Lindemann last night and probably going to be my gig of the year, absolutely fucking brilliant. The band were crushingly heavy and tighter that the duck's proverbial. Also getting the chance to watch Till Lindemann play a set from about 10 feet away isn't something that you get the chance to do every day.
I felt really sorry for the folks who get to clean the venue. About 4 songs in they played Allesfresser, a song about gluttony, whereupon Till wheels out a huge wheeled table laden with cake which the band proceeds to hurl at the crowd (I caught a ricochet of chocolate sponge square in the face from Mr Lindemann himself, but not sure if I am honoured). There was enough cake flying about that the floor was turned into a morass of trampled bakery goods with the usual splashing of beer. Later in the set they played Fish On and from stage left comes Till with a massive box of fish and a strange looking lecturn that turns out to be a catapult. He then proceeds to hurl and fire fish out into the crowd which turns the venue into a very stinky food fight, with fish (and then bits of fish) flying around the place. I missed getting walloped with a flying trout thankfully, something that Till didn't manage, the band had to do a lot of dodging from there on.
We got an email ahead of the gig advising of a strict age policy due to explicit content which turned out to be some fairly pornographic video footage played out during the songs. The funniest of these was during Golden Showers (which was an absolute highlight, Lindemann grinning like a madman as he exhorted the crowd to bellow the chorus of "From your pretty....Edwin!" over and over), which had a black and white close up of a vagina which was 'lip synched' to the vocals, something so bizarre I couldn't help but laugh.
They played for nearly 2 hours and have left me absolutely reeling from how damned good they were.
Also worth a mention was the crowd. I am used to some oddities going to metal gigs but this crowd was as out there as it comes. We all had a laugh as we were going in, with one lass wearing a completely transparent top with two small leather bats covering her nips and nothing else left to the imagination. I have never seen so many hot gothic lassies in one place before although they were outnumbered by other lasses in gear that they really weren't physically endowed to pull off as well as some fellas who will probably regret their choices in flesh tunnels and facial tats before they are much older (fuck me I sound old writing this but it is true).
Funniest crowd story, in front of me was a very tall lass with bright purple hair, who was leaping around like a loon throughout. As I got jostled about, I ended up alongside her and was surprised to see that she had an enormous pair of boobs barely held in place in a leather basque - if one had got free she could have blacked her own eye or knocked one of the smaller fans flying. Anyhow, my focus was on the band, but I noticed from there on that a lot of the blokes in the crowd around me were absolutely fixated with her massive norks, to the point that they were spending more time watching her than the band. When we left and got on the tube, she ended up sitting across from me and I couldn't help but notice that, at least from a birth standpoint, she had not always been a she
Anyway, amazing night. Now all I have to do is wait for the crust of chocolate cake and fish to dry before I clean my boots...