Rammstein

Download Festival

June 16, 2013

After decades spent witnessing hundreds of world-class rock shows, Rammstein’s headline set at Download 2013 should have been just another minor distraction to my jaded, over-saturated senses. But the Teutonic totalitarian porn-metal overlords delivered a fire-breathing, blood-splattered, spunk-spurting carnival of bondage and buggery that took stadium-punk spectacle to a whole new level. Their stage set, a hellish pageant of flamethrowers, fireworks and erotic torture instruments, looked like Mad Max re-imagined by Hieronymus Bosch. Simultaneously mocking and celebrating centuries of lederhosen-clad German Romanticism, Rammstein left Download in no doubt that Wagner invented heavy metal. In fact he liked it so much he put a Ring on it.

The band’s brawny, Herman Munster-lookalike singer Till Lindemann certainly imbued gloomy power ballads like Sehnsucht and Ohne Dich with Wagnerian high seriousness. Even so, a deep seam of cheerfully grotesque ironic humour ran through this performance, especially the scenes of simulated sodomy between Lindemann and wimpy keyboard player Christian ‘Flake’ Lorenz.

As the show climaxed, Lindemann straddled a giant penis cannon that blasted a jizzard of white foam into the crowd. Subtlety is not Rammstein’s forte. But by gleefully highlighting heavy rock’s latent homofascistic sub-text, this jaw-dropping, eye-opening, arse-widening show was both audaciously bold and hugely enjoyable. After a vigorous BDSM ear-shafting from these burly Berliners, everything else feels disappointingly vanilla.