LIVE DVD REVIEW: Rammstein @ Rock Am Ring Festival

The nuts and bolts of Rammstein’s music are exactly what you might expect from a self-professed ‘dance-metal’ band - violent onslaughts of explosive drums and guitars like monster trucks roaring into action, only resisting anchorage to the depths of complete impenetrability through the occasional thunderbolt-like injection of synthesisers.

But witnessing them as a live band (even via a screen) prompted a few surprising observations, the first of which being that despite my usual objections to music as outwardly leaden as that of Rammstein, I enjoyed watching the gig immensely.

The second is the band members’ abilities as engaging live performers, particularly lead singer Till Lindemann. Built like a rhinoceros, he dominates the stage as such, and yet still manages to retain a certain magnetic quality that keeps the audience transfixed for the entirety of their set.

The third observation (an unavoidable one, it could be argued) was the ambitiousness of the pyrotechnics and special effects during the gig, most of which took nerves of steel even to watch; at one point Lindemann actually had what must have been some sort of lightbulb in his mouth, again leaving the audience gazing up at him in awe as like he was a gleaming new skyscraper.

Returning to the music, if you’re not a fan of this genre or have not heard the songs before, they do potentially run of the risk of merging into one dense, concrete wall of noise (with the exception of ‘Sonne’, perhaps, with its unmistakable counting refrain).

But given a chance, any music fan watching this gig can surely begin to appreciate that Rammstein are a highly entertaining live act, comfortably able to bridge that gap between ‘dance’ and ‘metal’ that is often so treacherous.

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Rammstein’s performance at Rock Am Ring was originally filmed on 6th June 2010.