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High Kampf! – NME Brixton review

NME – December 2001

Landing in the heart of Rammstein occupied territory alone and uninitiated is not for the fainthearted. Waves of testosterone flood Shining-style down the central staircases of the Academy courtesy of vast legions of bull-necked devotees. Wagnerian synths drone from the PA, barely discernible behind an imported lighting rig Ozzy would drool over.

The lights dim. Keyboard gimp Flake Lorenz scuttles onstage and starts bashing out the squalling Casio riff to 'Sonne'. As he does so, one of five industrial turbines suspended high above the stage starts to descend amid a screech of hydraulics. On it stands enigmatic leader of the Rammstein-nation, Till Lindemann. Like a modern day John Lydon after six months on the WWF circuit, he prowls around stage with a deliberate sexual menace, growling indecipherably in German. Fully convinced of his followers' supplication to the six-strong band's tech-metal onslaught, he then burns his hand off.

The crowd, primal to start with, go ape. Pyrotechnics abound. Twenty-foot flame-throwers shoot across the auditorium; lightning bolts appear to regularly hit the stage. At one point Till, having led the hapless Flake onto a vaulting horse by a lead, strips off his victim's shorts and simulates sodomy with (one hopes) an imitation phallus. He then sprays the first ton rows with top grade Rarnmstein-spunk and then drinks a little for himself. It kind of makes you glad you didn't bring Mum along.

For all its brutalist trappings, Rammstein avoid the worst horrors of nu-metal courtesy of symphonic Euro-strings and a yearning undercurrent. Till could be singing the names of detergents for all we know, but you can't help being moved by it. Even if he is covered head-to-toe in flames and wearing red night-vision goggles. And at their peak, as on an epic 'Du Hast' and a final rip through Depeche Mode's 'Stripped' Rammstein even manage to share the sense-shredding pervy noir the Prodigy with the showmanship of Archaos. If they weren't already, they'd be massive.
Jazon Fox

Listen with Mutter – Kerrang! Brixton review

Listen with Mutter – By Catherine Yates
Rammstein: the Teutonic sextet make up for lost time
Kerrang! – December 2001
Brixton Academy, London
Sunday December 2
KKKKK

Rammstein drummer Christoph Schneider expressed his concern in a recent feature that the pyro bombast's that have made their shows such legendary landmarks might be overshadowing the more subtle elements at work in the band. He has a point - Rammstein are more than a bunch of twisted firestarters and they certainly couldn't have sustained a successful eight-year career if there weren't other factors involved.

Except that the moment singer Till Lindemann makes his stage entrance from the ceiling kitted out as a mohawked hunchback, it's a case of bollocks to subtlety. Who cares about hidden meanings when there's a big German in front of you, soaking the audience with several gallons of synthetic ejaculate from a pump-action dildo? Because some of the most obvious things about Rammstein are some of the best things about them. And surely the most obvious one is that they know how to entertain. You don't just pull off the greatest show on Earth this year with a few carefully chosen examples of understatement. Even if your basic musical blueprint is a potent-enough-by-itself unison of steroid-guzzling Metallica riffs welded to a battering ram beat dynamic and lyrical deviance. Oh no. You blow things up, lots of times and lots of different ways, you have UFOs as your lighting rig, you are generally ridiculously theatrical (crowd-surfing by dingy anyone?) and you do things with fire. Red fire, green fire, flames to the left of 'em, flames to the right of 'em, flames - ferrchissakes! - shooting 20 feet out the top of their heads; this is the full incinerating monty and no mistake.

If only more bands would make the effort to produce shows that looked and sounded as staggering as this. Rammstein might have blown out their last gig here, but they are making up for it in style. The band look fantastic - no matter how many layers of costume are shed from their sweating torsos, they still all manage to look (and move) like a gang of action men gone fetish (even guitarist Paul Landers whose cyber-monk barnet is surely the most frightening haircut in rock). The stage looks fantastic – particularly the scary flying saucer lighting rig that doubles-up as a scary spinning, sparking thing. The set is fantastic - all the best material from their back catalogue, pounded out and seamlessly rendered. There are enough ideas here to fuel several musical careers and everything is executed with a merciless precision and style that just wouldn't have worked had its perpetrators come from Basildon instead of Berlin.

On top of that comes a crowd that gives as good - perhaps even better - than it gets. From the moment the burlesque waltz of 'Mein Herz Brent' opens proceedings, right through to the impossibly fab triple encore of 'Rammstein', 'Sonne'and 'Ich Will', four thousand people go into mosh meltdown shouting out the words to song after song, none of which are in their language, yet all of which they know. It's an incredible spectacle from beginning to end. But if after all that you still want some subtlety - try this. Rammstein are a fascinating celebration of originality and capitalising on difference. No-one looks like them, no-one sounds like them. Everyone should try learning from them.

© 2005 Sue Lindemann