Rammstein (with Godhead and Crossbreed)
Star Plaza
Merrillville, IN
July 27, 2001

By Shelly Harris

      This Rammstein gig was billed as the "show that downtown Chicago
couldn't play," and though, sure enough, this venue was in the burbs in NW
Indiana, I'm not sure that it was so much the band's shock value that kept it
out of the city, as much as it was finding a venue of the proper size that
had enough insurance and  stage space to accommodate it's constant
pyrotechnic effects, including roman candle-like fireworks shooting straight
out of the costumes of various band members.  (Deep apologies to Godhead and
Crossbreed, but business kept me from reviewing their abbreviated opening
sets.)
   
      Which is not to say Rammstein don't live up to their shock rock
reputation ––  au contrare.  And I say that from a perspective of someone
who is not easily "shocked" -- at least not by live rock performances.  Even
back in the early '70s when I was as innocent and unsophisticated as any hayse
ed Hoosier country girl, I still found Alice Cooper's groundbreaking stage
antics and stunts to be over-the-top amusing, and I well understood the
crowd-pleasing and attention getting assets of such blatant, theatrical
envelope pressing/daring/aplomb.

      Of course, 30 years later, what will sufficiently hair-raise an
audience of teenagers and twentysomethings who have essentially seen and
heard it all with regard to sex, drugs, and even horror onstage does raise
the stakes to an almost unattainable degree.  Certainly anyone who's tuned in
has either seen or heard about all the Marilyn Manson ploys over the years,
including one of the fews acts that can still disgust even the most liberal
of the baby boomers: the desecration of the American Flag.  (For those who
haven't heard, Manson has been known to blatantly wipe his miniscule derriere
with the Stars and Stripes onstage, amongst other "outrages.")

    And Rammstein do employ a bit of the same "up-yours" and horror related
tactics in their shows, there's no doubt. In a "Rolling Stone" piece they
were said to have human body parts in jars of formaldehyde onstage (although
a photographer who was in a better position to see at this show than me
confided that the body parts they had in their jars were "fake").  Moreover,
they were also rumored to have opened their show, in support of current CD
"Mutter" (i.e. Mother), in their less-censored German "Motherland" by
tumbling out nude from the bottom of a gigantic onstage uterus. (Cool, but
not necessarilly anything to get your panties in a twist about.) 

    But, beyond that, whether you love them or hate them, Rammstein are
indeed disturbing -- and riveting -- in more ways than one. I will say that I
had never heard one of their albums complete before attending this show, but
it didn't matter.  Their music is hypnotic even when its thunderous
industrial rhythms are carbon copy repetitious, since that is a big part of
the intoxication anyway.  They also employ just enough unusually arranged
classical touches in their "soundtrack" (it is sometimes hard to determine
just which sounds/instuments are live, and which are Memorex) to accentuate
the drama and keep the melody mongers like me interested.

    Moreover, it doesn't matter, either, that unless you are fluent in German
or have a translator, you don't know for sure what any of the songs are
really about.  What you do know is that they are subversive as Hell, and you
can also see that the guttural, harsh sounds of their aggitated German
enunciation are precisely the right fit for the Alpha Male shout-sing that
accompanies the Rammstein machine.  And that is exactly what they strive to
evoke: a monstrous, well-oiled, brilliantly efficient, de-humanizing machine.
 

   I can't say for certain if Rammstein, with their obvious complete mastery
and knowledge of the importance of a topnotch theatrical production
(including lighting, timing, pyrotechnics, and the nuances of dramatic,
well-timed stage movements), are actually trying to present a social
statement which mocks the current state of genetic "engineering" and the
techo-industrial inhumanity of man in the 21st Century. (FYI, the great H.G.
Wells once did that first and best over a century ago in his classic, The
Time Machine.),  But -- if they are -- I have a feeling the irony of such a
message may be lost on the bulk of their mesmerized, lemming-like followers. 
   
     Nihilistic and apocalyptic -- those are just some of the adjectives that
start springing to mind from the first song -- so, whatever their intended
motives, there is no doubt whatsoever that this band is a demented skinhead's
delight. Of course, it is also no accident that all the band members --
consummately Stormtrooper buff and also clad in SS reminiscent black -- evoke
what Der Führer would have found to be the perfect Aryan master race. (Please
note the use of a particularly evocative "cross" in their name logo.) 

   Indeed, what was most frightening (shocking?!) to maybe a handful of those
in attendance is just how precisely the scenario resembled one of Goebbel's
expertly executed crowd control/mass hysteria publicity campaigns which
worked its black magic on the ripe and ready, decadent Berlin of the
mid-1930s.  Yes, it is the lump-in-the-gut, creeping horror of Cabaret
revisited, sans its more homespun early 20th Century charm, especially when
all those crowd echoed straight-armed salutes punctuate nearly every
Rammstein song!  But, of course, "charm" isn't the point being made here.

    And that is where I must reluctantly take my hat off to Rammstein. (Sieg
Hiel!?) The primary goal of any serious artist is to leave the patron moved
in some pointed way along the spectrum of human emotion and intellect.  Since
long gone are the days when it took mere pelvic gyrations, dead animals,
crotchless pants, or even S&M simulations to do that in its more insidious
formulations, Rammstein are merely raising the bar another notch -- and
executing it with malignant perfection.

   Certainly, some will be mesmerized, some will be intoxicated, and some
will be disturbed.  All I can say, is if religion is essentially dead in
Western society, and this is the new opiate of the masses, Mutter help us! 

Find out more about the enigmatic Rammstein at www.rammstein.com.