Trenčín Airport, Trenčín, Slovakia – June 14th
The first single-day show since Vilnius saw the band clearly having fun, a reaffirmation of the departure of a fan-favourite song, and lots of people being stuck in the middle of nowhere.
by Sez, KidArctica, Kapi (Guest Reporter), and basspug (Guest Photographer)
Trenčín strikes you as an interesting choice for a concert location. The city itself with its approximately 54.000 inhabitants doesn’t seem like it would be equipped to handle a concert with an attendance count that rivals its own population – news articles speak of the “biggest concert to date in Slovakia”. The venue, Trenčín Airport, has a staggeringly small amount of information about it available on the internet – apart from that it is used to hold the Slovakian Pohoda Music and Culture Festival since 2004. Despite these “oddities”, it seemed that fans were beyond excited to see Rammstein perform their first concert after the downright historic Munich shows.
This concert report will be a little different from our usual blogs. Neither Admin, Sez nor KidArctica were able to attend the show in Trenčín and therefore we cannot give you any first-hand reports ourselves. However, we have found a guest reporter, Kapi, who was kind enough to share not only photos but also impressions and observations from the concert with us. We also have an additional guest photographer, basspug. Thank you both for that! Without further ado, let’s see what Kapi has shared with us about the show at Trenčín Airport.
The setlist for this concert was the same one that was performed for all of the recent Munich shows. This is very interesting as some people had speculated that the setlist changes in Munich could possibly get reverted for shows outside of Germany. As the band is currently facing the most pressure from the media in their home country, the thought of them making changes to pose as statements there specifically does sound understandable. However, the Trenčín show does reaffirm that we might have now arrived at the final setlist for this tour leg… for better or for worse.
It is common for Rammstein to make changes to their setlists between the earlier dates of their tours. 2019 saw the omission of the song Sex after only three public shows. During the 2022 tour leg, Diamant was dropped after the first LIFAD rehearsal. No song was replaced or removed during the public concerts, however the concert intro was changed slightly after the first shows in Prague and the order of the songs on the setlist saw some short-lived changes during the first few concerts. This year’s tour leg has been rather… dynamic so far.
After not playing Angst during the LIFAD rehearsal concert in Vilnius and then unexpectedly adding it to the setlist for the public shows, we were already going through the motions. At that point, we did predict that more changes could follow, but nobody could have predicted the events that followed afterwards. The last show in Odense suddenly saw Ausländer as the main set closer, which rightfully merited a whole lot of people asking themselves: “What the hell?”
This change was reverted immediately for the Munich shows, only to change the “What the hell” into all-caps. WHAT THE HELL indeed, as the piano version of Ohne dich was missing from the B-Stage set, introducing one big emotional comeback of the full band version on the main stage after four years of the song not having been performed like this. To top it off, the song Pussy was not performed, leaving many fans in Feuerzone confused – and much drier as usual.
Now it seems like we can properly welcome Ohne dich full band version to the set and kiss Pussy goodbye (sentences with this song just always sound wrong). We have seen quite a few fans express disappointment about losing Pussy (goddammit). Who can blame them? It is nice to get sprayed with foam from a big penis cannon and then be covered in white confetti, making even Richard’s chicken coat jealous. Weh mir, oh weh.
Interestingly enough, for the fourth show in a row, the gong did not gong and the announcement asking the audience not to film was not played. By now, it is difficult to understand this as anything but if not encouragement to, then at least some kind of approval of filming during the show. That said, we believe Rammstein shows are definitely better experienced through own eyes rather than through the phone screen. While this might sound ironic given that at least one of us takes photos each show, we only try to shoot enough to give some glimpses of the concert and what took place, and put the phone away as much as possible to jump and sing and rock out. Highly recommended!
It seemed that Trenčín saw a rather seamless concert, with hardly any malfunctions or mishaps being reported to us. The most noticeable malfunction seemed to be the Puppe cam experiencing some freeze frames and glitches. During Angst, Till Lindemann started singing the line “Traue keinem Fremden dann” in the second verse too early, but he noticed and managed a pretty decent save by steering the sentence into the ending words of the correct line. He then altered the actual “Traue keinem Fremden dann” line slightly by singing “Traust du keinem Fremden dann”, probably so it would sound a little different and make the mishap less obvious.
At this point we’d like to note that we are decently impressed by Till’s improvisation skills when it comes to lyrics. He never just stops singing, but instead spontaneously invents new lines or mumbles fairly convincingly – a true professional. And highly entertaining sometimes, when you’re singing along, really feeling the song and suddenly you hear something like “hmzwr bmwn Fremden dann” and you’re torn between laughing, shaking your head or inventing your own mumbles to go along with it.
During Sehnsucht, Paul decided to add some guitar notes to the synth sounds between the verse lines, which made bassist Oliver Riedel visibly smile. Christoph Schneider seems to still be very grateful to the many fans who continue supporting the band in these difficult times as he blew a kiss towards the camera during the Puppe intro. During Mein Teil, Paul Landers and Olli sat down together and Paul subtly played a familiar circus-melody along with the synth backing. He has played this melody during Mein Teil before, for example in Prague in 2022. Till seemed to enact a little quarrel with a stage hand, which he seems to like doing every now and then. The Mein Teil background dancers were back as well, although only Schneider and Richard Z. Kruspe engaged in their little dance – Paul stood by their side but didn’t seem to feel like moving that particular evening. So much for symmetry, thank you, Paul. Instead of dancing, he started playing a subtle downwards-melody to accompany Schneider’s marching drums a little later.
The band members repeatedly get a diverse assortment of objects flung at them while riding the boats back from the B-Stage or sometimes even pick things up from the audience themselves. This time, Flake decided to take a Ukrainian flag, showing it to the crowd and taking it with him for the rest of the boat ride. Paul really seemed to enjoy some relaxation time in Trenčín as he spent the entire boat ride leaning back and just lying there at the back of his boat while his boat-mate Olli was as enthusiastic and energetic as ever a the front.
Unfortunately, we must report that the hopes for a proper return of the Ausländer outro with the kiss have been somewhat crushed as the two guitarists did not approach each other this time. In fact, the Ausländer outro was omitted completely and the band went straight into Du riechst so gut, which saw the return of the synchronised headbanging on the lower stage floor. Flake Lorenz has joined the other band members front of the stage lately, and this time, Oliver also came down to the front to line up with the others. It must feel bad being Schneider in this situation… poor drummers are always trapped in the same spot. During the freeze, Till decided to not freeze. He instead snuck around a bit and formed the “shhh” gesture towards the audience.
Contrary to his final words for the four Munich shows, there was no special goodbye message for the fans this time. Till simply thanked the crowd first in Slovak, then in English and finally in German by saying the words “Trenčín, ďakujeme, thank you very much, dankeschön”.
It was after the show was over that the real show had only begun for many people. With Trenčín Airport’s… somewhat limited means of transport to and from the venue, a lot of people reported being stuck in traffic jams for multiple hours. We even heard about accounts of the whole mess lasting up until 5am in the morning. That is impressively bad for such a concert. All in all, based on opinions of concert attendees on the internet, the general consensus seems to be pretty accurately represented by a common German saying:
Konzert hui, Organisation pfui. (Concert great, organisation shite.)
14.06.2023
- Rammlied
- Links 2-3-4
- Bestrafe mich
- Giftig
- Sehnsucht
- Mein Herz Brennt
- Puppe
- Angst
- Zeit
- Deutschland RMX
- Deutschland
- Radio
- Mein Teil
- Du hast
- Sonne
- Engel
(Piano version with Abélard) - Ausländer
- Du riechst so gut
- Ohne dich
- Rammstein
- Ich will
- Adieu
Sez and KidArctica are RammWiki editors who have been part of the website for years, working in the background with edits and content. Fun fact: We do not know anything about Kapi or basspug apart from their nicknames, but we assume they like Rammstein.
