Pyrotechnics on vo.rs

Rammstein and the Art of the Flamethrower: Pyro as Narrative

Sat, 11 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

There is a moment near the end of a Rammstein show when a man in a harness rises off the stage floor, spreads a pair of steel wings that reportedly weigh around fifty kilograms, and throws fire out of the wingtips into the dark. The crowd — a hundred thousand people who mostly do not speak German — makes the same noise every time, in every city, in a language older than any of them. That noise is the whole argument for what this band does. You do not need the lyric. The fire has already told you the story.

Rammstein at Parken: Fire as a Civic Event

Fri, 09 Aug 2019 09:00:00 +0000

On 19 June 2019, Rammstein brought their first stadium tour to Parken and set a Copenhagen football ground alight. The show sold out. Somewhere in an office in Østerbro, weeks earlier, a Danish official had signed a permit that authorised a German band to burn several hundred litres of propane, in choreographed bursts, in a residential neighbourhood, for two hours, on a Wednesday night. That signature is the thing I keep coming back to. A stadium concert is loud. A Rammstein stadium concert is a small municipal decision to allow fire.