Terrific start of Rammstein’s Europe Tour in the Veltins-Arena in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. How is it, experienced for the first Time a Rammstein concert? DW-music editor, Rick Fulker tells the story of his baptism of fire.
I am since decades a presenter and producer of a radio broadcast of Deutsche Welle’s classical music. So I have dealt with the concept of “culture export from Germany”. Beethoven and Bach are important protagonists. The Band Rammstein, but it is considered Germany’s most successful cultural export. Until the beginning of 2018, 20 million records, the Band went over the counter.
What is it with the Band? Reason enough to make the pilgrimage to one of their concerts. But not just any concert: It was the beginning of their European stadium tour the Veltins-Arena on September 27. May.
Strikingly a lot of black in the audience
Ten days before the new Album appeared with the title “Rammstein” and was sold within a week 260.000 Times in Germany: It was the most successful Start of the Millennium. Already weeks before the Show was hyped to be.
What you expect at a Rammstein concert? Spectacle, scandal, Ulk, fire and, above all, the noise: So much was already known. A Pre-note I when to Pick up the press card: ear plugs you were settled received.
Black people and taboo
Before the concert, I noticed that on this cool, cloudy evening almost all of the visitors were black-clothed. A woman wearing a bloodstained Baby doll on the back. It hit me a little queasy. Rammstein are known for their taboo-breaking: necrophilia, cannibalism, and incest are themes that occur in their Songs. Also want to break the Fans every taboo?
Rick Fulker is happy with a serious expression on the Show
Quite as terrible as it was seen in the Arena, with its 62.000 places, at least from the top, where the representatives of the press were accommodated. After a short recording of Georg Friedrich Handel’s “fireworks music” went on in the pre-proportionate manner, with the Duo Jatekok from France: The classical pianists of Adélaïde Panaget & Naïri Badal played tracks from the Album “Rammstein – XXI – piano”. When repeated many times the amplification of the piano took the sound of the booming, menacing effect of a typical Rammstein song. At the same time, the Duo showed how beautiful the often melancholic melodies of the Band.
Then the beginning of
The Show began – and ended – with a Bang
Here they are: front man Till Lindemann in a silver Outfit, the keyboardist, Christian Lorenz in glittering Gold, drummer Christoph Schneider naked to the waist, the guitarist Paul Landers, Oliver Riedel and Richard Kruspe. “What I love”, a song from the new Album, sounds.
“Sound” is an inadequate term. Everything produced by the Band, the marrow of the leg penetrates. My classically trained ears are not particularly sensitive, I have a set but the earbuds to listen to, whether it makes a difference. No. Table and chair with vibrate, but also my body: I take even my internal organs, they also vibrate to the Beat.
The table on which the press sits, vibrates with, and everything else
To fog, spotlights, and always fire back on the stage and scattered in the Arena: pillars of fire, the spray perfectly to the rhythm of high, designed so precise that they look like beautiful sculptures that are gone in less than a second again.
Sing to, or Till Lindemann speaks perfectly understandable lyrics, it’s No wonder that Rammstein abroad are also important intermediaries in the German language.
Disgust and a sense of Humor
New and old Songs will be played. “Germany,” in the video version of 2000 years of German (war)depicts the history of consuming, will be staged here on the darkened stage, rather simple: The band members wear illuminated costumes that make you like stick figure will appear. In the Song “doll”, where it is said: “Then tear’ I the doll’s head off”, shoots Lindemann with a fire thrower on a giant stroller and put him in flames.
Stroller in flame
In “My part”, where it says: “you are what You eat”, sits Christian Lorenz in a soup pot and cooked it, literally. The song “diamond will be sung” without any light, blast, fire, or other effects. “Without you” lights, tens of thousands of lighters in the Arena: they have been given to each visitor at the entrance.
Eventually, the band members bow in front of the audience. But that cannot be the end! It is not also. After a few minutes, the six Rammstein’s appear along with the Duo Jatekok elevated platform in the middle of the Arena and play together, “angel”, this beautiful, sad song – it was the first commercial Hit for the Band in 1997. Then the musicians rise individually in inflatable boats, one for each, and be transported from the audience to hands back to the stage.
The additions make up a significant part of the Show, before Lindemann shoots with a cannon bubbles on the audience and the band members ride in an Elevator to the top. Then another Bang. After two and a half hours, the Show is over, clearly.
Rammstein and Jatekok seem to float in the Arena, as “angel”
The Show must be
Rammstein’s works, though stylistically not very different, contain bezirzende melodies and harmonies that go to the heart. I have always said: These guys could just be from the culture came, which brought Bach, Beethoven and Mozart show. Often their works have epic size.
The topics you put in, the life, the way it is, even if the Dark and Disturbing, much more clearly than other Bands of the so-called “New German hardness” comes to the fore. Rammstein always has fierce critics. Nevertheless, I think it’s the Band not the taboo as such. The boys are playing with clichés, in front of the audience, are sometimes misunderstood, stimulate debates and favor or displeasure on different levels. Art stop.
Big stage – big Show
You may, like me, find the music, the access to Rammstein. But in order to understand the phenomenon, you have to do in the Show. However, at the time of the next tour, because of this, the to 22. August continues, is largely sold out. There are still tickets for the concerts in the UK, Milton Keynes, Riga, St. Petersburg and two concerts in Vienna.