Support act Apocalyptica were something of a surprise – somehow having not managed to hear them before, they were fantastic. Highlight – christ, where do I start? Seek and Destroy was incredible, the intro spiel to Bittersweet was hilarious (lets just say he wasn’t too complimentary about the vocalists on the track – Ville from HIM and Lauri from The Rasmus…), Enter Sandman and Master of Puppets weren’t bad either…

One thing is for sure – you can see why Metallica did S+M after hearing this…

As usual, Rammstein were frankly in a different league to just about every other live band. Pretty much the same set as when we saw them in Prague late last year, but as Andy noted the other day, with a few tweaks. Firstly, the somewhat weak sound of Moskau and Amerika have both been sorted out, and they both now sound immense. Standard opening of course, Reise Reise followed by the stompfest that is Links 2 3 4, unfortunately the crowd seemed somewhat subdued throughout.

Highlights this time ’round were headed of course by the mayhem of Mein Teil‘s stageshow (which when viewed closer to the stage, as we were, revealed some subtle touches that are otherwise missed – like the fact that Flake plays the keyboard from within the cauldron!), and spectacular pyrotechnics as ever – Morgenstern‘s finish with flares sweeping down from above being the best, although the longbow in Du Reichst So Gut was rather cool too!

I could go on and on, it was so good – but the fact is that most people on here have now seen them at least once (that was my fourth time seeing them live), so I’ll leave it mostly at that. Roll on next time…