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Kerrang (Issue #1067) - 30 July 2005

Teutonic metallers set Birmingham alight

Rammstein
NEC, Birmingham
15.07.05
KKKKK

Weaving out into the balmy Brum night, the sound of ‘Stripped’ still ringing in your ears, you’re all over the place. Yeah, Rammstein were fucking incredible tonight, an inspirational transmission of pure joy and poetry and drama to a few thousand quaking souls. At the bus stop home you prise your jaw from the floor and feel somewhere between a demi-god and a mere speck in Rammstein’s universe, an extra in their swirl. And you realise, no other band can do this to you. No-one even comes close.

In fact, we’ve only seen two other bands be this damn good in the hangar-like space of the NEC and they were AC/DC and Black Sabbath. In 10 years Rammstein have achieved precisely that kind of greatness, knowing exactly how to fill out a stadium with sound and spectacle like no one else at the moment. Where US bands would try and be just a rock ‘n’ roll band and end up sounding weedy in this enormous vacuum, Rammstein have the smarts to pump every moment with pure theatre – a stunning ‘Reise,Reise’ the first to singe our eyebrows and pop our eardrums with the flames and fireworks we’re all expecting but that still seems so startlingly life-threatening and spontaneous. As Till and co set their mic stands on fire and roar into ‘Rein Raus’ you’ve got too much to take on, your mind melting at the sheer fuck-off sleaze-disco putsch of ‘Mein Teil’ and your funny-bone tickled to distraction by Flake Lorenz’ lunatic dancing and electro-convulsive clowning. Crucially, none of this flash and dazzle would work without the band’s ability to swing from epic romanticism to pulverising electro-rock in a heatbeat, the Elvis-meets-Stooges style stomp of ‘Los’ delivered raw-as-fuck and shredding your face off with a downhome brutality that’s incredible.

Every song is played perfectly to its strengths by a band the peak of their powers, a band executing their catalogue and detonating their classics with a seemingly ever-renewed purpose and belief. So by the time Till Lindemann has roasted Flake in a cannibal’s cauldron and ‘Amerika’ has showered us all in red white and blue fall-out we’re so caught up in hurricane Rammstein we never wanna leave. Hollered back by an ecstatic, hugely diverse crowd for two stunning encores (‘Rammstein’, ‘Ohne Dich’ and ‘Ich Will’ are particularly awesome) – as Till blows us a kiss and the band take their bows you feel tearful, like you’re waving goodbye to friendly dictators whose occupation of your soul is coming to an end you’d forgotten would inevitable come. Reality seems even duller, even crueller, after the wonder and magic of a Rammstein show. Put simply, they are one of the greatest live bands on earth. Like there was ever any doubt. All hail.

Neil Kulkarni

© 2005 Sue Lindemann