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London Evening Standard : 04-Feb-05 Brixton Review

Brixton Academy
Fireworks and music from hell
German pyromaniacs Rammstein play three nights at Brixton Academy this week, just like chart-topping bands such as Franz Ferdinand and Keane. That's almost 15,000 Londoners, yet they are far from household names, at least in any household where you or I would care to pop for tea.

Who are they, and why do so many people want to see them? Six men from east Germany who have produced four albums of bludgeoning industrial metal, who put on the kind of show that makes doyennes of the arena spectacular such as Kylie and Madonna look as if they aren't really trying.

They appeared, just after a set of smartly dressed roadies wielding metal baseball bats, atop a platform high above the stage, beneath which was a mess of pipes and screens designed to look like a criminal mastermind's lair.
Guitarists Paul Landers and Richard Kruspe-Bernstein were lowered to eye level on motorised platforms while muscular singer Till Lindemann, poured into a leather corset, intoned Reise, Reise in his doom-laden growl.
From then on, one scorching stunt followed another. Geeky keyboard player Flake Lorenz jigged around the stage with explosions emanating from his arms and legs. Lindemann shot balls of flame into the audience from robotic arm attachments and a giant crossbow. Eyebrows were most endangered when, during Feuer Frei, three band members with flame-throwers attached to their faces shot jets of fire across the stage whenever they sang.
The music, sadly, prevented this from being the gig to end all gigs. Rammstein make the sound your next-door neighbours would play at three in the morning if you lived in hell. While other bands sing about love, sunshine and balloons, this lot performed Mein Teil, about German cannibal Armin Meiwes while Lindemann, dressed as a blood-spattered chef, flambeed Lorenz in a giant cauldron.
As Stripped brought proceeding to a close with bassist Oliver Riedel sailing over the crowd in a dinghy, and capsizing twice, the eyes were dazzled once more. What a shame about the ears.
David Smyth

© 2005 Sue Lindemann