Win RAMMSTEIN's Entire Discography

What better way to celebrate the final night of Hanukkah than by giving away a great collection from a German metal band. All joking aside, Rammstein are playing their first US show in years this Saturday at Madison Square Garden. It sold out in moments! To celebrate, the band has given us a killer prize pack: their entire discography, which includes the studio albums Herzeleid, Sehnsucht, Mutter, Reise Reise, Rosenrot & Liebe ist für alle da as well as the live album Live Aus Berlin and the Volkerball DVD. How killer is this giveaway? Pretty fucking killer!

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Concert Review: Rammstein at the Bell Centre, December 9, 2010

 

 

For a gallery of images from the concert, click here. 
Berlin's Rammstein is an imposing band in both size and sound. On their albums, the bulky sextet play a dense, massive brand of electronica-influenced industrial rock, evoking a cluster bomb demolishing a synthesizer. And their stage show is notorious for its excess, full of pyrotechnics and heavy machinery, like a factory that makes steampunk robots out of German Expressionism and oversized rivets.
Last night's concert at the Bell Centre—the only Canadian date on their current tour—was no exception. Before a packed house of almost 14 000, the band took to the stage in black leather, muscles bulging and faces glowering with the menace of a chthonic Mr. Universe pageant. It was high drama from the outset: Shakespeare in Vulcan's forge as the six-piece band launched into Rammlied, from newest album Liebe ist für alle da.
Formed in 1994, Rammstein made an impact early in their career, with two songs from their 1995 debut Herzeleid being featured on the soundtrack to David Lynch's Lost Highway. Their techno samples, synth flourishes, groove-heavy guitars and martial rhythms helped define a new brand of German industrial music known as Neue Deutsche Härte, a rock/electronica crossover best described as Laibach entombed in one of Pantera's amplifiers. And vocalist Till Lindemann's distinctive voice—deep, stern and dramatic, like getting a lecture from an ogre—gave the band an instantly recognizable sound.
The band's second album, 1997's Sehnsucht, spawned the international hit Du Hast, and the band has gone on to sell millions of records worldwide, despite singing primarily in German. And a host of controversies, from being sued by a German cannibal for making him the subject of a song to spending a night in an American jail after simulating sex acts on stage, have kept them in the public eye.
For the most part, last night's show wasn't particularly explicit, at least until the foam-spewing phallus/cannon showed up at the end for recent single P***y. But it was certainly theatrical, from the first pyro blasts to the gas masks hacked to spew fire during the driving Feuer Frei!, from 2001's Mutter. And during the catchy, hook-laden Benzin, taken from 2005's Rosenrot, a would-be crowd surfer was set ablaze with a gas pump-turned-flamethrower in what was either a staged set-piece or a war crime. When something wasn't burning, wiry keyboardist Christian Lorenz took the spotlight with bizarre, spastic dance solos, as if channelling both an interpretive dance piece and an electrocution. All in all, it was an astonishing show.
And then, of course, there was the actual music. While Rammstein's obsession with technology can cause them to sound overly-processed on disc, their live performance has just enough of a ragged edge to bring the material to life. The powerful B******** featured gunshot snare strikes from drummer Christoph Schneider and a particularly harsh vocal from Lindemann, who sucked in deep growls like an asthmatic dragon. Du Riechst So Gut had a solid guitar chug—courtesy of Richard Kruspe and Paul Landers—beneath a blaring techno beat, while Engel had an insistent, catchy bassline from Oliver Riedel.
The elaborate show did occasionally verge on the ridiculous, like the array of /hanged baby dolls that exploded mid-set, or Lorenz riding a lifeboat over the crowd while dressed as an undead disco ball. And unless you like the idea of a lullaby sung in the voice of bellowing Titan, the booming Frühling in Paris may have sounded a touch silly. But excess was clearly the battle plan for Rammstein, and the war was won long before the enormous pink artillery arrived.
The show was opened by Norway's Combichrist. Dressed like Cenobite DJs, the group delivered a fierce set of aggrotech, a violent form of electronica that sounds like a computer after downoading too many 80s hardcore albums.

Alles Gute Paul

Behind the Scenes: Rammstein Live

Rammstein's Till Lindemann 

It's been 13 years since Rammstein scared the shit out of American music fans with the release of the guttural, chest-pounding anthem "Du Hast," and almost a decade since they brought their explosive brand of industrial metal to U.S. concert halls. That all changes this weekend when the German crew returns to the States on Saturday for a one-night-only gig at New York's Madison Square Garden which promises to be one of the most explosive at the storied venue in years, complete with pyrotechnics, flame-throwers and bone-rattling, tinnitus-inducing art metal.

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Anticipation for the show is hot: when tickets went on-sale in October, they were snatched up within 30 minutes and now scalpers are offering the cheapest nose-bleeds at a whopping $120 a pop. "I had an idea that it was going to be a fast sellout, but I didn't expect it to be that fast," Rammstein guitarist Paul Landers (via translator) tells SPIN. "For us in Europe, [Madison Square Garden] is somewhere everyone knows immediately, and it's pretty renowned here."
So what took so long for the band to return to the U.S.? For starters, Rammstein undervalued the demand among American audiences and the band's over-the-top stage production is prohibitive cost-wise. But at a recent show in Quebec, the band noticed a large American contingent had made the trek across the border. "We started to realize that there probably is more interest in the States than we thought, so it was time to take a risk and play a show in the States," says Landers.
While Rammstein's show is a one-off in America, the band is bringing their complete stage production. And their rig — transported in 15 semi-trailers — is staggering: 80 spark-producing devices, 10 mortars, 40 cannon bursts, 10 grid rockets, and 60 kilograms of fireball-producing powder. Fans in the front row should come prepped with flame-retardant clothing, as the band members' guitars and drumsticks are liable to spew sparks and flames at any time. But the show's real show stopper? An enormous, foam-shooting penis, which gets straddled by frontman Till Lindemann near the end of the 2009 track "Pussy."
As for the setlist, Rammstein will focus on their entire catalogue — not just their 1997 album Sehnsucht, the group's most successful album in the States. "That would sound like a reasonable idea on paper, to have more songs from the Sehnsucht record, but all of our fans that saw it back then, they've already seen it, so they're all looking forward to new stuff from us," says Landers. "We leave it to our instincts, and with the shows that have been working here in Europe, that's our gut feeling of what we think is going to be a good show."
If the MSG show goes off as planned, Rammstein will consider returning for a Best Of-style tour, featuring songs like the infamous "Buck Dich" (translation: "Bend Over"), the live version of which featured Lindemann simulating sodomy on keyboardist Christian "Flake" Lorenz with a rubber dildo. That stunt earned Lindemann and Flake a night in a Worcester, Massachusetts, jail in 1999 for indecency charges although Landers wasn't too bummed about it. In fact, he says that run-in with the law oddly made the band feel right at home.
"It was sort of interesting for us, to see that there could be parallels from communist East Germany, where we grew up, and the United States," says Landers. "We're used to all that sort of stuff, with the police getting involved. But Flake and Till weren't amused when they were sitting in the jail cell with a bloody guy next to them and realized that this is what it had come to."

Interview with Richard Kruspe of Rammstein: Giving It To America

One week before Rammstein were heading to Chile to kick off a tour of six South American cities and one U.S. date at Madison Square Garden, guitarist Richard Kruspe called me from his hotel room in New York City.
I was pretty excited to speak to him, since I haven’t heard much from Rammstein in many years, except for their album releases. But what makes me feel that way is because I only saw them once, about 10 years ago on the Family Values Tour, and to this date, I remember their performance like it was yesterday.
I especially remember the part of the show where the keyboardist was posed doggie style on stage and singer Till Lindemann enacted as though he was “giving it” to the him from behind, with a long hose that came out of his pants and shot, what looks like something liquid, into the keyboardists’ backside.  That’s a memory I don’t think will be leaving me… ever! There was also their eccentric pyrotechnics and a heavy-ass set of songs.
This time around, Rammstein decided to only play a small handful of dates, but something tells me they’ll be back for more soon enough. Tickets sold out in less than thirty minutes for their performance at the World’s Most Famous Arena. This will be the only U.S. show by the Berlin-based six-piece band, who has not performed in America since 2001. The band’s most recent album, Liebe Ist Für Alle da (“Love is there for all”), was released in November 2009 and hit number one on charts across Europe, and entered on the Billboard Charts at number 13—the highest chart entry for Rammstein in the United States ever—and boosted their worldwide catalog to over 16 million albums sold. Rammstein’s live show requires about twenty 18-wheelers, packed with pyrotechnics, flame-throwers, bazookas and enough armaments to level a small country.
Here’s what Richard had to say….
First and foremost, I think what’s on everyone’s mind is, why did it take so long for you to return to the states?
Out of so many things why, we did like a two-year break after our Reise, Reise.  When we toured the last time, we just [needed] a break. The band needed the time off.  After two years, I was doing my solo project, then I took another two years to do the record, and for some reason, as you get older, touring isn’t a high priority anymore.
A few years ago I suggested that we should do something big. Right now, people can see what we do in Europe, and we play such bigger places in Europe than the rest of the world. And at the time we thought that it’s a shame we can’t bring the whole show to America. We chose to play the Garden, the agent wasn’t sure if we could sell it.  Then, we asked them again about a year ago, and we decided to give it a go.
Well, we sold out in 20 or 25 minutes, and I was shocked.  It was such good news. I was actually jumping up and down in my apartment when we found out. We didn’t know what to expect. But, the reason it took so long is because making the record took long and the European tour, it all took a lot of time.  We became much bigger in the rest of the world than in America and it was hard to bring our entire show with the stage and pyrotechnic with us, it’s a whole visual thing. Since we were bigger everywhere else but in America, we just didn’t think America would make sense to go to. We knew we had a lot of fans here, we just couldn’t figure out how to bring a big show to the states. We couldn’t play small clubs.
Of all of the cities, why did you pick New York City?
The Garden has history and it was a dream that I had—and the rest of the band—to play their once. As a musician, you just want to play the Garden, I don’t know what it is, but you just want to play there.
On that note, why only those few cities in South America?
Some countries have capacities to do our show and some don’t. We haven’t really played a full show ourselves in South America. We opened for Kiss once in South America. We played one time in Mexico and I’ve never seen anything like that. To see thousands of Mexican people singing in German is so amazing, I was like, “Wow!”
There’s always been lots of controversy surrounding the band, how has it been since the new album came out?
When we had the first video with the “Pussy” song, well, I think you’re talking to the wrong person. When people find controversy, to me, I think it’s funny. The video of “Pussy” is something I found funny. I showed the video to my kids and they were laughing too. I can’t really understand where [critics] are coming from. We are choosing certain things, we always had a dark side and we are interested in certain things. I guess that’s why people think we are controversial.
When we first started in our own country, we got blamed for being sympathizers of right wing direction. That hurt a lot because deep down we are a band, and if you are going to put us in a direction, we are liberal. There was lots of misunderstanding especially with the German generation at this time. It has changed a lot in the last six to eight years, but coming from German history, there’s always a lot of guilt. There’s certain kind of jokes you just can’t laugh at. Also, it comes from education, and there are certain things you shouldn’t do as a German. And we’ve overstepped some boundaries. I was never aware of things where I was hurting anyone.
We do believe if you want to make true art, you have to follow your instinct. Everyone in the band has morality, and there are certain things we’d never do. But Germany is still wounded by its own history. That’s why there was some kind of misunderstanding. But I think this is over. I think also, since the last World Cup, things have changed. When we had the World Cup, even people who felt it was not cool to have a German flag on their car were driving around with the German flag.  The new generation Germany is getting much more a balanced feeling of its identity than it was a couple of years ago. It’s important that you have a balance of feeling to your own country.
Where do you get your inspiration from when writing music and in your live performances?
Obviously, it comes through life. It’s through good and bad things. We grew up in East Germany. It comes through how you see and go through life and all the good and bad stuff you experience growing up. When you start to write those songs we always attracted to the darker side of life as opposed to the happy side. If you write a song, all of a sudden the song goes in one direction then you have to follow up where the song wants to go, and then it comes kind of naturally, there’s certain things you want to visualize.  And then every song gets what it deserves.
And in our live performances, obviously in the beginning, we had the language problem and people didn’t understand what we were saying. Then we started to experience with visual effects to make certain things clear. It’s like a big theater. You try to visualize things and then people understand more because we couldn’t communicate it any other way.
Rammstein’s latest studio album is available now via Universal/Vagrant records. The band will be playing at Madison Square Garden on Saturday Dec. 11. Tickets are sold out, so, we wish you the best of luck in your search for tickets on the Internet.

OFFICIAL PROMO. RAMMSTEIN in NEW YORK's legendary Madison Square Garden!

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.”