Völkerball

RAMMSTEIN
VÖLKERBALL

DVD UNIVERSAL RELEASE: NOVEMBER 17, 2006 REVIEW: NOVEMBER 1, 2006


I was invited to a pre-screening of Rammstein’s new live DVD ”Völkerball”, at Universal’s offices in Stockholm. They screened the DVD on a huge 50” plasma screen, with a massive 5.1 sound system.

We were joined by Swedish Rammstein producer Jacob Hellner and engineer Ulf Kruckenberg, who obviously has a lot of inside info on the band. Jacob is also featured on one of the accompanying documentaries, where frontman Till says he thought about strangling Jacob, after doing over 80 takes of one track. I could hear Jacob giggle behind me when we watched that.

Now, let’s talk a little about the main attraction, namely the huge concert in Nimes, France, that takes up the main part of the disc. Professionally filmed with excellent sound, it gives a great glimpse of Rammstein’s latest world tour where they played for over one million people. The sound packs a big punch, and when the explosives went off, I was almost lifted from my chair!

Also included are footage from London, Tokyo and Moscow. The latter is in the form of a montage of the entire Russian experience, and it’s quite funny.

The two documentaries both give an unprecedented look into the band Rammstein, and show us the members like we’ve never seen them before. I kind of feel that Rammstein is a band that requires some mystique, but it’s actually quite liberating to see them laughing, cooking and fooling around. Flake is my new hero.

“Völkerball” comes in no less than three different packages. First off, there’s the vanilla one, with only the concert, and one audio CD. Then we have the “special edition”, with the concert footage, an extra disc with the documentaries, and the CD. Finally, there’s a limited edition behemoth with a 190 page photo book, the DVD:s from the “special edition”, and an extended audio CD! Phew! I think most people will go for the middle one, and so will I.

JOHAN CARLSSON