{"id":57164,"date":"2024-10-02T10:58:34","date_gmt":"2024-10-02T15:58:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/?p=57164"},"modified":"2024-10-02T11:02:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-02T16:02:20","slug":"live-review-rammstein-front-man-goes-solo-and-brings-his-chaos-calamity-and-carp-to-aragon-ballroom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/?p=57164","title":{"rendered":"Live Review: Rammstein Front Man Till Lindemann Goes Solo And Brings His Chaos, Calamity and Carp To Aragon Ballroom"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

By Christopher David<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Aragon Ballroom saw one of the most bizarre nights of performance art in recent memory when Till Lindemann, frontman and guru of industrial giants Rammstein, arrived for his first solo outing with wild costumes, explosive staging and\u2026fish guts?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well\u2026yeah.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Taking the stage to \u201cZunge\u201d with a hail of strobe lights and percussive beats low enough to shake the floor courtesy of drummer Joe Letz, who looked like a psychotic female clown, which was even more disturbing when he later simulated the removal of what looked like tampons (he was wearing a full body female form complete with breasts and vagina) before throwing them into the crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lindemann\u2014dressed in red from head to toe, including his painted skin\u2014led his well crafted five piece band, that included Letz of Combichrist, as well as Constance Antoinette, Emily Ruvidich, Jes Paige and Danny Lohner of Nine In Nails, through a razor-sharp sixteen song setlist.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The band is as tight as one could hope for a band to be, and the sheer bombast of their performance was enough to distract away from the relentless unsettling visuals (most of which we can’t show here).\u00a0 Women in lingerie being force-fed various foods?\u00a0 Check.\u00a0 Three obese, naked mechanical bull riders engaged in some sort of cowboy orgy?\u00a0 Check.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Close-up of genitals in various states, oral sex\u2026I could go on, but you get the idea.\u00a0 The order of the day was keeping the crowd on edge, and Lindemann\u2019s performance was certainly designed for a healthy dose of interactivity.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This was most apparent when, during \u201cFish On\u201d from 2015\u2019s Skills in Pills<\/em>, Lindemann had keyboardist Constance Day and guitarist Emily Ruvidich load up a ‘t-shirt gun’ and fired it into the crowd.\u00a0 What rained down upon the Aragon floor was not a barrage of t-shirts\u2026 it was fish guts and mutilated fish carcasses\u2014a lot of them.\u00a0 And some fans actually clamored to capture them!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Threads of sexual deviance and oddities of all manner, including Lindemann\u2019s own lips being sewn shut, pervaded the imagery behind the band, adding a layer of visual overload to the band\u2019s searing performance.\u00a0 Lindemann connected with the fans even more by strolling through the venue with a GoPro camera attached to his hat causing the house to go wild.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Was there social commentary at the heart of it all?\u00a0 Was it satirizing the role of sex in culture, portraying it as awkward and gross instead of exciting and desirable?\u00a0 Honestly, it\u2019s hard to tell – which, perhaps, was the point, as it is with some performance art.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One thing is certain\u2014getting pelted with fish at the Aragon can be scrubbed from the bucket list.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Christopher David The Aragon Ballroom saw one of the most bizarre nights of performance art in recent memory when Till Lindemann, frontman and guru of industrial giants Rammstein, arrived […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":57115,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,39,20],"tags":[356,199,285,674,625,673,671,672,668,342,667,310],"class_list":["post-57164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-music-news","category-reviews","tag-aragon-ballroom","tag-chicago-music-news-live-venue-interviews-reviews","tag-concert-review","tag-danny-lohner","tag-germany","tag-joe-letz","tag-live-in-chicago","tag-performance-art","tag-rammstein","tag-solo-tour","tag-till-lindemann","tag-tour-2024"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}