a mix between Motorhead and Depeche Mode and I thought wow, which one should I have, Dave or Lemmy?” he laughs. “But Lemmy was really sick and he’d cancelled a show so I thought there was no chance in the world he’d go into the recording studio with a band he doesn’t even know. But a couple of days later, an email came with no explanation, just a song with vocals on it. Those moments are worth everything in life. One of those moments where you’re like a little child and it’s like birthday, Christmas and Easter all together.”
With gothic sounds, hard rock, industrial electro and contagious melodies, Silent So Long is a myriad of music flavours.
Perhaps the most intriguing of the song choices is the duet with Peaches, “Get Down” which Kruspe explains was born of strippers and raw food.
“When you’re a rock star, you end up spending a lot of time in strip clubs. I’ve never really understood the concept of strip clubs, to be honest. I don’t drink, so that’s two things that don’t really go together so I was sitting in all these strip clubs and I was really bored and I thought I would love to write a song that really works in a strip club. So I went home and started to write and I came up with something really electro, sexy and groovy. When the guys heard it they said it should be a duet with Peaches. She wasn’t really interested in the song, she just said she wanted to meet us so she came over and we talked for an hour about raw food and smoothies and then she decided we were healthy enough to do the song with,” he laughs.
Although the album is not far away from release, and a new video for “Eat You Alive” premieres this Friday, Emigrate have no plans to tour just yet.
“There’s no plans to tour Emigrate,” Kruspe says. “But the demand is amazing which makes me want to plan but then I think shit, I’m playing in one of the best live shows in the world with Rammstein, how do I compete with Emigrate? I’ll have to come up with a completely different idea. There’s a lot of pressure and I hate pressure.”
Despite finding new success with Emigrate, Kruspe has no plans to leave Rammstein; he uses Emigrate as a creative outlet to find a balance between the two bands.
“People always talk about Rammstein as the show and the fire and the pyro, but I’m also Richard the musician and producer who loves music. I think after a while of talking about all of the visual effects I became quite tired and I was trying to prove to myself that I could do music without any visual effects,” he says. “Other people thought when I started Emigrate that it would be the end of Rammstein but actually it’s the opposite. Emigrate gave me the balance to stay in Rammstein.”
Silent So Long drops November 7 but you can pre-order it now and even have a listen to it on Facebook.
Interviewed by Libby Parker
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