Some 15 months after live shows paused in the UK, and seven months since we were allowed inside a cinema, sometime Rammstein frontman and full-time pervert Till Lindemann brings his solo group’s live extravaganza to the big screen for one night only – presumably because one showing is all it'll take for cinemas to need a puritanical deep-clean afterwards.
Lindemann: Live In Moscow transports us back to March 20 2020, when an enormous congregation met at Moscow’s VTB Arena to unknowingly attend a historical event – one of the last big metal gigs before Covid hit.
This being Lindemann, the film is gloriously filthy. It's a paean to debauchery that wrings muck from every frame. We’re barely into opener Skills In Pills when the big screen behind the band flashes a fleeting glance of something that looks suspiciously like someone devouring pills via their anus – a timely reminder that Till Lindemann will never bother with titillation when sledgehammer sleaze is far more effective. Live In Moscow is to concert movies what La Bête is to werewolf movies: hyper-sexualised, completely over the top and somehow utterly captivating.
With such grotesque imagery being projected throughout the set, you might think it’d be impossible to actually pay attention to the band. But a combination of moving platforms, stage props and dynamic camera-work turn Live In Moscow into a splat-happy fish-and-cake flinging extravaganza.
Sounding closer to Revolting Cocks than to Rammstein at times, this performance mimics a hellishly perverse disco complete with neon lights and rolling disco-dome. But colossal riffs are in no short supply as pigtailed co-conspirator Peter Tägtgren drops industrial-tinged thunder throughout the set. The band even break out acoustic guitars for a rendition of Knebel, only for Tägtgren to completely smash his up as the song kicks in full-pelt.
Transported onto the big screen, there is a palpable sense of macabre magic to Live In Moscow, not least just in seeing a band play to a huge audience of rabid fans. The fact that said band no longer exists (Tägtgren left Lindemann in 2020) adds an unexpected layer of poignancy to the performance – a sense that we may never see their like again. But then, considering some of the things that we witness, maybe that’s for the best… Or not. Catch you down the front for the sequel.
Lindemann: Live in Moscow is available on DVD and Blu-Ray now
