These German nutters have got to be Beavis's favourite band; the amount of fire (FIRE! FIRE!! FIRE!!!) that goes off during one of their shows is enough to kick-start climate change all by itself!
It's the fourth time I've seen this band now and so I had a good idea of what to expect; more fireworks than on November 5th, enough pyro to make the fire brigade extremely nervous, plenty of carefully-choreographed but spectacular stunts and some of the heaviest music around to act as the soundtrack for all the firey mayhem. I'm not familiar with the current album 'Liebe Ist Für Alle Da' (with the exception of the controversial single 'Pussy') but that hardly mattered; the new songs sat comfortably with the older ones and as my grasp of German is limited at best, it still all worked well. It's been almost five years since the band last visited the UK, but although the set contained most of the new album the basic principles of a Rammstein show remain in place: blast the audience's ears with the music and toast them with the pyro! So out came the flamethrowers for 'Feuer Frei', vocalist Till Lindeman and both guitarists (Richard Z. Kruspe and Paul Landers) donned the firebreathing masks and spat huge jets of flame high into the arena (but not TOO high!); if that wasn't enough, Lindemann brought out a petrol pump (which of course threw more flame out) for 'Benzin', they almost torched themselves during 'Sonne' with flame coming from the front AND the back of the stage, and in the encore, 'Engel' was performed with Lindemann wearing a large set of 'angel wings'; needless to say THESE shot out fire too! But the craziest part was when a bathtub was brought on stage for 'Ich Tu Dir Weh'; the bathtub was intended for keyboardist 'Flake' Lorenz who, after a staged tussle with Lindemann, was dumped in the tub while the vocalist grabbed what looked like a milk churn and began to ascend from the stage on a platform. When he was high enough, he poured the contents out - not milk, but a flaming concoction that sparked as it fell into the tub, before the tub itself exploded! We were meant to think that Flake was still in it, of course, but once Lindemann and the rest of the band left the stage, he emerged from the tub unharmed, but now resplendent in a sparkly suit! Once back at his keyboards, he played while running on a treadmill that was set up where he stood!
The show owes a large debt to Alice Cooper and his rock theatrics; when watching Alice you're often wondering what is next in his box of tricks, and the German band's show runs in the same way. It's one stunt after another and you begin to understand why they have such a massive stage setup (the stage area was much bigger than anticipated; our seats were to the side but the stage was so much further forward than we expected that we were sat at a 90 degree angle to the front of it). We could see technicians behind the stage setting up the next prop throughout the show. The Alice thing was subtly acknowledged when during the song 'Wiener Blut', there were rows of babies (dolls, I hasten to add!) suspended from the ceiling, all shooting out lasers. At the end of the song, they all exploded and fell to the floor in pieces - still shooting out lasers!
I've gone on a lot about the show and the theatrics, but the music was delivered with precision and power, despite all that was going on around them. The band are often categorised as 'industrial' among other things, but this was as Metal as it gets for me. I was impressed in particular with drummer Christoph Schneider, much of the raw heaviness of the band's material is derived from his hard-hitting beats. The two guitarists tend not to show off with lead solos all the time, they play hard but never hog the limelight - apart from when fire-breathing! During the encore, Flake Lorenz got to do his crowd-surfing routine once again with the dinghy, unveiling a Union Flag for the British crowd while out there. A nice touch, seeing as the band had us all reciting German for the best part of two hours!
All in all then another spectacular from Rammstein, let's hope it is not another five years before we see them again. They did of course do their politically-incorrect song 'Pussy'; I did fear what they might do for that song based on that video (!) but it was a straight performance, until the end. The sight of the vocalist atop a flesh-coloured cannon will live long in the memory, but I'll leave you to guess what that cannon actually did!
Combichrist were the support act; four heavily-tattooed guys with no guitarists and a neat line in 90s industrial music. They gave a short set packed with incident; their drummer kept kicking his kit onto the stage and when he wasn't doing that, the other percussionist (playing bongos and toms) was lashing his own gear off his platform! With such an approach their material was heavily beat-laden, and they did make you think of early NIN, but they did a good job warming up a crowd there for one reason only. They even did a bit of a Who tribute in trashing their gear at the end of their set! They were good but probably with a longer set their material might have worn thin, 30 minutes or so was enough for me.
Set list:
Rammlied
B********
Waidmanns Heil
Keine Lust
Weißes Fleisch
Feuer frei!
Wiener Blut
Frühling in Paris
Ich tu dir weh
Liebe ist für alle da
Benzin
Links 2-3-4
Du hast
Pussy
---
Sonne
Haifisch
Ich will
---
Engel
Wednesday 3 February 2010
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