Information
Date: January 29, 2005
Title: Shock'n'roll circus
Source: TimesOnline.co.uk
Press Article
The cheering crowd packed into the 12,000 capacity Velodrome in Berlin are clearly dazzled - and possibly deafened - as Rammstein unleash a live extravaganza that makes most "showmen" seem lacklustre. The German industrial rock sextet don't resemble everybody's idea of fun, but you have probably heard their bombastic soundtracks on films such as The Matrix, xXx and David Lynch's Lost Highway, as well as car commercials. The band's drummer, Christoph Schneider, explains that Rammstein's motto is: "Do your own thing. And overdo it!"
At the centre of this storm is their hulking vocalist (and former national swimming champ) Till Lindemann, whose onstage guises have included a Terminator-style cyborg and a human flame-thrower.
"When you are on the stage you have a different chemistry inside you. When you add fire to that, it's a good reaction," says Lindemann. However, one particular stunt - when the band joked that they couldn't extinguish the inferno - proved too effective. "The audience were so shocked they didn't know how to react. There were girls fainting two or three rows back."
Hard rock traditionally exploits theatricality - what better way to outrage authorities and wow fans? Rammstein's imagery reflects their visceral sound and contentious lyrics. As Lindemann sings almost exclusively in German, the band's dark humour doesn't always translate. Controversy, though, always crosses over. Their 2004 single Mein Teil (meaning "my tool") was based on the scandal of a German cannibal who consumed his lover. Rammstein argued that the track, with its "you are what you eat" refrain, was a love song; the Pet Shop Boys eagerly provided a remix.
"We like being on the fringes of bad taste," admits Paul Landers; he and Richard Z. Kruspe-Bernstein are Rammstein's two guitarists. "Things that we consider to be normal, other people find embarrassing, and vice versa. We're getting to the borderline of acceptability." How could they get any closer? "By having genetically modified band members, maybe with six arms so they could play even better."
"The controversy is fun, like stealing forbidden fruit," agrees the keyboard-player, Flake Lorenz. "But it serves a purpose. We like audiences to grapple with our music, and people have become more receptive."
It's certainly impossible to ignore the stage show for Mein Teil, in which Lindemann, dressed as an unsavoury chef, wheels on a giant cauldron containing Lorenz, who is "flambéed alive". Too OTT to be taken seriously, it is a shockingly funny display, though I'm sure it's terrifying to perform. "It's fine. It is only pain," Lorenz tells me, unblinking. "Although you can't breathe in because then you will inhale the flames and die." So, does he mind posing as Rammstein's gimp? "Not at all. I don't have much music to play, so I'm open to abuse."
Of their contemporaries, Rammstein draw the clearest parallels with the American rocker Marilyn Manson, whose burlesque concerts have resulted in obscenity charges. In 1999 Lindemann and Lorenz were arrested for "lewd and lascivious behaviour" after a show in Massachusetts during which they spiced up the track Bück Dich ("Bend Over") with their most notorious prop - an ejaculating dildo.
Live, Manson has flirted with fascist imagery, but Rammstein's nationality apparently draws nastier accusations - including the delusion that their logo resembles a swastika. Essentially, their most political songs are Links 234 (the marching rhythm of which represents a heartbeat "on the left") and the sardonic Amerika (which rhymes "wunderbar" with "Wonderbra"). Still, I think - watching them strut onstage in black lederhosen (Lorenz wears his with suspenders) - they are not anxious to justify themselves.
The show's audience is genuinely multigenerational, and tonight includes some of Rammstein's offspring. "For children, there's nothing more exciting than a gruesome fairytale," says Lorenz. It is probably just as well that they don't reprise Bück Dich, but the band's attention to detail is phenomenal. Their roadies are modelled identically on Michael Douglas's psychotic businessman in the film Falling Down, while their lighting designer is inspired by "Fritz Lang and Bauhaus art". This tour will cost "in excess of £5 million", a reassuringly expensive contrast to their first shows in 1993, when they simply poured petrol around the stage and set it alight.
Despite having seen Rammstein live before, this concert is an exhilarating, immaculately choreographed torrent of surprises, in which every number is presented like a grand finale. Some of the explosions are so fierce that I scream involuntarily (the show reaches 130 decibels). Thunderbolts and tickertape shoot towards us, and the band make increasingly intrepid moves, especially when the bassist, Oliver Riedel, launches himself on to the audience in a rubber dinghy and sails the thrashing sea of hands right around the massive auditorium. When the music finally subsides, the atmosphere still crackles with audacity and adrenalin. That's entertainment.