EDMONTON - You can make up your own compound words when you’re German. Isn’t that cool?
So in honour of Friday night’s sold-out Rammstein show at Rexall Place, we’d like to coin the word Schwerfelsenkarneval, or “heavy rock carnival” — because this show is totally going to Vegas in 10 years or so. Mark my words.
It had everything: Tragedy, comedy, sex, death, Weltschmerz, Schadenfreude, you name it. It was all rendered over deep, throbbing, jackboot beats so loud they made your scalp vibrate like Jello in an earthquake.
Meanwhile, you could feel the searing heat from frequent columns of flame that erupted from a stage that looked like a bomb factory in some bleak future that might have been imagined if the Germans had won the war. No offence, Germans. It looked like a complete disaster — which means a “good gig” from Rammstein. This entire show was a Wagnerian heavy metal opera of Sturm und Drang on steroids — and lots of things getting blown up. You can’t ask for much more from a heavy metal show.
Rammstein is an unlikely band to be so popular. They sing almost everything in German, they don’t get played much on the radio, and yet anywhere in the world that heavy metal fans congregate.
More than 13,000 local fans chanted the words to such Rammstein favourites as Du Hast (either “You Have” or “You Hate” in a German play on words) or Pussy, perhaps the band’s most popular song, whose lyrics will go unquoted.
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At the end came phallic symbolism as singer Till Lindemann spewed the audience with goo from a giant foam cannon. It’s the little things that count.
Also fun was watching keyboardist Christian Lorenz —dressed in a sparkly suit and walking in time to the music on a treadmill the entire show — when he boarded a rubber raft and crowd surfed like no one has ever crowd surfed before. Did I mention the fire? There was a lot of fire. At one point, three of the band members breathed fire at the same time.
There were floating foetuses shooting lasers before they, too, exploded. Some fan appeared to barge on stage — so they set him on fire. Good thing he was wearing an asbestos jacket.
These guys are clearly aware how close to Spinal Tap absurdity some of this schtick can be, and maybe that’s why it works so well. This is some serious metal mojo made by musicians who don’t take themselves too seriously.
And as much fun as Lindemann was having with all his flaming toys, when it comes to headbanging, he is the real deal. You get pumped up just watching him get pumped up. The man loves his work.
In short, Rammstein has managed to put on one of the most theatrical heavy metal shows ever witnessed, at least in this building. If it was over the top, it was just over the top enough. Stand aside, Cirque du Soleil. This is the Schwererfelsenkarneval!
From the land of the Goths to the home of the Vikings, Norway’s Combichrist was a worthy warmup to the main event.
They looked scary enough. Like the headliner, they pumped out a deafening wall of pulsing, pounding, throbbing electronic beats powered by two drummers, a synth player and some suitably sinister sequencer tracks.
And like the headliner, they performed songs that — as far as could be determined — dwelt on the dark side of life. “Follow the trail, the trail of blood,” urged the screaming, masked lead singer Andy LaPlegua early on.
To where? It wasn’t clear. Other songs included Get Your Body Beat and Sent to Destroy, which made it a bit clearer.
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