Souvenir ticket thinger that was handed out for free at the show. Beats paying sixty bucks for a t-shirt!

I’m not sure if Rammstein played the best show of the year at Madison Square Garden this past Saturday night — but if they didn’t, they certainly came close.

It was the band’s first and only show in America in ten years, and had sold out in thirty minutes, so expectations were understandably pretty high. Personally, I’d never seen the band before — I can’t even claim to be that big a Rammstein fan, in all honesty — but I’d heard so many amazing things about their live performances that I was dying to check ‘em out.

And they delivered in every way. In fact, they more than delivered. I am now a Rammstein fan.

I’m not gonna talk about the music too much. I know that probably seems weird since the music is more important (in theory at least) than the band’s theatrics, but, really, by this point, you know Rammstein, you know their music, and you know how you feel about it. They’re (obviously) not a jam band, so there were no real surprises in that regard — Rammstein lives sounds more or less like Rammstein in the studio.

But the performance… oh, the performance… it’s full of stars!

Here’s some of the shit the crowd was treated to during the course of the band’s nearly two-hour performance:

• An opening in which guitarists Richard Z. Kruspe and  Paul H. Landers broke through a wall with sledgehammers, while vocalist Till Lindemann broke through that same wall with one of those massive heat cutter thingers that bank robbers always use to break into vaults in movies.
• More flame-spitting than at any Kiss and Dillinger Escape Plan show combined.
• A man set on fire.
• Baby dolls with lasers coming out of their heads.
• Baby dolls with lasers coming out of their heads exploding in perfect time with the music.
• Lindemann singing with a light in his mouth (still not sure how he did that).
• Lindemann riding a cannon painted to look like a cock, “cumming” all over the audience.
• Lindemann wearing giant metallic angel wings that shot out flames.
• Keyboardist Christian “Flake” Lorenz dressed in a leather S&M version of Woody Allen’s outfit from the movie Sleeper.
• Keyboardist Christian “Flake” Lorenz dressed in a disco ball suit.
• Keyboardist Christian “Flake” Lorenz crowd surfing in an inflatable raft.

But don’t take my word for it… here’s some shitty video of the awesomeness that I captured on my phone!

So, in case you can’t tell, I was really wowed by the spectacle of the thing — in fact, the words “Fuck Kiss” and “Fuck the Spider-Man musical” kept running though my head as I watched the show unfold. I can’t believe this was a one-off performance; let’s hope Rammstein return to the U.S. real soon.

-AR