RAMMSTEIN in Klagenfurt!

Posted on July 19, 2024 by borysSNORC

In September 2023, I received an email saying that Rammstein were bring back their famous European stadium tour for what sounds like ‘one last time with feeling’! I had though that 2023 was going to be the wrap up of the tour – Till and some of the other band members had various creative solo plans all on the go, and to be honest, how much longer do guys pushing 60 want to be performing songs they wrote 30+ years ago. The 2023 tour ended up surrounded by a fair bit of controversy so perhaps they wanted to go out on a bang without any salacious scandal hanging over them – whatever the reason, as soon as I saw they were touring in 2024, I started machinating to figure out how to get not just Angus, but BigSal and SurLee there too!

It took about two days of research to decide which stadium would be our best option – nothing outdoor in a park setting, covered seating if possible, and preferably a smaller stadium than the 100,000+ seating at Lyon in 2022. After much googling and translating, I decided on Klagenfurt am Wörthersee. Well located, smallish stadium (all the same fire power, itty bitty space!).

Then the tickets were released and the German ticketing website was painful! It wouldn’t let me choose tickets in any particular section of the stadium and would only offer me 5 seats ‘best available’ and every time you went out and back in again it would give you 5 different seats in a different part of the arena. 🙁 Having seen a very similar show in 2022 from the corporate boxes on the west side of Lyon stadium, I was really keen to get a front on view, with enough elevation to be well over the top of any beer tents or raised sound booths etc. I kept coming back to the website until FINALLY it offered up some seats that matched the criteria … then the countdown was on!

Sadly Stephola was unable to come with us, so her ticket went to waste, but after some logistical dramas for our BigSal & SurLee, the four of us managed to rendezvous in Villach and make our way to Klagenfurt for the concert! To say I was excited to share this experience with these guys is a huge understatement.

Creating memories, people! That’s what travel is all about!

Perfect! Just right of centre, and not too obstructed by the central flammage tower. 😀

Four random Aussies in a huge crown of German and Austrians. 🙂

I think it was right after this pretzel that BigSal ‘friended’ a strange Nazi who was sitting right in front of us… his English was as broken as my German, but we had a short conversation where I managed to impart that we were from Australia, and he asked to ‘friend’ her on FB. Which they did – because why not? A few minutes later, she saw a selfie he had taken with her tagged on FB, and he had called her a ‘Comrade from Australia who was here to protest the ban on some super right-wing neo-Nazi magazine!’ Man, did that escalate quickly. Needless to say, mental notes to ‘unfriend and block’ him were made immediately!

The concert was amazing. The playlist was different enough from when I saw them a couple of years ago, but still with all the major highlights and their greatest hits. Additionally the smaller stadium call was a good one! Klagenfurt with it’s <50k people in it had far better sound quality and less distorted volume than the Lyon show, which was an awesome bonus… also, I was right about the flammage – all they high impact, burning-your-eyebrows pyrotechnics in a much smaller space was just so much more in your face!

We were having a much better time than the people behind us! 😛

Du Hast… with the flaming arrows.

Concert landscape photography!

No Rammstein gig is complete without the ol’ penis foam cannon. lol.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how many truly memorable days I have had in my life, and so many really great memories I have also feel heavily clouded in pain. But this concert? With these amazing people? Well, fuck not even the 152 steps I walked up and then back down to get here (thanks for counting Angus!) on a severely torn meniscus will dampen my memories of this! So much pain, but I’d do it again tomorrow!

Did I mention that we were in the Austrian alps but it was 32C that day? Thankfully as soon as the sun passed over it was much cooler – but the locals weren’t having it at all.

BEST. DAY. EVER! I will never forget this.
Big thank you to these guys, for joining in on one of my ridiculous flights of fancy.

^ This was our view as we waiting in line for a solid 30-40 minutes to get out of the car park. This and drunken locals staggering and yahooing, swaying and peeing on the side of the roads. lol. Didn’t care! Too hyped!

A few days later, I saw this from the Rammstein FB page… the smiley is where we were seated. <3

RAMMSTEIN in LYON!

Posted on July 9, 2022 by borysSNORC

So in January 2011 I went to my first and last Big Day Out style concert… and the only thing that enticed me to go was Rammstein was on the bill. The 20-25 mins they were on stage was easily the BEST music gig I have ever been to (second runner up would have to be Pavarotti’s Farewell Tour – ooh goosebumps just thinking about that one), and sadly felt like a teaser trailer with such a short set.

Anyway, I have this one photo taken when we saw Rammstein in 2011, and I’ve always loved it; blurry mess of non-image forming blown out highlights, that it is… myself, BigSal, Yale and DA were at the show and man, did we pity poor Tool who came on after them and seemed so completely flat and boring in comparison. Ever since, I have always wanted to go see them do a big stadium show in Europe – preferably Berlin, (but the dates just were not going to play nice – and I’m so not gonna be fussy on this one). This has literally been on my ‘Things to Do Before I Die List’, and last night I finally got to see them in Lyon, France.

It was a fucking amazing, visual and visceral spectacular… and so worth the wait. I have uploaded a pile of photos here – mostly because this page has slightly less crap image compression than when you share images on FB. Most of the pics below are mine from last night, and ah and full at the end are some from a Rammstein Forum where they encourage people to steal/share and spread the fiery goodness. 🙂

One thing that is particularly evident – mobile phone image capture quality has improved considerably int he last 11 years! 😀
Stephola and I having a few ‘no shit, here we are!’ moments when we arrived and found out that (due to language barriers) I had booked us seats in a corporate box and the view was excellent of the entire stadium! Spent half the night wishing I was in the mosh pit; the other half of the night thanking fuck I wasn’t! 😉 When these huge flames leapt into the air, seemingly punctuating the music, I swear it felt like our eyebrows had been singed off! The heat was intense.There was a small stage half way through the GA area that the support act had used earlier in the evening – a duo of pianists playing effectively, Rammstein Unplugged. It really got the crown going. The band also turned up on this stage to sing, ‘Engel’ which was beautiful, the crowd sang along (German surtitles provided) and lots of mobile phone torches made for a beautiful backdrop.After they finished that song, they crowd surfed back to the stage on rubber dinghies. Caught this pic of Till Lindemann’s flaming backpack, you can see the accelerant has sprayed out, right before the streams are ignited. Way to go iPhone 13 Pro… not bad under difficult lighting.It’s a crazy thing to do – fly 15,000 kms to go see a band, but was so totally worth it. After seeing this stadium gig, I imagine we won’t ever see anything like this in Australia. We don’t have the populace to warrant the equipment, expertise and expense of bringing this show or anything like it, Down Under.

So glad we went. Even the walking and try to get an Uber for an hour couldn’t dampen our elation…. Though I was having second thoughts when we didn’t get back to the hotel until 0130 and I had to be up for my flights at 0445.

RIP Lemmy… Stone Dead Forever

Posted on December 29, 2015 by borysSNORC

Twenty four and a half years ago, a bunch of excited wannabe metal heads packed themselves into their crappy, barely roadworthy cars, and drove down from Brisbane to the PlayRoom on the Gold Coast, to see what was promising to be one of the biggest gigs of the year…

Motörhead!!!

This was huge. We had been looking forward to this gig all year, and after we had finished ignoring Frozen Doberman for about 45 minutes or so, the mosh pit packed tighter as Motörhead came out on stage and opened hard, and stupidly loud, with ‘Ironfist’ assaulting our eardrums – the sound waves physically beating our chests thanks to the Marshall stack from hell covering all the walls barely 15′ in front of us. Sadly, the whole thing fell apart in a spectacular and rapid fashion when some idiot in the crowd threw a beer can at Lemmy. He warned the crowd to wind their fucking heads in.

They didn’t.

Some complete wanker who was obviously stoned, or missing a few neurons, (or both!), decided to flail a second beer can at the biggest, nastiest looking, motherfuckin’ rock legend the PlayRoom had ever seen. And then, Lemmy pretty much said, ‘Fuck you lot’ and just kinda walked off, leaving the rest of the band momentarily confused before they up and followed him.

Some reports say they played about 5 or 6 songs, some say only 3. My recollection is more, ‘Fuck! What?! They were just getting started!’ We were unceremoniously herded outside the venue as the crowd was turning ugly – angry people milled about, cops were called, punters were demanding their money back, dog squads arrived, disheartened fans took pictures of Lemmy’s ugly mug out of cherished silver lockets and burned his image on the spot… ok, only one fan (that I know of), burned a tiny cut out picture of Lemmy’s wart covered face that night – any idea who that might be, BigSal? – but you get the idea. We dispersed into the night and never got the chance to see Motörhead play live again.

The incident went down in local metal folklore and still holds a place in various lists of rock’n’roll disasters. The acrimony towards Lemmy was short lived… one can only be so mad at God for so long.

RIP Lemmy… thanks for the music.

“1991 also saw us support MOTORHEAD on the 1916 TOUR at the now deceased GOLD COAST PLAYROOM. It went down in local folklore for a few reasons, not because we played, but MOTORHEAD only played about 5 songs and walked off pissed at the dumb crowd who threw cans at them, we were left with their rider..we drank till oblivion..trashed their dressing room, almost got our arse kicked by management and high tailed back to Sydney with stupid arsed grins on our faces. Our management was contacted, threats may have been made, deals probably done. We chose to move on. We never did play there again.”
Adam (vocalist) – Frozen Doberman

“Oh yeah. We played on the Gold Coast in Surfers Paradise one night. We had 1500 people there. It was packed. “

Of course, there is always the ugly and that came in the form of their performance at the Gold Coast’s now defunct Playroom in 1991 where punters were hurling beer cans stageward early on during Motörhead’s performance. After warning the crowd about stopping the show if their behaviour didn’t cease, Motörhead simply walked off stage after only a few songs.

“Yeah, fuckin’ right y’know? I’ve had fireworks just miss my head. The worst one for me was in Belgrade in this festival. Somebody had taken the time use a glass cutter to chop off about that much (his fingers indicating about a 1cm) off of the bottom of a wine bottle and then shape it into a nunchaku star and fuckin’ throw it at me. It missed my eye by about that much (again indicating with his fingers about 2cm from the right side of his face). I just fuckin’ walked off. The promoter was shittin’ himself. I said, ‘I ain’t fuckin’ goin’ on man. You can forget it!’ They convinced me eventually and they assured me that it wouldn’t happen again. It just ruins it. It somebody doesn’t like me or whatever if I fuckin’ shagged his sister years before and, probably I have,” jokes Campbell. “People throw stuff at me like that and go ‘Hey wanker!’. I say ‘What’s your problem? Did I shag your girlfriend last time?’ There’s no need to throw stuff. I don’t know why they bother to come. It’s not cool to do that. We can’t see nothing. We’re in the dark. It’s cowardly. If you wanna come up, come up afterwards and say ‘C’mon, I wanna fuckin’ punch you Phil!’ y’know?”
Phil Campbell – Lead Guitarist Motorhead (via The MetalForge)