Thought I'd offer a report on last night's Rammstein show in sunny Brum. The show was the sixth I've seen on the Reise, Reise tour after Mannheim (Maimarkthalle, Nov 1), Frankfurt (Festhalle, Dec 10) and London (Brixton Academy, Feb 4-6). Cardiff on Monday will presumably be my last one unless they go to the US which might actually help motivate me to haul my narrow behind over there and let Jennifer abuse me in person.

Set details will no doubt appear on Jennifer's site before long but it seems to have been the same the whole tour, except at Mannheim on the opening night when they played every song from Reise, Reise and subsequently dropped Amour and Dalai Lama. Since then it seems to have been constant until the Wuhlheide shows when they introduced a new tune callen Benzin. They played this last night and although I struggled to hear Till's vocals properly at that point because of where I was standing in the arena, it sounded really excellent. Fast and heavy, so Jennifer should approve.

The show was filmed last night, as were the Brixton shows, so presumably there's a DVD being planned. Personally I would doubt they would use last night, certainly not in preference to Brixton. The Academy holds about 3-4,000 I believe but it caters very well for large scale shows because it's very wide and has a comparatively very large stage for the size of venue. For Rammstein this means that even at the back you're not too far away but you're part of a good-sized audience and the atmosphere is always tremendous. Also, Rammstein are hugely popular in London. In contrast the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, which for many years was the largest arena in the UK, is just that - an exhibition centre. The Brum crowd is pretty enthusiastic, but it's just a big generic hangar on the edge of the city. Anyway, as I was saying, I doubt they'd use this show. The pyro seemed a little more conservatively used than usual. No exploding drumsticks for Schneider at the start of Links 2 3 4 and most obviously, Till's flamethrowing claws during Rammstein hardly worked, despite the attentions of a roadie halfway through the song.

Oh, one other thing. Since the first leg of the European tour before Christmas, Los has been extended a little and now features a coda where Richard swaps his acoustic guitar for electric and Flake does a manic keyboard solo to finish. Last night Flake finished the song Ritchie Blackmore style by smashing the keyboard into pieces and throwing it into the crowd, predictably resulting in somewhat of a bun fight to get the remains. Personally I wasn't thrilled by this since the keyboard entered the crowd in the general direction of my head before being gobbled up in a mob of people wrestling for it.

Overall, it was a good but not great show. The crowd seemed a little less intense than usual. Maybe the sense of anticipation was dulled a bit because there was no support band, unlike elsewhere (Exilia on the pre-Christmas leg, who are good and whom I've also seen supporting In Extremo, and the fantastic Apocalyptica, who raised holy hell at the London shows). There was general confusion as nobody seemed to know about this and I think people got a bit bored waiting for the band to come on, as they didn't really start any earlier. Of the shows I've seen I'd say Frankfurt was best because the show was slicker than at Mannheim where they had the odd glitch, but the German crowds were ace, and it's worth travelling to Germany to see them just to be part of a crowd that yells back "Wir fühlen Euch!" during Ich will. I was talking to a girl the first night at Brixton who'd been to one of the Dortmund shows for the exact same reason. The London shows were all great, but you just can't beat seeing them in Germany. However I have high hopes of Cardiff. South Wales crowds are usually well up for it.

Simon