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.

Corpse Paint: A Short History of the Painted Face

Tue, 08 Feb 2022 09:00:00 +0000

White greasepaint over the whole face, black sunk into the eye sockets and streaked down from the mouth, the living man rearranged into a skull. You have seen it a thousand times on a T-shirt and it has stopped meaning anything, which is exactly the problem worth unpicking. The painted face is one of the oldest tricks in loud music and one of the few that still land a punch when the lights drop.

Stagecraft on vo.rs

Rammstein and the Art of the Flamethrower: Pyro as Narrative

Corpse Paint: A Short History of the Painted Face