Rammstein - up close!

This is German heavy metal band, Rammstein. I took this picture at last night’s concert at The O2 with the crummy camera on my old iPhone. It makes the band look further away than they actually were:

Yes, I was about six feet away from one of the biggest metal bands on the planet in one of the largest music venues in the country. Beat that, posh people in corporate boxes!

Read on to find out how I ended up getting so close and personal with Rammstein …

Clearly the starting point was dragging myself out of bed at the horrendously early hour of 9:00am on a Friday morning roughly six months ago to order myself a pair of Rammstein standing tickets. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to forsee those getting snapped up like hot pies within a short while of them going on sale.

But here is the more pertinent part of the story - this is Rammstein’s descending walkway:

At the start of the show it descended to connect the main stage to a small platform in the centre of the crowd. Which, as luck would have it was right by our chosen spot near the mixing desk. (Top tip - for best sound quality stand near the man who controls the sound system!)

I’d seen the platform earlier and wondered what it was but since it seemed way too small for a band of Rammstein’s stature to perform on, I pretty much forgot about it. Then at the start the band made their way through the crowd and stood on the platform, before crossing the walkway to the stage. So, I figured that was that and forgot all about it.

Part way through the show I noticed that the crew had put a small drum kit and guitars on the platform. Shortly after, the walkway came back down, and sure enough, Rammstein were about to put on a performance right where I was standing!

This final shot was cropped ever so slightly, which makes it look a little closer than the others. It was taken after the platform had risen up a little - To make it easier for the other 19,999 people who didn’t get such a good spot to enjoy Ohne Dich, I guess.

This is what gig photos taken with my phone normally look like:

That’s my unsuccessful attempt to capture some flames during Feuer Frei - if you forward to 2:30 in this video you can see what was going on.

Because obviously no report of a trip to see Rammstein is complete without giving flame throwers a mention. And on this occasion Rammstein most definitely did not disappoint. We had standard poofs of fire - huge blasts that could be felt even halfway back were we were standing; then there were dancing fountain flames; face mounted flames; arm mounted flares; explosions; rockets; keyboards on fire; the cooking pot flamethrower and when that wasn’t enough, out came the Jumbo cooking pot flamethrower, resulting in one thoroughly toasted keyboard player!

Definitely one of my top five best ever gigs!