Rammstein Rocks, with tinned spaghetti...

Well lunch was a surprisingly tasty budget mush of tinned spaghetti in cheesy tomato sauce on toast topped with mayo, Nando's extra hot, salt & pepper. Like my colleague said "have some food with your condiments". Gross as it looked, and probably smelled, it tasted nice and filled the gaping pit at the end of my gullet enough to last until dinner!

The Rammstein concert last night was fucking mindblowing! I would say the second best concert I've been to in recent years (only because I can't remember the earlier ones too well, too many bottles of cheap whiskey through my brain since then!). The best concert ever was Tool, about 4 years ago at the Brixton Academy in London City, my home for 8 years. But that's another story.... (how many times have I said that; I've got so many 'stories' to catch up on!)

About last night, the show was in the Grand West Arena, Cape Town, and was truly a great performance. The atmosphere was exciting, the crowds were not as young as I expected. There were many teenagers of course, but also a decent mix of older folk up to my ripe age and even older. I suppose the reason for this being that Rammstein is in fact not a new band, they've been headlining for a good 15 years so many of their dedicated fans from way-back-when got to re-live their (should I say OUR) youth for an evening, and well rewarded for the effort!

The music was very loud, as would be expected, so loud it was quite distorted at times in the confined arena, but the music itself was befuck! Awesome! Brilliant! All of Rammstein's best stuff, including the popular commercial numbers, performed at a top class professional level. The band was tight, the performance well oiled, and the power of the music got me very excited! When my favourite song Benzin came on (which has been my morning alarm clock tune on my phone for about 3 years now) I nearly went ballistic! I had goosebumps and couldn't control my shouting and air drumming, which must've looked seriously idiotic, but who gives a shit?! Du Hast was also performed brilliantly, a classic crowd pleaser that got this crowd rupturing into a moshing frenzy!

The lighting was also very well done, brilliant, and dynamic, though I do feel the band members could've been lit up more. The flashing bright lights at times hid what the band was doing, especially at the end when the band crescendoed into a typical wild metal finale - I was frustrated not to see what the drummer was doing, though it sounded like he was going apeshit and it sounded great!

But by far what made the show for me was the pyrotechnics! There was a LOT of incredible controlled fire! Loads and loads of big fireballs, flamethrowers, fireworks, flashing bangs, etc. One of the band members was spectacularly boiled in a large pot and set on fire on stage! Surreal to watch but uniquely spectacular! The use of large amouts of fire was very impressive, and very real. We were seated right at the back of the arena, in the cheap seats, and we could feel the waves of heat whenever the big fireballs were let off! It was so cool, though the packed crowds near the stage must've been roasting! Wish I could've been among them, it looked like great fun down there!

Then again it would not have been a Rammstein concert without the fire, sparks, pyrotechnics and moshing maniacs!

I loved the whole experience thoroughly, and have been left with a renewed enjoyment of the album music from this great German band, having heard and seen them from a new perspective the music has a different appreciation to it as I can mentally picture them blasting out their noise, lights and fire to the tunes coming from my car radio. Though the same thing happened after the Tool concert and in the following weeks I played Tool to death! Great as they are, I'm all Tool'ed out for a while; I'm sure I'll give Rammstein a similar demise in my erratic world.

But for now, I look forward to pumping Benzin out loud and arrogantly again from my car windows through the busy streets of Observatory in less than 2 short hours...