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Classic Rock - March 2005 : Berlin 18-Dec Review

Rammstein
Velodrome, Berlin
December 18, 2004

They’ve sold 10 million records and their shows involve flamethrowers and a rubber dinghy. German metal gods Rammstein might just be the most extraordinary live band in the world.

It's not every day you see a frontman with the power to burn 15,000 people alive. But Rammstein's Till Lindemann -who emerges onto the stage tonight with an enormous flame- thrower strapped to each of his tree-trunk arms - is one. Stalking the stage like some evil dystopian cyborg, the firepower he unleashes is so explosive you can feel the heat on your face from 100 feet away. At one point, having tired of throwing flames, he instead fires out a volley of burning arrows that streak over the heads of the audience to the back of the venue, hit a target and explode in a shower of sparks. Had he misfired, it's quite possible that several fans would have died.

This astonishing spectacle is unfolding in an immense underground sports arena on the outskirts of Rammstein's native Berlin. Above ground it's freezing. A fierce wind whips around the bleak and silent once-Communist cityscape.

Stepping from the cold into the heat of the venue feels eerily like a descent into Hell. Everywhere you look there are flames, bathing the audience in red light. German rock fans don't ‘mosh' as such, but they do extend their right index fingers in perfect unison. The sight of thousands of stern Berliners doing this - accompanied by the granite-hard, jack-boot precision of Rammstein's music - can't help but appear faintly fascistic. It is also utterly compelling.

Rammstein have always had a knack for the grand gesture. In the early days, before they even had a record deal, guitarist Paul Landers would sneak behind audiences and pour kerosene on floor. He'd then drop a match and watch as flames licked the feet of horrified punters. Years later, following the international success of their albums 'Sehnsucht' and' Mutter', the band found themselves with the budget to realise their outlandish visions, and in 2002 wowed Europe with a stage show that climaxed each night with an outsize dildo spurting fake spunk 50 feet into the air. All of which posed something of a problem: when you've already pulled out all the stops, where else is there to go?

Coming up with a show to match the expansive sturm und drang of their current album 'Reise Reise' certainly wasn't easy. It took months of thinking of ideas, planning and rehearsals. Even now, 40 dates into the tour, it's obvious Rammstein are still getting to grips with the sheer scale of the new production.

Backstage it's anarchy; staff race past on bikes, barking into walkie-talkies (the corridors of the venue are so long as to make walking impractical). Keyboardist Flake Lorenz, a bookish, frail man at the best of times, looks visibly nervous. "It's like when you get a new toy and you don't know how it works," he explains. "You don't know how the audience is going to react. It's been a very steep learning curve."

He's interrupted by guitarist Richard Kruspe, who has just emerged, bare-chested, from his dressing room to show Flake his new steel-plated signature guitar. "It's going to be available in the shops!" he beams (although one assumes the shop version won't have the capability of spewing flames from the headstock, as Kruspe's will do at regular intervals throughout the evening). But there's no time to quiz him further. It's show time.

What takes place on stage here over the next 90 minutes is arguably the most startlingly ambitious live spectacle ever attempted. It starts in total darkness, with a sinister gang of besuited minions - Rammstein's road crew - prowling the stage and shining torches out over the audience. Then suddenly a curtain drops and the venue ignites in a flash of heat and light for the anthemic 'Links 2-3-4’, its call-and-response choruses accented by split-second bursts of fire.

Half an hour later the stage is empty again. Lindemann re-emerges wearing butchers' overalls, and pushes an enormous cooking pot to the front of the stage. Inside, it transpires, is Flake. Enraged, Lindemann roasts him with the flame-thrower, before setting upon him with a kitchen knife. When Flake finally reappears he is (inexplicably) riding a Segway scooter. It's a sight that is only topped during the final encore, when bassist Ollie Riedel does a victory lap of the arena - on a rubber dinghy, surfing over the heads of an audience that is by now delirious with excitement.

Of course, none of this would mean much if the music itself wasn't also astonishing. Taking the industrial electro-metal sound pioneered by Ministry, and suffusing it with the icy melancholy of The Cure, Rammstein's best moments carry an intense emotional charge. At times it's like a nightmare inversion of hair metal - flamboyant, OTT, theatrical - but with the widdly solos replaced by doomy synths, and the screeching high notes replaced by Lindemann's mordant baritone.

After the show, at the bar Flake looks distraught. What's it like being roasted in a cooking pot every night? "Awful," he shudders. "It's so fucking hot in there."

As we turn to leave, he's still shaking his head, muttering the same words, over and over again: "Just so... unbelievably... fucking... hot!”
Karl Stephens



© 2005 Sue Lindemann