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Kerrang!Live review of Barcelona Gig 11-11-04

Kerrang (Issue #1034) - 04 December 2004
Rammstein
Palau Olimpico
Barcelona
11.11.04
KKKKK

In the 80s, there was a thing called showmanship. If you were going to get up onstage and charge people to watch you run through your hits, you were expected to dress up, to put on a show to do something. Then grunge happened, punk and garage-rock regained their currency, and flamboyance came to be equated with phoniness. Bands assumed that standing stock-still and saying nothing was a mark of ‘authenticity’. And, with a few honourable exceptions (The Darkness, Green Day), that dubious legacy has endured to this day.

Thank fuck for Rammstein then. Those who witnessed their last UK tour in 2002 might have assumed that the riotous collision of fire, dildos and fake spunk on display could never be topped. But, amazingly, their new show is even better. More ambitious, more theatrical – and crucially, funnier – than anything they’ve attempted in the past, it’s the perfect foil to the sprawling panoramic genius of ‘Reise, Reise’.

Ranged before a vast steel door backdrop at one end of Barcelona’s Palau Olimpico (a cavernous sports hall, roughly the size of Wembley Arena), the band kick off with that album’s title-track, before launching into ‘Links 2-3-4’. But it’s not until ‘Feuer Frei’ that the chaos really begins, with guitarists Richard and Paul (who spend the whole night on their own elevating platforms) donning protective headgear and spitting flames from their guitars in perfect synchronicity. It’s only the seventh date of the tour, but clearly this is already a finely honed production.

‘Mein Teil’ sees frontman Till emerge looking like the Swedish chef from ‘The Muppets’, wheeling a huge cooking pot to the front of the stage. Inside is keyboardist Flake, who manages to escape – only to be chased by Till, who is now brandishing a huge butcher’s knife (which, handily, also doubles as a microphone). Eventually he collars Flake and stuffs him back in the cauldron, before roasting him alive with an enormous flamethrower as the opening bars of ‘Mein Teil’ blast from the speakers. The crowd practically self-combust with excitement.

Then it gets even better. ‘Amerika’ features Flake (now miraculously recovered) racing enthusiastically round the stage on a modified scooter with attached keyboard. The song climaxes with confetti being canon-blasted over the audience – an act that, for most bands, would mark the end of the gig. With Rammstein, though, it signals that they’re just getting started. From hereon it’s a breathtaking rush of audio-visual stimuli, encompassing exploding drumsticks, Till’s bizarre firework archery act, and a blistering encore of ‘Rammstein’, ‘Ich Will’, ‘Sonne’ and ‘Ohne Dich’.

There’s one weak moment. Their cover of Depeche Mode’s ‘Stripped’ is ill conceived and simply baffles much of the audience. But it hardly matters when it’s book-ended by a clutch of surprise numbers including ‘Rein Raus’ and ‘Stein um Stein’. And, as bassist Ollie crowd-surfs in a rubber dingy to the sound of deafening climatic applause, you’re left with one over-riding though: next year’s UK gigs are going to be fucking incredible.

The greatest show on earth? No question.
Dave Partridge

© 2005 Sue Lindemann