– a spectacular audio/visual, multi-format package featuring
exclusive documentary material
plusextensive live footage of
The Greatest Show On
Earth!
IN MUSIC, as in politics, it’s all about
people;
if you don’t have the ear of the public, if your ‘manifesto’
doesn’t strike a chord, then no amount of campaigning is
likely to save the day. Ultimately,
Die Völkerwill
decide – which is both entirely as it should be… and good
news for bands whose rapport with the audience is both
easy and instinctive.
Bands like
Rammstein…
Since 1995, when debut album
‘Herzeleid’
saw the six Berliners
sparking the rails for the first time, there has been a bond
between those onstage and those cheering them on that has
never been breached, and in fact has grown
stronger.
As with all successful relationships, it’s been founded on a
heady combination of mutual respect, satisfied expectation
and the ability to provide that special gift at the right
time.
Which is where
‘Völkerball’
comes in!
SET FOR international release on November
20th (November 17th in Germany),
‘Völkerball’
– which literally
translates as ‘People’s Ball’, although it’s
also a team sports game played in schools – is an audio/
visual, multi-format, 5.1 package boasting the sort of no-half-measures
approach to art that followers of the
Rammstein
cause have come to expect.
Of particularinterest
will be the
Limited Edition –
a truly magnificent, fully-loaded format featuring a vast
array of images from the
‘Reise, Reise’World
Tour of 2004/2005, all housed in a 190-page Tour Photo Book,
along with exclusive onstage and documentary footage, plus
over two hours worth of live audio. Indeed, it is the
‘Reise, Reise’
tour (a six-month run
of sold-out arena & festival dates), along with the multi-platinum
album of the same name, that the
‘Völkerball’
package primarily
seeks to celebrate.
Between November 2004 and July 2005,
Rammstein
played to one million
people across 21 different countries, taking with them a
‘castle laboratory’ set boasting as many incendiary devices
as 13 trucks and three buses can reasonably handle, the
whole thing weighing in at a cool 140 tons and requiring a "small
town" (63 crew members, plus local hands & drivers) to make
it come to life, including five on the pyro side alone.
With so many turning out to witness this
flambé-fest on wheels (near on 40,000 in Moscow and St.
Petersburg alone), it would be quite impossible to define
the
Rammstein
audience as just one kind of person with one kind of view;
however, what is made clear by the aforementioned photos –
the work of
Frederic Batier,
a man afforded full fly-on-the-wall access throughout the
tour – is that, from London to Leipzig, Barcelona to Berlin,
there is a particular style an’ stance, an attitude if you
will, that draws the ‘extended
Rammstein
family’ together.
Fittingly, the
‘Völkerball’
content has been chosen with fan satisfaction to the for.
On the live front, there’s an entire concert
from Nimes in Southern France, filmed in a Roman
amphitheatre in front of 12,500 fans who, frankly, couldn’t
have been more pumped-up had they been saluting a favoured
gladiator; add to this selected footage from London, Tokyo
and Moscow (the latter featuring female back-up singers who
were supposed to be wearing traditional dress!), plus two
carefully-constructed documentaries showing the musicians at
their most candid & relaxed, and you have an overall package
that gives a neverbefore-seen insight into both
Rammstein
the bandand
Rammstein
the people…
* Standard Edition:
2 disc set, available in DVD
& CD digi-packs (1 DVD, 140 minutes live video; 1 CD,
75 minutes live audio).
* Special Edition:
3 disc set, available in DVD
& CD digi-packs (1 DVD, 140 minutes live video; 1 DVD,
90 minutes of documentary footage, including
‘Anakonda Im
Netz’/ ‘Anaconda In The Net’
plus
‘Reise, Reise: The
Making Of The Album’;
1 CD, 75 minutes live audio)
* Limited Edition:
190-Page Tour Photo Book,
including all of the 3 disc content plus the complete audio
to the live show (140 minutes). A prestige 4 disc set –
‘Bildband (in Luxusausstattung’).
IN TERMS of adding flesh to bones, the two
documentaries go further than ever before in revealing what
it is that keeps the
Rammstein
flame burning as
brightly as it does.
‘Anakonda Im Netz’
is the more
‘official’ of the pair, featuring interviews with all of the
band members as well as manager
Emanuel Fialik;
in the course of 53 minutes, it examines a whole range of
topics, from the pure logistics of keeping
Rammstein
on the road through
to the group’s regular pre-show ritual (clue: it involves
alcohol) plus the ups & downs of life as a touring musician
– which in this particular case can involve either being
burnt or having your shoes ripped off.
In keyboard player
Flake’s
case, both!
Equally as revealing is
‘Reise, Reise: The
Making Of The Album’.
A 26-minute documentary
filmed and edited by band guitarist
Paul Landers,
it provides an informal view of his fellow musicians (plus
regular producer
Jacob Hellner)
as they move through studios in Spain, Sweden and Germany,
mulling over matters as they go; there’s vocalist
Till Lindemann
explaining how, after
almost 100 takes of a track, he can feel like choking
Hellner
on the spot (he may not be
entirely serious here), whilst the producer reveals how
album title
‘Reise, Reise’
was almost replaced by
‘Sonntag Bei Omi’
(‘Sunday With Granny’),
and so it goes on… an
informal peek behind-the-scenes proving beyond all doubt
that, even when it comes to cooking sausages,
Rammstein
just can’t resist the
urge to give the smoke alarms a thoroughly good testing!
Add to this the unrestrained drama of Messrs
Lindemann,
Landers, Kruspe, Schneider, Riedel & Lorenz
working their way through 30
kg of pyro (per show!) at Club Citta in Japan or the
Olympiski Sport Complex in Russia, and you have the sort of
package that
Rammstein fans
have doubtless played through in their dreams. Ambitiously
conceived, flawlessly executed and loaded with more quality
extras than a top-of-theline (German) limousine, it shows
the six musicians – in the studio, on the stage (and in the
kitchen!!) – as they push previous achievements to a whole
new level of global success.
Sunday with grannywas never like this!
Dante Bonutto
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