Rammstein - Lichtspielhaus DVD
Motor Music
Industrial
20 songs (210")
Release year: 2004
Rammstein, Motor Music
Reviewed by Jay

After putting out such an amazing release in Reise, Reise, let’s examine Rammstein’s far overlooked release for this year. Without too much fanfare, this DVD was released earlier this year. It is a collection of all things Rammstein.

What most fans will want is the 12 videos that form the crux of this disc. It has all of their videos through the Mutter album. Some of them are old favorites like “Du Hast” and “Seemann” but there are some gems like the rarely seen “Du Riechst So Gut ‘98” and “Stripped.” Particularly “Du Riechst So Gut ’98” is amazing. It had a high budget so there are some excellent special effect shots. “Stripped” isn’t as rare as it would seem. The video was a hidden bonus on the Live Aus Berlin DVD. There are some short featurettes for the making of several of the videos. Each one interviews the band as well as the directors and talks about their inspirations and artistic views for the videos. In all of these shorts, look out for Paul Landers. He usually has jokes to tell or is doing something that’s pretty funny.

Another large portion of the content is concert highlights from various gigs the band has played over the last eight years. You can tell that they’ve become successful as the venues keep becoming larger until the last video which was taken at the Berlin Velodrom. The Big Day Out festival in Sydney is like watching the band play through a blizzard. The smoke machine malfunctioned and the stage was so smoky that the band can barely be seen through the haze. I’m surprised this made it on the disc as the performance is somewhat marred by the smoke. Conspicuously absent from the live footage is the infamous “Bück Dich” performance that was left off of the Live Aus Berlin DVD but made it to the uncensored cut of the video version. The rest of the disc is a mixed bag. There’s a strange “TV Trailer” included which is basically a promotional video for the band. In the same vein there are advertisements for Rammstein albums that presumably ran on German television.

The DVD menus for this disc are horrible. I like animated menus as much as the next guy but these are too much. The introduction to the menu takes forever and the menu itself is a pain to navigate. There are long extended breaks between the sub menus and it is annoying to read the tiny print font the menu options have. What ever you do, don’t try and play this in your computer. The complex menus crashed every computer I tried this disc on. The DVD programmers even knew the menus were complex and caused problems with DVD players. They included keypad shortcuts in the booklet. This is a major, major flaw with the disc. The booklet is nothing special. Aside from the standard credits, there are some still photos from the “Du Hast” video and another picture of a hillside.

This is going to be an essential disc to own for any Rammstein fan but casual admirers might as well just skip this. While this disc does have a vast amount of good content, I’m guessing that Rammstein will release another disc in the future with a similar format and even more content.

Killing Songs :
All the Rammstein Singles
Jay quoted no quote
Other albums by Rammstein that we have reviewed:
Rammstein - Zeit reviewed by Goat and quoted 75 / 100
Rammstein - Untitled reviewed by Goat and quoted 80 / 100
Rammstein - Mein Land (single) reviewed by Aleksie and quoted no quote
Rammstein - Liebe Ist Für Alle Da reviewed by Goat and quoted 90 / 100
Rammstein - Rosenrot reviewed by Danny and quoted 60 / 100
To see all 11 reviews click here
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