Rammstein

support Exilia
author MS date 20/11/04 venue Forum, Copenhagen, DEN

Saturday night, I just got off work, and I was going to a concert that would prove to be very enjoyable. Rammstein was playing in Forum, Copenhagen. The concert was sold out in 2 days or so, which meant about 10.000 people were going to be inside the hall with the german mastodons of rock. I had very high expectations to this show, and they were all met, plus some.

Exilia

The warmup band appeared to be a german band named "Exilia", according to the banner hanging on the stage curtain. I had not heard of them, and didn't really know what to expect. After we had handed our coats in at the wardrobe, and bought our obligatory Rammstein t-shirts, we positioned ourself in the right side of the hall. The crowd was already very packed, and it was next to impossible to get as far ahead as I would had liked to.

The clock struck 8, the lights were turned off, and a very loud and impaling bass errupted from the speakers. Exilia entered the stage, and the lead singer turned out to be a woman! Her hair was blonde, dreadlocked and very long, and when the band started playing a very heavy metal song, she swung it about in all directions. Very cool. She started screaming her lungs out like a female version of Anders Friden or Alexi Laiho, something I had never heard before, and I found it to my liking. The music was nu-metal'ish, with downtuned heavy guitar riffs followed by very high-pitched guitar riffs. Nothing not seen before, but not bad either. The crowd seemed to like them as well, since there was a lot of bouncing, and the mandatory devil horns. It was kinda hard to make out the titles of the songs, since the the singer screamed them out, when announcing them. The ones I did make out were "Stop Playing God" "Underdog" and "Starseed". All in all not a bad performance.

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Rammstein

Exilia played for about half an hour, and about 9:10 pm, The lights once again were turned off, and some guys dressed up as guards entered the stage. The first tones of the titlesong of Rammsteins new album "Reise, Reise" were heard in the great hall. The crowd went nuts. The stage was built like some kind of metallic fortress, with the Rammstein "+" written all over. The two guitarplayers, the bassist and the keyboardist appeared on top of the fortress, two on each side of the drummer who was located in the middle, on top of the huge construction. They played an enlongened intro of the song, so Till Lindemann could make his proper entrance. And what an entrance. On the floor of the stage, a big round door opened, and smoke errupted. Out came Till Lindemann, and started singing. The crowd went even more nuts. Till Lindemann is encredible. His voice sounded exactly like on the albums. All from very deep and brutal, to higher and more gentle. If I didn't know better, I would have though it was playback. When he errupted into the chorus: "Reise, Reise, Seemann Reise...", you could nothing but scream along. It was awesome. The other band members joined him on the floor via elevators built into the stage.

The next song ended, and the marching troops of "Links 2 3 4" errupted from the speakers, the 2nd track off of their third album "Mutter". The song is a lot more fast paced than "Reise, Reise", which resulted in bouncing and jumping from most of the people in my view. I swear to God, the floor was shaking by inches! It was crazy!

If my memory serves me right, the 3rd song was "Mein Teil", which was the first single off of "Reise, Reise". The song is about the german cannibal, who found his victim on the internet, and eventually made him eat his own penis. The german government had trouble judging him, since there was no law against cannibalism in Germany. Anyway, the highlight of the song was during the bridge with the screaming. Lindemann exited the stage, and entered again wearing an apron, and carrying a giant knife and fork (the cover of the "Mein Teil" single is knife and fork). A man who I believed to be Christian Lorenz, the keyboardist, crawled into a giant pot standing on the stage, where after Till literraly flamb?ed him with a flamethrower. When he was "done", Lorenz crawled out of the pot, and ran about on the stage as fireworks attached to his suit went off. Very comic and well carried out. "Denn du bist, was du isst!" -or "you are what you eat".

Im not sure about the order of the rest of the concert, but the stageshow never got duller. During "Feuer Frei!", the classic Rammstein-flamethrower masks were brought on, just as seen in the hollywood actionfilm "Triple-X" staring Vin Diesel (Crappymovie). I think it was the two guitarists and the bassist wearing them, spraying flames from each side of the stage, and from the middle, into the air, and it wasn't small flames coming out of these masks. They were at least 5 meters high, and you could feel the heat.

Other highlights of the stageshow included Till Lindemann entering the stage with some sort of device attached to him, which turned out to be a dual flamethrower! One on each arm, and during one song he entered the stage with another device, which he pointed into the air. Suddenly rockets were fired from it, which flew out over the crowd, to the middle of the hall, where they exploded.

"Amerika" was the last song played before the encore. It's the second single off of "Reise, Reise", and it is a severe mocking of the US. The chorus, which by the way is the only english lyrics Rammstein have ever written: "We're all living in Amerika, Amerika ist Wunderbar" followed by the words "this is not a love song", should hardly leave anyone in doubt of what the song is about. At the end of the song, a huge mass of confetti, colored in red white and blue was fired into the air. Almost half of the hall was filled with it, while the song faded out. It was very atmospheric.

As the first encore, they played their title song "Rammstein", from the first album "Herzeleid", which was very cool. Then I believe they played "Sonne" and "Ich Will", and in the second encore, they played "Ohne Dich", and finished with a song I had not heard before. I think it was a cover or something. Anyway during this song, the bassist crawled into a huge rubber raft, and he actually sailed out over the crowd. He sailed almost out to the middle of the hall, before he made some kind of jumping motion in order to get back to the stage. As the show ended, a quiet version of

"Engel" was played over the speakers. A song which I really had hoped they had played. That and "Mutter" was really the only two songs I missed.

All in all a more than awesome concert, which scored top grade in my book. Thank you Rammstein! Till Lindemann is a fucking genious.

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Setlist: (not accurate)

  • Reise, Reise
  • Links 2 3 4
  • Mein Teil
  • Feuer Frei!
  • Keine Lust
  • Los
  • Morgenstern
  • Stein um Stein
  • Moskou
  • Du Riechst so Gut
  • Du Hast
  • Sehnsucht
  • Amerika
  • Rammstein
  • Ich Will
  • Sonne
  • Ohne Dich
  • Some cover
  • Engel

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