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Metal Hammer - Rammstein's First UK Show

Rammstein – London Powerhaus ‘97
By Mark Chapman
Metal Hammer - June 2002
Rammstein’s first UK Show
If you’ve seen Rammstein lately you will be familiar with their incredible pyrotechnic live extravaganzas, where they set off more explosives that your average tinpot dictatorship gets through in a decade.
What you may not know is that Rammstein’s first live show in the UK was in one London’s smallest venues, the Finsbury Park Powerhaus, a venue with a postage stamp-sized stage and a capacity of a few hundred. This was at a time when they were already huge in Germany, but how the band felt about going straight from open-air festivals with tens of thousands of obsessive teutons to a tiny gig in front of the couple of hundred people who’d heard their stuff on Reznor’s ‘Lost Highway’ soundtrack (about the only release they’d had in the UK), has never been recorded.
Some may remember Rammstein were scheduled to appear at the London Astoria, but on the night flatly refused to perform without their full firework show, resulting in a near riot of disgruntled fans on Charing Cross Road when the gig was pulled. Well, for their first London show, they were no less stubborn, insisting on using as much of their pyro as they could without turning a large portion of salubrious Finsbury Park into a smouldering crater (an improvement some might say). The organisers presumably weren’t reassured much when Rammstein’s pyrotechnician was carted off in an ambulance after blowing himself up Wile E. Coyote style, but the band took it in their stride.
What ensued was possibly one of the most mental live shows any of the assembled throng has ever experienced right from the opening number, where Till sang his way through the entire of ‘Rammstein’ in his now legendary flaming metal overcoat and goggles (it’s what they’re all wearing in Paris this year, dahlink, don’tcha know).
Things only got stranger as the band squeezed every prop they could during their set. Stuff that looks pretty cool at an arena show took on a whole new air of crazed genius in that North London shoebox, from Till’s ‘Gush’-like spurting dildo and sodomy while singing ‘Bück Dich’ to Flake crowd-surfing in a dinghy throughout ‘Seeman’. And that’s not to forget a bunch of fireworks that made the Kiss live show look like big kids playing with sparklers, and a flame lance that could have easily turned the first three rows into London’s crispiest Goths.
Needless to say, the music was Rammstein at their thundering best, with tracks like ‘Du Riechst So Gut’ and ‘Du Hast’ given an added dimension by the entire crowd being within spitting distance of the band.
Rammstein’s first London show was an example of a stadium-filling global act being willing and able to transfer their monstrous live show into a tiny club venue, and as such deserves to go down in legend with gigs such as Metallica ay Ministry of Sound. If you were there you witnessed something truly unique, as now Rammstein are big enough over here to play the London Arena you’re never likely to see the like of this show again.
Mark Chapman.

© 2005 Sue Lindemann