Flake Lorenz

Flake Lorenz — Christian Lorenz, born in East Berlin on 16 November 1966 — is Rammstein's keyboard player and, alongside Paul Landers, the member with the deepest roots in the East German punk scene. Before Rammstein the two played together in Feeling B, a punk band active in the GDR in the 1980s, in a context where making that kind of music meant dealing directly with state surveillance. That origin explains much of the group's corrosive humour: they come from a place where provocation had real consequences. His musical role is decisive and poorly understood. Because Rammstein's guitars play few notes and repeat a great deal, it is the keyboard that carries the melody — the lines that stay in the head in "Sonne", "Mutter" or "Engel" are his. Without the synthesizers the band would be nothing but rhythmic weight. Onstage he is the comic counterpoint to the martial rigour of the other five. He has been cooked inside a cauldron, run on a treadmill and floated over the audience in an inflatable boat — set pieces the band uses to dismantle its own austere image before anyone takes it too seriously.