Men on fire

German metal band a surprise sell-out at MSG

Turns out the formula for selling out Madison Square Garden is pretty simple, and it has nothing to do with the Black Eyed Peas or Taylor Swift. All you need is a half-dozen Germans with mohawks who shriek about sex and fascism while on fire.

Announce that bill, and all the tickets will be gone in 30 minutes.

Which is exactly what happened with Saturday night’s Garden headliner Rammstein, the venerable German metal band that hasn’t played a show in the US for nearly a decade.

Best known for blunt and brutal late-’90s hits such as “Du Hast” and “Links 2 3 4,” Rammstein surprised many in the concert business with its instant sell-out.

“It’s really incredible. The question is, ‘Why now?’” says Adam Friedman, a metal fan who is CEO of LA’s Nederlander concerts. “You start to think: ‘Who else is out there that’s hard, that’s big, that can really sell tickets?’”

Apparently, demand has been pent up. Rammstein tours continuously in Europe and elsewhere, but hasn’t performed in America since its 2001 slot on the Pledge of Allegiance tour with Slipknot and System of a Down.

The band’s fondness for performing with flame-throwers, onstage explosions and samples of marching jackboots doesn’t come cheap.

But bringing the elaborate stage show, which centers on singer Till Lindemann’s apocalyptic antics, to the Garden was a long-held Rammstein dream.

“At the moment, it looks like America is the only market where we cannot provide the same show as we play in the rest of the world. So we have to be balanced — like, what makes financial sense?” Richard Kruspe, the band’s lead guitarist, has said. “One of my dreams is Madison Square Garden — just to play one show and to feel out, like, if there is a need for us, are people waiting for us, what can we do, what would be the next step?”

(The Post requested a Rammstein interview, but declined to sign the band’s unusual media contract, which stipulates where and when the story can be published, and requires would-be writers to subject themselves “to the laws of Germany,” in which “the place of jurisdiction is Berlin.”)

Rammstein has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide, but not without controversy. The band’s provocative lyrics, almost all in German, have brought protests from anti-

discrimination groups for flirting with fascism in song titles such as “Reise Reise,” which can be translated to “Arise! Arise!” Not to mention the group’s habit of showing the occasional Leni Riefenstahl (Hitler’s favorite filmmaker) clip in concert. But the band, and its fans, insist Lindemann’s tongue-in-cheek delivery is more satirical than intimidating.

“A lot of their songs are misunderstood,” says Marek Stacho, a Czech banker who runs the Rammstein fan page Affenknecht.com. “But I think, honestly, they don’t care.”