German shock rockers Rammstein spark outrage with Nazi camp video teaser

German metal band Rammstein have come under fire for using controversial imagery of Nazi concentration camps to promote their upcoming single ‘Deutschland,’ in what has been called “a tasteless exploitation of artistic freedom.”

The band has been posting short clips featuring shocking imagery in recent days. The images range from several members posing on a gallows dressed in striped concentration camp prisoner uniforms with nooses around their necks, to a woman dressed as royalty carrying frontman Til Lindemann’s decapitated head.

In particular, guitarist Paul Landers’ uniform bears a Star of David, erasing any ambiguity about the setting for the video.

“With this video, the band has crossed a line. The instrumentalization and trivialization of the Holocaust, as shown in the images, is irresponsible,” Charlotte Knobloch, a Holocaust survivor and former president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, told Bild.

Felix Klein, the German government’s commissioner for anti-Semitism, said: “I think it is a tasteless exploitation of artistic freedom.”

So far, the band and their label have refused to comment on the teaser video, presumably as speculation and controversy mount ahead of the single’s release later on Thursday.

Rammstein’s as-yet-untitled album, the follow-up to 2009’s Live Its Fur Alle Da, will be the band’s seventh offering.

The rockers has been repeatedly accused of using Nazi imagery and deliberately courting controversy over the years since they formed in 1995. The band previously caused outrage for including Nazi-era propaganda footage in the music video for the song ‘Stripped.’

Lindemann addressed that particular controversy in an interview with Playboy. When asked if he would produce a similar video again, the musician said: “No, because I’m tired of hearing we’re a right-wing band. That was a point I said to myself, ‘We crossed a line.’”

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