mutter tour

Mutter Tour

The Mutter Tour was the third concert tour by Rammstein . It is named after the band's third album, Mutter , which was released on 2 April 2001. The tour had 116 concerts, the first one being on 13 May 2001 in Nuremberg (not counting the private shows for the members of the official fanclub on 1 and 11 May 2001 in Berlin) and the last on 13 July 2002 in Caminha, Portugal.

Subtours, tour legs and special performances

• 13.05.2001 – 09.06.2001: Support by Clawfinger
• 15.06.2001 – 16.06.2001: Support by HAM
• 03.07.2001 – 31.07.2001: Support by Godhead and Crossbreed (except for 14.07 and 29.07)
• 04.08.2001 – 06.08.2001: Support by Hocico
• 10.11.2001 – 19.11.2001: Support by Clawfinger
• 21.11.2001 – 23.11.2001: Support by No Big Silence
• 27.11.2001 – 15.12.2001: Support by Clawfinger
• 14.05.2002 – 18.05.2002: Support by American Head Charge and Raging Speedhorn
• 17.06.2002: Support by Clawfinger and Psyshit
• 19.06.2002: Support by Black Coffee
• 30.06.2002: Support by Dreadlock Pussy and Within Temptation

Notable concerts

• 01.05.2001 - The first performance of Nebel , Ich will and Pet Sematary .
• 13.05.2001 - The first public concert of the Mutter Tour.
• 18.05.2001 - This show was supposedly fully recorded. Ich will and Links 2-3-4 were released on Lichtspielhaus . Live audio of Ich will and Links 2-3-4 was also recorded here, and later released on the Tour Edition of the Mutter album.
• 01.06.2001 - The Ramones cover song Pet Sematary , released on the single Ich will , was recorded at this concert. Live audio of Sonne and Spieluhr was also recorded here, and later released on the Tour Edition of the Mutter album.
• 09.06.2001 - The last known performance of Nebel .
• 15.06.2001 - The first concert in Iceland.
• 18.07.2001 - During Pet Sematary , the band was joined by C.J. Ramone and Marky Ramone from the Ramones as well as Jerry Only from the Misfits.
• 24.10.2001 - Daron Malakian of System of a Down fell in for Paul during this concert.
• 08.11.2001 - Rammstein perform Ich will at the MTV Europe Music Awards.
• 12.11.2001 - The first performance of Halleluja .
• 17.11.2001 - The first concert in Russia, as well as the first known performance of Rammstein's version of Lied von der unruhevollen Jugend .
• 19.11.2001 - The last performance of Rammstein's version of Lied von der unruhevollen Jugend and 5/4 .
• 21.11.2001 - The first concert in Lithuania.
• 22.11.2001 - The first concert in Latvia.
• 23.11.2001 - The first concert in Estonia.
• 25.11.2001 - The first concert in Finland.
• 05.12.2001 - The last public performance of Spieluhr .
• 15.12.2001 - The last concert in 2001, as well as the last performance of Pet Sematary .
• 14.05.2002 - The first concert in Scotland and the first concert in 2002.
• 04.07.2002 - The first concert in Norway.
• 13.07.2002 - The last performance of Adios and Zwitter , as well as the last concert of the Mutter Tour and in 2002.

The setlist went through numerous different iterations during the tour, never remaining the same for extended periods of time. Due to this changing nature, not all dates are present in the tables below, only those that are known for sure. If one or more dates have an unknown setlist, but are grouped below, then it is assumed they shared a setlist with a known concert. When this is the case, a note will be present to signify this. The setlist of the TV performance on 8 November 2001 is also not included here.

Mutter Tour 2001: German leg

Mutter tour 2001: european summer leg, mutter tour 2001: north american leg, pledge of allegiance tour, mutter tour 2001: european winter leg, mutter tour 2002: european leg, stage, band apparel, live effects and stunts.

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Anne-Sophie Mutter

Anne-Sophie Mutter is a musical phenomenon: for more than 45 years the virtuoso has now been a fixture in all the world’s major concert halls, making her mark on the classical music scene as a soloist, mentor and visionary.

The four-time Grammy® Award winner is equally committed to the performance of traditional composers as to the future of music: so far she has given world premieres of 28 works – Unsuk Chin, Sebastian Currier, Henri Dutilleux, Sofia Gubaidulina, Witold Lutoslawski, Norbert Moret, Krzysztof Penderecki, Sir André Previn, Wolfgang Rihm, Jörg Widmann and John Williams have all composed for Anne-Sophie Mutter. She dedicates herself to supporting tomorrow’s musical elite and numerous benefit projects. Furthermore, the board of trustees of the German cancer charity “Deutsche Krebshilfe” elected her the new president of the non-profit organization in 2021. In the autumn of 1997 she founded the Association of Friends of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation e.V. , to which the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation was added in 2008. These two charitable institutions provide support for the scholarship recipients, support which is tailored to the fellows’ individual needs. Since 2011, Anne-Sophie Mutter has regularly shared the spotlight on stage with her ensemble of fellows, M utter’s Virtuosi .

In view of the coronavirus pandemic, all concert plans are currently contingent on the authorities’ regulations combatting the virus. For July 2021 there is hope that Anne-Sophie Mutter will be able to perform the world premiere of the Violin Concerto which John Williams has dedicated to her in Tanglewood. For the 2021/22 season, an extensive European tour with “Mutter’s Virtuosi” has been scheduled, during which the work Gran Cadenza for two violins, which Anne-Sophie Mutter commissioned from Unsuk Chin, is to be given its world premiere. The Brahms Double Concerto will be performed by Anne-Sophie Mutter and Pablo Ferrández with the Czech Philharmonic, conducted by Manfred Honeck. She will also tour with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Vasily Petrenko, playing André Previn’s Violin Concerto, also dedicated to her. In Asia, works by John Williams from the Across the Stars project feature on the programme – in collaboration with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of David Newman. In the USA, Anne-Sophie Mutter performs Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Chamber music programmes are also planned, featuring violin sonatas and piano trios by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with Lambert Orkis and Maximilian Hornung; further recitals with her long-standing piano partner will focus on works by Beethoven, Franck and Mozart. During a chamber music tour with current and former fellows of her foundation, various ensembles will perform Beethoven’s String Quartet in G-major Op. 18 No. 2, Haydn’s String Quartet in E-flat-major Op. 20 No. 1 as well as Jörg Widmann’s Studie über Beethoven , which she gave the world premiere of in Tokyo on February 22, 2020.

Discography

For her numerous recordings, Anne-Sophie Mutter has received four Grammies®, nine Echo Classic Awards, the German Recording Award, the Record Academy Prize, the Grand Prix du Disque and the International Phono Award.

On the occasion of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 250th birthday in 2006, Anne-Sophie Mutter presented new recordings of Mozart’s complete major compositions for violin.

In September 2008 her recording of Gubaidulina’s Violin Concerto In tempus praesens as well as the Bach Violin Concerti in A-Minor and E-Major was released.

During the Mendelssohn anniversary year of 2009, Anne-Sophie Mutter paid very personal homage to the composer, uniting solo concerto repertoire and chamber music on CD and DVD: the Violin Sonata in F-Major written in 1838, the Piano Trio in D-Minor completed a year later, and the Violin Concerto in E-Minor of 1845.

March 2010 saw the release of Anne-Sophie Mutter’s recording of the Brahms Violin Sonatas, performed with Lambert Orkis.

For her 35-year stage anniversary in 2011, Deutsche Grammophon released a comprehensive box set with all of the artist’s DG recordings, extensive documentary material and as-yet unpublished rarities. At the same time, an album of first recordings of pieces dedicated to the violinist by Wolfgang Rihm, Sebastian Currier and Krzysztof Penderecki appeared.

In October 2013 Anne-Sophie Mutter presented her first recording of the Dvořák Violin Concerto with conductor Manfred Honeck and the Berlin Philharmonic.

In May 2014 a double CD with recordings by Mutter and Orkis followed, commemorating the 25th anniversary of their collaboration: The Silver Album featuring the first recordings of Penderecki’s La Follia and Previn’s Violin Sonata No. 2.

The live recording Anne-Sophie Mutter – Live from Yellow Lounge of her club performance in Berlin was released on CD, vinyl, DVD and Blu-ray disc in 2015. This was the first live recording ever from a Yellow Lounge. On the podium at Neue Heimat Berlin, Anne-Sophie Mutter was joined by her long-standing piano accompanist Lambert Orkis, “Mutter’s Virtuosi” and the harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani. The programme covered three centuries of classical music – from Johann Sebastian Bach and Antonio Vivaldi to George Gershwin and John Williams – a combination chosen especially by Anne-Sophie Mutter for the club evenings.

Commemorating the 40-year stage anniversary of the charismatic artist, Deutsche Grammophon assembled the double CD Mutterissimo – The Art of Anne-Sophie Mutter , released in 2016. It assembles the highlights of her multi-faceted discography – personally selected by Anne-Sophie Mutter herself and focusing primarily on the past two decades of her impressive career.

In November 2017, Anne-Sophie Mutter and Daniil Trifonov released their first joint album, focusing on one of the most famous work in all the classical repertoire. Together with Hwayoon Lee, Maximilian Hornung and Roman Patkoló, they recorded Schubert’s Piano Quintet in A-major, generally known as the “Trout Quintet”. The programme also included Schubert’s Notturno, a masterful late work for violin, cello and piano, as well as his songs Ständchen and Ave Maria , arranged for violin and piano.

Krzysztof Penderecki’s 85th birthday was honoured by Deutsche Grammophon in 2018 with a double album including all the works he has dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter, including her first recording of the Sonata for Violin and Piano No. 2: a sensitive and touching homage by the violinist to her musical friend and companion.

In 2018, Deutsche Grammophon also commemorated the 40-year anniversary of Anne-Sophie Mutter’s first recording by re-releasing her earliest concerto recordings in a deluxe hardcover edition entitled The Early Years – featuring violin concerti by Mozart (Nos. 3 and 5), Beethoven, Bruch and Mendelssohn. Thanks to the new, high-resolution audio format 2.2 24bit/192kHz, the listener has the impression of being in the violinist’s immediate vicinity.

In August 2019, Across the Stars , her album with some of the most brilliant works by the composer and multiple Oscar-winner John Williams, was released, for which Williams adapted most of the recorded works especially for her.

Anne-Sophie Mutter, Yo-Yo Ma and Daniel Barenboim recorded Beethoven’s Triple Concerto together, celebrating the composer’s 250 th anniversary. The album also commemorates the 20-year anniversary of the founding of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. It was released on May 8, 2020, 40 years after the legendary recording of the Triple Concerto by Anne-Sophie Mutter and Yo-Yo Ma under Herbert von Karajan’s baton.

In August 2020 it was followed by John Williams in Vienna : the legendary American film composer conducted the Vienna Philharmonic for the first time in January 2020; the recording documents this historical performance of film history milestones. For the Musikverein audience, Anne-Sophie Mutter performed a selection of the virtuoso adaptations which Williams created especially for her, including Hedwig’s Theme from Harry Potter, Devil’s Dance from The Witches of Eastwick and the theme from Sabrina . In February 2021 the so-called “live edition” of this concert appeared, including six bonus tracks and John Williams’ remarks from the podium, introducing each work on the Viennese programme.

Benefit Concerts

Anne-Sophie Mutter also takes a keen interest in alleviating medical and social problems of our times. She supports various causes through regular benefit concerts. Thus, in 2019 she played for projects of Save the Children in Yemen. In 2020 three benefit concerts were scheduled, all of which had to be cancelled: The concert at the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn will now take place in December 2021; replacement dates for the foundation “Leipzig hilft Kindern” and the London-based organization “Crisis”, which aids homeless people, are still being coordinated.

On October 16, 2019, Anne-Sophie Mutter was honoured to receive the Praemium Imperiale in the music category; in June she received the Polar Music Prize. Poland awarded the Gloria Artis Gold Medal for Cultural Achievements to Anne-Sophie Mutter in March 2018, making her the first German artist to receive such an honour. In February 2018 she was named an Honorary Member of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Romania awarded the Order of Cultural Merit in the rank of a Grand Officer to Anne-Sophie Mutter in November 2017; during the same month France honoured her by presenting her with the insignia of a Commander of the French Order of the Arts and Literature. In December 2016, the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports awarded her the “Medalla de oro al Mérito en las Bellas Artes” (Gold Medal for Merits in the Fine Arts). In January 2015 Anne-Sophie Mutter was named an Honorary Fellow of Keble College at the University of Oxford. In October 2013 she became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, after winning the medal of the Lutoslawski Society (Warsaw) in January. In 2012 the Atlantic Council bestowed the Distinguished Artistic Leadership Award upon her. In 2011 she received the Brahms Prize as well as the Erich Fromm Prize and the Gustav Adolf Prize for her social activism. In 2010 the Technical-Scientific University of Norway in Trondheim bestowed an honorary doctorate upon her; in 2009 she won the European St. Ulrich Award as well as the Cristobal Gabarron Award. In 2008 Anne-Sophie Mutter was the recipient of the International Ernst von Siemens Music Prize as well as the Leipzig Mendelssohn Prize.

The violinist has been awarded the German Grand Order of Merit, the French Medal of the Legion of Honour, the Bavarian Order of Merit, the Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria, and numerous other honours.

• SCP Chamber Music

Anne-Sophie Mutter & Mutter Virtuosi

The eminent German violinist arrives with her Mutter Virtuosi, an ensemble comprised chiefly of current and former scholarship recipients of the Anne-Sophie Mutter Foundation. The emerging string stars present Vivaldi’s beloved Four Seasons , along with a concerto by Joseph Bologne, the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and Unsuk Chin’s Gran Cadenza , a virtuoso duo for violins.

• Venue Symphony Center
• Length 1 hour 50 minutes
• Program Book Read more

Concerto for Four Violins in B Minor

Gran Cadenza

Violin Concerto in A Major, Op. 5, No. 2

The Four Seasons

The Long Goodbye [Encore]

Allegro non molto from Violin Concerto in F Minor, RV 297 ( L'inverno ) [Encore]

Nice to Be Around [Encore]

Internationally acclaimed violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter presents the world premiere recording of John Williams’ Violin Concerto No. 2. The concerto immortalizes the deep connection between the composer and violinist, who have collaborated on several recordings in the last decade. Find this recording, as well as other highlights of Mutter’s discography, including her recent recording of Brahms’ Double Concerto with Pablo Ferrández, at the Symphony Store.

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Flames, fetishes and pickled babies: the twisted story of Rammstein‘s Mutter

How Rammstein’s third album, Mutter, took them from cult band to global metal superpower

The headline screamed, ‘Nazis? Heil no!’ This wasn’t one of the usual outrageous tabloid rags, though – this was a mainstream UK music publication. Why? The year was 1998 and a band had used footage of Leni Riefenstahl’s 1938 film, Olympia , in their latest music video – a cover of Depeche Mode ’s Stripped . While originally created as propaganda for the infamous ‘Nazi Olympics’, the movie is now routinely name-checked as a vital moment in cinematic history. But the band in question were German, sparking fears of fascism.

It was Rammstein : the Berlin six-piece who’d lived under hardline socialist rule in the German Democratic Republic. The staunchly liberal band. The band with the fire. The band with the dildos. But Britain didn’t know all that yet…

“We are not Nazis, Neo-Nazis, or any other kind of Nazi,” said the band emphatically in a statement quoted in the piece, stating that the footage was used as an example of good art. “We are against racism, bigotry or any other type of discrimination.”

It was a strange start for a band who were about to embark on an effort to win over Britain. “They were convinced it would never happen in the UK,” says Anna Maslowicz, the PR guru who took Rammstein under her wing a year or so after that headline. “The first time I met them, I said, ‘You’re gonna be playing stadiums in the future.’ And they said, ‘Never. We’ll never be accepted here. We sing in German.’”

That admission seems surprising in light of how things were going for the band. While their debut album, 1995’s Herzeleid , flopped onto CD players and was met with a somewhat flaccid reception, it caught the ear of Nine Inch Nails ’ Trent Reznor and filmmaking legend David Lynch – they loved it so much, two songs ended up on Lynch’s 1997 neo-noir cinematic nightmare, Lost Highway . 

Album Nummer zwei, Sehnsucht , booted the door down later that year. Its lead single, Engel , reached No.3 in the German singles charts. Up next was Du Hast , now a setlist staple, which somehow became a US radio hit and pipped The Smashing Pumpkins to a heavy rotation slot on MTV.

They were playing to thousands of devotees in mainland Europe and blowtorching a serious reputation across the pond. Thorsten Zahn, former editor of German alternative magazine Visions and the current editor-in-chief at Metal Hammer Germany, was sold hook, line and sphincter from day one. But as Rammstein hunkered down to make the album that would become Mutter , a seed of doubt sprouted in his brain: how could the band exceed expectations again?

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“Everyone was afraid which direction they’d go next,” he says of the band’s Deutsche fanbase. “Everyone was nervous that the third record would turn out bad.”

There was one man who definitely wasn’t nervous: Jacob Hellner. The Swedish producer had already worked with the band on Herzeleid and Sehnsucht , and would continue to produce every record save for 2019’s self-titled. He remembers the mid-1999 gestation period of Rammstein’s defining chapter.

“[With] how the music world worked back in those days, your third album would define whether you were there to stay or just a flash in the pan,” he explains. “They realised that, and even though they’d had massive hits with Sehnsucht , they still had the bravery to follow their artistic instinct and go where they went.

“They rented Haus Weimar in Heiligendamm, a small town by the Baltic Sea,” he continues. “It was a hangout for the East German political top brass, and in those days, it was really worn down – they rented the caretaker’s house. The whole foundation of the album was laid out in that house.”

Aside from the presence of a minor celebrity – the German Shepherd who played Hitler’s dog in 2004’s Downfall , if you were curious – these sessions were unremarkable and workmanlike. The next year saw Rammstein road-test pretty much the entire album at a fan club gig in Berlin, before recording the tracks in France’s Studio Miraval.

Musically, it was a definite swerve from the hyperactive, videogame-ish industrial metal of albums prior. Mutter ’s grandiose chuggery was accentuated with the help of the Deutsches Filmorchester Babelsberg, whose swelling strings run through the title track, Mein Herz Brennt and Nebel . Jacob had a very specific, very German target in mind for the sound: Richard Wagner. But there was nearly a cock-up. 

“I’ve always had a soft spot for when they did that kind of drama, which was possible in the slower and mid-tempo stuff – there was more space to really go into those colours,” he says. “The orchestra was a high and low point at the same time. We’d been recommended someone to transpose it – these notes by the cellos, these by the violas, and so on. We had this enormously expensive orchestra come into this enormously expensive studio [Studio Saal 1, Berlin], and when they started to play the music, it just sounded strange. Really awkward. We were so fucking stressed out, and not until we’d done that for two or three hours did we realise that this transcription guy had changed stuff – he’d changed the arrangements! We convinced the orchestra to come back the next day, and the guy spent all night redoing it.”

Once recorded, Jacob mixed Mutter alongside Stefan Glaumann and hashed it out with the band, often for hours at a time. “The post-production discussions became quite heated, with various camps – me included – taking sides and trying to convince the other half whether a particular track should be included or not!” Jacob laughs. “That’s their strength. They can have these never-ending discussions and end up with Rammstein.”

The focus fell on acoustic-sounding percussion locking into those regimented, mechanical riffs – something else Jacob appears to have had a hand in.

“Composition-wise, Jacob is a very important key in the chain – that was a role not many people got to see, except the band,” says Ronald Prent, the mixing engineer responsible for Rammstein’s core sound on Herzeleid and Sehnsucht , who also oversaw preliminary Mutter mixes in June 2000. “The band has great ideas, great riffs, and Till [Lindemann, vocals] writes amazing lyrics and controls the German language like no other… but Jacob was the common denominator that brought it together into a song.”

Speaking of the German language, on the run-up to Mutter ’s release, Anna was preparing a proper push for Rammstein’s PR campaign in the UK. Before this, the band had only played one UK show, at London’s Powerhaus in 1997. Essentially a pub, the venue bore witness to Till taking the stage with laser goggles before setting himself on fire. One publication gave it three out of five. Rammstein needed someone to give a shit. 

“At the start, they did all the interviews using a translator,” says Anna. “Christoph and Paul [Schneider and Landers, on drums and guitar respectively] came over and did interviews. People felt a bit uncomfortable, so I explained that English wasn’t their first language, and it shouldn’t be a hindrance – they shouldn’t not be able to do press because they can’t speak perfect English. I think, because of that piece [with the Nazi headline], they didn’t want to be misunderstood or misquoted.

“The only hard bit was persuading people about interviews with a translator,” she continues. “People were aware of them, but they hadn’t really come to the UK and done anything. People needed access to them – be exposed to them – for them to progress in the UK.”

On April 2, 2001, Mutter was born. The baffling, Snow White -themed music video for lead single Sonne had been doing the rounds on music television, and before anyone could fully sink into Mutter ’s musical embrace, they had to look at that cover. Photographed by German couple Daniel and Geo Fuchs, it frames the vulnerable, heartbreaking image of a dead foetus preserved in formaldehyde. 

“The cover was a big scandal in Germany, as everyone said, ‘You cannot show a dead baby!’”, recalls Thorsten, who’d just started as editor at Metal Hammer Germany. “Then they said, ‘Well, is it really dead? Is it not dead? Are you allowed to show a dead baby on the front cover of a major record?’. Then you saw the photos of all the guys in the liquid too. This was something that they directed. They wanted it. They’re a magnet for provocation.”

No matter what people thought of the artwork, Mutter ’s sonic content was too explosive to deny. As with every Rammstein record, it comprises 11 songs – they sprint across a 45-minute run-time, spattering the music and lyrics further across the canvas than ever before. The riffs hit harder, the vocals more commanding, the drums punchier, the keys dripping with sorrow and silliness in equal measure. It was Rammstein 2.0, and with Ich Will, Feuer Frei!, Sonne and Links 2 3 4 , it had absolute tunes for days. Irrefutable proof that they had more in their locker than just Du Hast and a worn-out strap-on.

“Fucking hell, it is… bangers,” says Winston McCall, vocalist of Parkway Drive – a band whose fire-fuelled live show is indebted to the Germans’ onstage chaos. “I’m hooked from the word ‘go’. Mein Herz Brennt , as an opening track, sets the tone so well. The grandness straight-up, the strings coming in straight away, then the female vocalisations coming in the whole way through the record, tying it with that whole Mutter theme – it’s fucking genius.”

For Winston, an Australian, the maternal theme is more apparent through the music. But for Thorsten, and German listeners at large, Mutter was more than thematic – its effect was profoundly literal. “A record called Mutter – ‘mother’ – is a pretty strong expression,” Thorsten elaborates. “[Most people] have a very special relationship to their own mother, and if you like this band and the sound they put on a record called Mutter , all of a sudden you have a special relationship to this record.

“The diversity of the songs made this pretty intense,” he continues. “ Links 2 3 4 , that’s where they show their political views – they do left-wing lyrics with a marching military beat. When Till sings ‘Sie wollen mein Herz am rechten Fleck / Doch sehe ich dann nach unten weg / Da schlägt es links / Links’ [translated loosely as ‘They want my heart on the right spot / But then I look below it beats left there / Left’], for a German audience, it is crazy to hear. Then you look down at yourself and see that your heart too beats at the left side. Everyone’s does.”

Elsewhere, the band venture into gentler territories – the aforementioned title track and Nebel , the record’s coda, achieve the melancholy balladeering the band hadn’t quite nailed on previous outings. For the latter, Rammstein re-enlisted Bobo: the singer whose syrupy vocals made Engel such a hit four years prior (see “I was touched by its timeless beauty”, right). Here, though, she’s slight – almost hidden, an Easter Egg for anyone listening properly. After banging your head and thumping your thighs like Till does onstage, it’s almost a relief… until you cotton on to what the song’s about.

“It’s a fog in the morning, and it’s about this relationship between two older people,” says Thorsten. “She will obviously die, and this is the last kiss she will get from him. It’s so intense – you can really cry to it.”

Mutter was more significant than just a piece of plastic on a CD deck or turntable. Sure, reviews were a bit middling, and people still used Nazi puns that went out of fashion at the same time as the Third Reich. But the album instantly topped the charts in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Of its five (five!) initial singles, Ich Will and Feuer Frei! crept into the UK Top 40. Clearly, somebody liked it. For the fans, this was the moment Rammstein became more than just a band – they were now something you had to consume, experience, live and breathe. It was a phenomenon the press couldn’t ignore any longer. 

“I’ve never had so many industry people blag tickets off me for shows,” laughs Anna, who has counted the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Blink-182 as PR clients. “We concentrated on the rock press for the actual interviews, but for the live shows, we went, ‘Right, let’s invite the NME , let’s invite all the broadsheets.’ And the reviews were just amazing – ‘You’ll never see a show like this, it’s next level.’ It’s so much more than a live show.”

Covering more than 100 dates between May 2001 and July 2002, the Mutter tour brought Rammstein’s musical step-up to life, flinging them from theatres to arenas in most territories. Kitted out with lifeless tiles to conjure images of an old-fashioned, East German delivery room, the show started with the band’s keyboard player, Flake, at his instrument.

“We’d had an old dentist’s chair repurposed for me to use as a keyboard stand, and I wore a white doctor’s coat,” he writes in his book, It’s The World’s Birthday Today . “Tom [Morawetz, the band’s long-term tour assistant] came up with the idea of pinning a blood bag to it. Lord knows where he got hold of that.”

From there, he started fingering the ghastly opening to 5/4 , one of Mutter ’s criminally overlooked B-sides. A massive, red, pulsating uterus descended from the venue’s ceiling. 

“I designed a huge uterus that they came out of,” LeRoy Bennett, an A-list lighting and production designer, told Hammer in 2019. “The birthing canal they were coming out of was a tube that was used for escaping out of a fire, and it had fireproof webbing on the inside that zig-zagged through it. Normally you’d have clothes on while going down it, but because they were coming through in diapers, their skin would get web-burned, so we had to cut the tube short so they could slide out easier.”

It was a swerve into the absurd on an unprecedented scale, larger than life and completely one-off. Just six years prior, they’d supported Swedish rap metallers Clawfinger in 500-capacity clubs. Now Rammstein’s fortunes had changed, they returned the favour and offered the Swedes a support slot. 

“When Mutter came, it was like a new definition of heavy,” says Clawfinger’s co-founder and keyboard player, Jocke Skog. “We only realised [how popular Rammstein had become] when we came to the first show of the tour and saw this incredible, huge spaceship theatre going on, and it was to, like, 20,000 people! They told us, ‘We’ve put 80% of all the money we make back into this tour.’

“They had huge bangs going on – we could feel it when we were sat eating in catering,” he details. “It was like an old American action movie with bombs, explosions and absolutely no plot. I’ve always been a tech geek too, and they had two full-sized Apple computers, with one for backup. We were standing in one of those 20,000-capacity venues, you can hear the birth of the band, then suddenly it’s pitch black. Silence, for 30 seconds. We looked at each other like, ‘Holy fuck, the computer died!’ The audience was like, ‘Are we supposed to clap now?’ Then suddenly, Mein Herz Brennt starts. I asked what the fuck happened, and they were like, ‘Yeah, the first computer broke, then the second one broke, so we had to restart the whole thing – fuck the intro.’ One guy was still hanging from the uterus, ha! It was like, ‘BLACKOUT, REMOVE EVERYTHING, GET THEIR CLOTHES ON!’”

Hold-ups in the ute-chute aside, the Mutter tour seemingly went off without a hitch. Even the postponement of Rammstein’s much-hyped London show couldn’t dent their momentum – the local authorities pulled their gig at the 2,000-capacity Astoria at the last minute due to safety concerns, but it was rearranged for later in 2001, at the much larger Brixton Academy. The album only peaked at #86 in the UK charts, but you can’t stand between the British public and a concert where the singer pretends to spunk all over the keyboard player. 

“After that first media run, they never looked back,” says Anna. “The UK embraced them.”

Everything was finally happening, until it wasn’t. A September/October US tour supporting Slipknot and System Of A Down was cut short for Rammstein, due to inter-personal tensions compounded by the 9/11 terror attacks. Richard Kruspe, the band’s guitarist, actually saw the second plane hit. Flake packed his bags and headed home mid-tour. “We totally slipped into this wave of hysteria, and I found the frenzied atmosphere very frightening,” he said in 2015’s Rammstein In Amerika documentary.

They didn’t return to North America for nine years, and in that time, their legend grew there as it did around the globe. Because Rammstein are the only band to have ever done this – to make a success of uncompromising, industrial, German metal filtered through a transgressive, performance art lens. It’s best suited for Berlin bondage dungeons, not Olympic stadiums. So why were they playing Feuer Frei! in the opening scenes of blockbuster movies like xXx , warming audiences up for two hours of shit-housery with Vin Diesel?

“As far as Mutter goes, it is sloganeering done to fucking perfection – every chorus is literally, like, a line,” says Winston. “Everything about it is made to get into your brain, and it’s pounded in there by riffs that are fucking relentless. There’s always a lot of tongue in cheek with whatever Rammstein do, of course there fucking is, but this is the one where the seriousness of the art can’t be fucked with. That, accompanied by dudes shitting flames out of their faces.”

In 2021, it’s still watertight. Peter Tägtgren, the producer who’s worked with everyone from Immortal to Amon Amarth, Children Of Bodom and Till Lindemann himself, cites the record as a lesson in how the genre should sound. The singles are regular rock club staples, and still occupy a sizeable chunk of the setlist whenever Rammstein drag their macabre monolith of a show on the road. It’s endlessly replayable: the jewel in the band’s kinky crown. 

Thorsten puts their success down to camaraderie. “They stayed together like a family,” he concludes. “Like best friends. Nobody from the outside can bring anything between them – they do everything by their own rules. They’re doing these super-huge pyros you never thought of in a stadium, artwork you never thought possible, lyrics people would go to jail for – you know what I mean? They try everything. No borders.”

Published in Metal Hammer #347

Alec is a longtime contributor with first-class BA Honours in English with Creative Writing, and has worked for Metal Hammer since 2014. Over the years, he's written for Noisey, Stereoboard, uDiscoverMusic, and the good ship Hammer, interviewing major bands like Slipknot, Rammstein, and Tenacious D (plus some black metal bands your cool uncle might know). He's read  Ulysses  thrice, and it got worse each time.

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2011 - 2023 Virtuosi Tours

Europe the mutter virtuosi tours summer 2023.

The programme includes two works by J. S. Bach, his Violin Concerto No. 1 in A-minor and the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G-major. In addition, André Previn’s Nonet, commissioned by Anne-Sophie Mutter for Mutter’s Virtuosi and dedicated to Anne-Sophie Mutter, will be performed, alongside the Concerto for 3 Violins in F major by Antonio Vivaldi and the Violin Concerto in A-major Op. 5 No. 2 by Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint Georges. Fourteen string players and Knut Johannessen at the harpsichord will perform under Anne-Sophie Mutter’s leadership.

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The Mutter Virtuosi – Ensemble June 2023

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Mutter’s Virtuosi – Ensemble August / September 2023

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