It will inevitably result in a book and a film, but the story of Germany's cannibal has already brought a summer chart hit to the country's masters of the macabre: the hard rock band Rammstein.
"He loves me so much he could eat me. The soft and the hard parts are all on the menu; it's so good with seasoning and flambed," go the not so subtle lyrics of Rammstein's Mein Teil, or My Part.
Armin Meiwes was jailed in Germany in January for more than eight years for killing and eating a willing victim: both men allegedly tried to eat the man's severed penis before he died.
The story of the "cannibal of Rotenburg" was manna from hell for singer, Till Lindemann: "It's so sick that it becomes fascinating and there just has to be a song about it," he said.
Mein Teil took second place in its first week in the charts in Germany after its release in early August, slipping down to sixth place by mid-month.
The video clip, which shows the musicians held on a leash by a transvestite and rolling around in mud, has sparked heated debate and is only being aired by music television channel MTV after 11pm. A few other stations have been giving daytime airings.
But controversy is not new to Rammstein, which adapted its name from the site of a 1988 air crash in which 70 people died.
The six-piece group from Hamburg was formed in 1993, and their fusion of industrial, progressive rock and heavy metal has made them globally popular.
Rammstein's first success came in 1995, with Herzeleid or Heartbreak, but the group's second album Sehnsucht (Nostalgia) two years later made them famous. The disc went platinum in Germany and the US.
Stage shows including firebreathers, explosions and flame throwers have contributed to their notoriety. They have also been known to walk on stage through a giant fake uterus in their underwear.
It's a repertoire that has won them fans as far away as Japan and Australia, not to mention their following in Europe.
But it has won them few fans among police in the US. Lindemann's musings in his deep, guttural howl and grinding against the group's keyboard player during the song Bueck Dich (Bend Over) earned the two a few hours in custody after a show in Massachusetts.
The teenage gunmen in the 1999 Columbine high school massacre that killed 12 people declared that Rammstein was their favorite group.
That same year, though, the band won the Echo award in Germany for "best artist abroad" and received a US Grammy nomination.
Filmmaker David Lynch also included two of their songs on the soundtrack to his Lost Highway. Even Kurt Cobain, the late frontman for the grunge group Nirvana, had described them as a dream band.
In a market in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, customers flock to Ache Moussa’s stall to have their long plaits smeared with a special paste in an age-old ritual. Each strand of hair, from the root to the end, is slathered in a traditional mixture of cherry seeds, cloves and chebe seeds, the most important ingredient of all. Users say the recipe makes their hair grow longer and more lustrous. Local and natural hair products are gaining popularity across Africa as people turn away from commercial cosmetics. Moussa applies the mixture and shapes the client’s locks into a gourone — a traditional hairstyle consisting of
The US yesterday wrapped up its first multidomain exercise with Japan and South Korea in the East China Sea, a step forward in Washington’s efforts to enhance and lock in its security partnerships with key Asian allies in the face of growing threats from North Korea and China. The three-day Freedom Edge increased the sophistication of previous exercises with simultaneous air and naval drills geared toward improving joint ballistic-missile defense, anti-submarine warfare, surveillance and other skills and capabilities. The exercise, which is expected to expand in years to come, was also intended to improve the countries’ abilities to share missile warnings —
‘APOCALYPTIC : An UN official said that Lebanon was ‘the flashpoint beyond all flashpoints,’ and a conflict that involved it would draw in Syria and other nations Israel on Wednesday said that it does not want war in Lebanon, but could send its neighbor “back to the Stone Age.” The border between the two countries has seen daily exchanges of fire between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants since the attack on Israel by Hezbollah’s ally Hamas on Oct. 7 last year, which triggered the war in Gaza. Fears those exchanges could escalate have grown in the past few weeks as cross-border attacks intensified and after Israel revealed it had approved plans for a Lebanon offensive, prompting new threats from Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said
‘ONE FELL SWOOP’: Overturning a landmark ruling that said judges should defer to experts would ‘cause a massive shock to the legal system,’ a dissenting opinion said Prosecutors overstepped in charging Jan. 6, 2021, rioters with obstruction for trying to prevent certification of the 2020 presidential election, the US Supreme Court said on Friday, throwing hundreds of cases into doubt, while another controversial ruling struck down 40 years of legal precedent on federal agencies’ ability to regulate critical issues. The matter was brought to the court through an appeal by former police officer Joseph Fischer, a supporter of former US president Donald Trump who entered the Capitol with hundreds of others in 2021. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said prosecutors’ interpretation of the law would “criminalize