A Pilgrimage of Fire - Rammstein Live at US Bank Stadium

I’ve been a fan of the German metal-adjacent band Rammstein since the Rare Hipster introduced me to them in the late 90s (via a mixtape he gifted us on a road trip to Gettysburg as I recall).

It is probable you have never heard of this group - their days of being introduced to new fans through their stylish and powerful videos on stations like MuchMusic or MTV have long passed, and you don’t get a lot of the genre they call “nieu Deutsche harte” on commercial radio.

But those of us who like it, like it a lot, as it turns out, and that includes both of my lovely daughters, who have been listening to this raw, crunchy yet immensely danceable music since before they could walk.

Rammstein’s translated lyrics and titles run the gamut from the banal (“Du Riecht So Gut” (You Smell So Good)) through the bizarre (“Buckstabu”,an invented word) to the horrifying (“Mein Teil” (My Tool) based on a true story of cannibalism), but when younger listeners asked about the words I either feigned ignorance, was genuinely and willfully ignorant, or simply declined to translate the more disturbing lyrics.

I fully believe the quality of their videography remains unequalled, and three years after its release, I also feel that “Deutschland”, directed by Specter Berlin, is simply the best music video ever made (your mileage may vary, of course).

But much of Rammstein’s awe-inducing and terrifying reputation comes from the scope and spectacle of their live performances. They borrow heavily enough from the shock-rock ouvré that, as much as it pained me, I refused to take either of the girls when they made their sole appearance in Edmonton to date back in 2011.

In fact, Glory recently confessed that she was not just miffed or a little put out by her exclusion but was actually angry at me for some time afterwards. Thankfully she forgave me after seeing concert footage that included the finale of a giant phallic cannon shooting foam into the audience. (“It’s fine Dad - it was the right call.”) 

If you are at all curious, there are two concerts currently viewable on Amazon Prime, at least in Canada, Rammstein: Paris and Rammstein in Amerika  - Live from MSG, but be warned:  the Paris concert contains the graphic staging of "Buch Dich" that got the lead singer and keyboardist arrested on obscenity charges on the 1998 "Family Values" tour!

Last year, when Rammstein announced the resumption of the tour they’d postponed in 2020 due to Covid, I knew it presented a singular opportunity. For the very first time, they would be taking their renowned stadium-sized stage show to nine lucky cities across North America.

There were no shows nearby and only two scheduled before their school year started, so we picked Minneapolis, intending to drive there and camp along the way. But the scheduling was too tight after all so we ended up buying plane tickets in April and using Air Miles for a hotel stay at the IHG MSP by the airport (and a Hilton in Toronto for the 11-hour layover two days before the concert).

I have no fear of flying but I am an extremely apprehensive traveller. I know I can be forgetful and I am a worry-wart by nature, so I keep lists, documents, shortcuts and multiple copies of confirmation emails. I downloaded the ArriveCan app and uploaded both our passports and our vaccination records to Air Canada when I checked us in.

We endured a brutal night’s sleep in Toronto thanks to the noisiest AC unit I have encountered to date and clearing customs and security the following day took a staggering two hours. But our Minneapolis hotel gave us easy access to the city's convenient Blue Line trains, and Saturday night we found ourselves in surprisingly good lower bowl seats of the modern and monolithic US Bank Stadium, eagerly anticipating what might literally be a once-in-a-lifetime show.

We grabbed the obligatory commemorative shirts and I had a hard time choosing between the standard design with the tour dates on the back and the first venue-specific shirt I've ever seen, which replaced the generic building with US Bank Stadium. (In the end I got the tour shirt because two sides are better than one).

Even without lights or musicians, the stage was an architectural and engineering marvel; a castle or fortress-like structure requiring an immense 1350 tons of equipment, and combining art deco and brutalist elements. There were also two separate floor areas to incorporate a "Feuer Zone" in close proximity to the stage.

The opening act was a surprise as well; two lovely French ladies in sequinned dresses (Duo Abelard) bashed out powerful and moving acoustic piano covers of Rammstein songs.

But a little after 8:00, smoke began to fill the stage, and the band’s cross-shaped logo (the “Rammkreuze”) begin crawling up the center stage tower, accompanied by Handel's fanfare "Music for the Royal Fireworks" (so apropos!). Once it reached the peak, there was a massive set of explosions and sparks, and the band emerged to play “Armee Du Tristen,” the lead track to their most recent album, Zeit (“Time”).

It took the 30,000+ fans in attendance a little while to really get into things. The music was powerful as always - simple, brutal guitar melodies masterfully executed and backed up by dazzling synth counterpoints, and dramatically staged lighting effects.

Then some of the older songs came out and enormous red banners with the Rammkreuze on them unfurled around the stage. A sizable chunk of the crowd obligingly sang probably the only German words they know into the outstretched mic held by intimidating lead singer Till Lindemann, which you could tell pleased him to no end.

And later in the show, during "Sonne," it felt like everything caught fire.

Enormous flame jets erupted onstage in time with the chorus “hier kommt die Sonne” (here comes the Sun), accompanied by massive - and I mean immense - pillars of flame rising from three enormous towers situated on the stadium floor. And in a covered stadium no less!

As the saying goes, "Other bands play; Rammstein burns."

The heat was like what you would feel opening the door of an oven preheated to 450, and this occurred repeatedly in each chorus, to the delighted screams of everyone in attendance, including the three of us.

We stood on our feet for most of the show, including two encores, the girls dancing, singing along and banging their heads in time to the percussive guitars.

We marvelled at the climax of their best-known song, “Du Hast” as Till used a multi-barreled launcher to fire flares into the upper reaches of the stage, which in turn launched fireworks at the stage towers, which then fired a veritable salvo of pyrotechnics back at the stage which finally exploded and showered sparks everywhere. 

(skip to 3:30 to see the fireworks!)

(Wider view of the launch from about 3:42)

Honestly, it felt kind of like being in proximity to an airstrike or something from the Old Testament, and a gentleman on the train back to the hotel said he loved the show but joked it may have given him some degree of PTSD...

We gasped as an enormous pram with a horrific animatronic doll in it was set ablaze during “Puppe.”

We marvelled during "Mein Teil" as keyboardist “Flake” Lorenz took cover in an immense cooking pot, as Till, in a blood-covered leather apron and filthy chef’s hat, brought out larger and larger flamethrowers to threaten his bandmate with, finishing up with a wheeled fire cannon that would not have looked out of place in a game of Warhammer 40,000.

But we laughed then too,and again as Till took a break and most of the band came out to dance (poorly!) to guitarist Richard Kruspe's club-style remix of “Deutschland” in light-up suits that made them look like stick-men.

They brought back Duo Abelard for the first encore, singing a stripped-down version of “Engel” on an island stage across the stadium from us, then the entire band boarded three inflatable boats (a concert staple but usually only featuring Flake) and let the crowd carry them back to the main stage.

One of the best effects came near the end when Till strapped on an ominous-looking backpack before singing their eponymous track, "Rammstein," inspired by the 1988 Ramstein airshow disaster from which the band takes its name. In the early days, Till would sing this song while wearing a jacket with the back and sleeves fully engulfed in flames. On this tour he escalated things by using his rocketpack to create a huge fan of flames around him in a fiery starburst, or as the girls called it, "the fire peacock."

I took a handful of generally low-quality photos and videos, partly due to my increasingly unreliable memory, but also to commemorate the occasion. It was the loudest, biggest, craziest and wildest concert I had ever attended, and I was there with two of the people I love most in the entire world, and they were enjoying themselves as much as I was.

Before leaving for Minneapolis, I had expressed disappointment that Audrey hadn’t chosen to join us as she appreciates the band but wouldn't describe herself as a fan the way the girls and I do. 

Looking at our faces in the selfie that Glory had somehow managed to capture with her fancy new iPhone though, with our broad grins in the foreground and a fiery conflagration in the background, I realized Audrey was right to let us go on our own. So we could fully revel in this strange, powerful, almost atavistic spectacle as fans absolutely delighted to be there.

I hope the latest album, recorded spontaneously during the pandemic, isn’t the band’s swan song. But they aren’t getting any younger (Till is turning 60 next year!) and the closing track for the album and concert is entitled “Adieu}, so part of me wouldn’t be too surprised if they hung up their axes after this colossal and no doubt exhausting tour.

But even if they do, the girls and I can say we saw their biggest show, in an incredible venue, during an extreme thunderstorm that we could barely tell was happening. And when people ask me how it was, I will think not only of the sound and the spectacle, but its significance to the three of us and the travails we endured to get to the show, and I can say this truthfully:

I have never enjoyed a concert more in my life.