Rammstein at the Nassau Coliseum

Did anyone need a Sprockets reunion? How about an episode wherein the cast rides a gigantic erupting phallus while trying to find as many ways as possible to burn down the Nassau Coliseum? After last Saturday, in Long Island, the answers are officially "Yes" and "More often."



Rammstein has gone as long as nine years between US visits, both in part to their expensive touring costs and America's post-Great White laws. When they do stop by, the fans are in rabid droves with a band t-shirt ratio that rivals KISS. The similarities don't end there--Rammstein also aim for the Greatest Show on Earth, loaded with fire, props, fire, costumes, fire, fire, a fundustrial soundtrack and more fire. It's too bad the name "Porno for Pyros" is already taken.

For American fans, who appeared to make up about 25% of the audience, Rammstein follow the Borat Principle, wherein people will let you get away with being weird if they assume that it's a foreign custom. The band entered, bearing torches, on a smoking bridge that dropped down from the arena's ceiling. Keyboardist Christian "Flake" Lorenz, decked out in a a sparkling body suit, spent most of the show either on a teadmill or riding a rubber raft aboard the GA. Frontman Till Lindemann donned enormous metallic angel wings that shot flames. Lorenz was cooked inside a pot engulfed in flames.

Call these acts gimmicks, but Rammstein are undeniably master pyrotechnicians and stuntmen. The guitarists' masks shot out flame geysers that sent sweat-inducing heat waves into the stands. The words "fireworks" and "sparkler" can't properly convey what the band did with bazooka-and-crossbow-shaped devices.

If you weren't there, you're probably wondering how the music was. No one will mistake Rammstein's dance-metal for Nine Inch Nails, but songs like "Engel," "Du Hast" and "Du Riechst So Gut" are as catchy as workout music gets. With or without flamethrowers.