Mutter (4:28)

“Mutter” (German for mother) is a song by Rammstein on the album of the same name.

The lyrics tell the story of a child not born from a womb but in an experiment, thus having no true father or mother. The song was confirmed by Till Lindemann and Richard Kruspe to be a reference to their unhappy childhood relationships with their own mothers. The decidedly depressing lyrics describe a character’s plan to kill both the mother “who never gave birth to him” and himself, which he carries out. But ends instead with him still being alive and no better off than before; begging, possibly praying, for strength. The song is similar to Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, in that the character takes revenge for his misfortunes on his ‘parent’, and then ends up no different than he was before the ‘parent’ died.

The video for Mutter follows the storyline of the song, whereby the character kills his mother and then dumps her body in a river, ending with the character in a cage or dungeon that is set into the ground.

The single includes an instrumental song, 5/4, that was played as intro for live shows since 2000, but wasn’t released until 2002.

It debuted on April 2000 in its demo form, in a concert exclusively for members of the fan area. The only difference between it and the final release was that the demo version was less orchestrated. During the Mutter tour, it was played at every concert, and played in select concerts in the Pledge of Allegiances tour in North America. Mutter didn’t make it into the Reise, Reise tour’s setlist.