Neue Deutsche Haerte
German industrial metal built on a programmed stomp rather than a drummer's fill.
The pattern
2 bars, sixteenth notes. Loops until you stop it.
The kick is a stomp: beat 1, the a of 1, beat 3 and the and of 3. It leaves beats 2 and 4 to the snare, and that gap is where the guitar riff becomes audible, because the kick is doubling the riff everywhere else. Hats run eighths at 82 on the beats and 60 on the ands, with the and of 4 handed to an open hat. A floor tom answers on the and of 2 and the and of 4. Bar two fills the kick in on the and of 2 and the and of 4, adds a snare at the loop point and a ghost hat just before it, and puts a second tom on the e of 4. At 96 the temptation is to add a fill; the style is built on refusing.
What it is
Rammstein's Herzeleid arrived in 1995 sounding like a marching band that had found a Marshall. Oomph! in Wolfsburg had got there first in 1992, and Megaherz and later Eisbrecher worked the same seam. The reason it belongs on this list rather than in a metal one is the drums. They are programmed, or played to a grid so tightly that the difference stops mattering, and the pattern is a stomp rather than a rock beat: the kick doubles the guitar riff and then gets out of the way for the snare. Rammstein's producers built the records around a sequencer running alongside the band, which is why the guitars line up with the sixteenths so exactly and why nothing ever rushes.
What it sounds like
Enormous and completely rigid. Guitars are downtuned, quad-tracked and gated so hard that the space between riff notes is silent, and a synth doubles the riff an octave up on almost every chorus. The kick has a tight click at 3kHz to cut through them. The snare is a real sample with a short plate behind it, hit on 2 and 4 and never anywhere clever. Bass follows the guitar exactly. The vocal is spoken or barked in German with a rolled r, close-miked and dry, with a second take doubling it a fifth below on the choruses. Everything is compressed hard, and the arrangement stops dead between sections rather than filling.
Key elements
- The stompKick on beat 1, the a of 1, beat 3 and the and of 3, doubling the guitar riff. Beats 2 and 4 are left to the snare so the riff stays readable.
- Gated quad guitarsFour takes of the same riff panned hard, gated with a fast release so the palm-muted gaps go silent. The tightness is what makes it read as machinery.
- Synth doubling the riffA saw or a supersaw playing the guitar line an octave up, mixed low enough to be felt rather than identified. It is the industrial half of the equation.
- Floor tom answersA single low tom on the and of 2 and the and of 4, filling the space the kick leaves. It is the one ornament the pattern allows itself.
- Barked German vocalDelivered on the beat, dry and close, with the consonants doing the percussive work. Harmony appears only as a fifth below on choruses.
How to get them
- Program the stompKick on beat 1 at 120, the a of 1 at 80, beat 3 at 118 and the and of 3 at 82. Write the guitar riff to those four positions rather than the other way round.
- GuitarsDrop D or lower, four takes, two panned hard left and two hard right, all through the same amp sim with the gain at two thirds. Gate each at minus 40dB with a 10ms release.
- Kick clickLayer a metal kick sample on top of a rock kick and boost 3 to 4kHz by five decibels on the layer only. Without that click the kick disappears under four guitar tracks.
- SnareA tuned rock snare with a 900ms plate gated at 250ms, on 2 and 4 at velocity 118 every time. Do not add ghost notes; the rigidity is the genre.
- Synth layerTwo saws detuned by 12 cents playing the riff an octave above the guitars, low-passed at 5kHz, at around minus eighteen. Sidechain it to the kick so it never masks the click.
- Stop instead of fillingAt section changes cut everything for a beat rather than playing a fill. That hard stop is used on nearly every record in this style and it works because the grid is so exact.
Reference points
Rammstein, Oomph!, Megaherz, Eisbrecher, Die Krupps in their later phase, and the Motor Music and Metropolis catalogues. Named as reference points for the sound, not as endorsements.
The pattern is a starting point rather than a rule. If you want the theory underneath why any of it works, Battuto measures it.