The year is 2019. It's been a decade (well nine and a half years) since Rammstein have released a new album. Liebe is Fur Alle Da still rings out in households around the world. But in the distance there's a rumbling. A European Rammstein Summer tour is coming. And it's coming this year.
Rammstein have been teasing new music and information for over a year now. Letting us know they're in the studio, things have been written and just generally creating hype. However when a mixture of posters and projections starting popping up around Europe, people started going off the chain. With little information, just dates with stadium imagery in various cities, speculation went wild. Is a new album imminent? Are these tour dates? Are these tour dates for a new album? Are Rammstein planning a global invasion using pyrotechnics to hypnotise us all into becoming Metal slaves? Ok, so no-one thought that one, but fans and non-fans alike were beginning to wonder.
But eventually it came out. A summer tour, hitting stadiums across Europe. With the full announcement, we feel that an album is close. But there's still no word on new music. Many believed we'd see some new tracks in Mexico at New Years, but sadly (sadly? There's no such thing as a sad Rammstein show) no new tracks (but a nice surprise of Mein Teil making a live comeback after not appearing since 2013).
Now looking at the UK date, many starting questioning before the full announcement dropped, if we'd get a headline slot at Download or even an appearance at all. After their previous Download shows (which both sit in the top 5 Donnington sets for a lot of people - myself included), it's pretty obvious to see why people would want their return. But instead of headlining arguably one of the bigger European festivals, they announced a single Milton Keynes date.
So, what do we think this means? There's nothing wrong with the bowl at all. It's got everything you need for a one off show. Huge capacity, great train lines, epic history of shows (looking at you Foo Fighters). And to top it all off, if you book out a stadium for an evening, you don't need a support act. In fact, you drop a lot of the limitations of a festival slot. Want to play an entire 4 hour show? Sure, go for it. (Ok, yes GnR did a 3 hour show at Download, but that was really not a typical thing). Now we can't be sure if they were approached to play Donnington, but after playing 2013 and 2016, I don't think many would be surprised if Mr Copping had approached them to make it 3 for 3.
So, from our point of view, this is all signs pointing to an album release pre-tour. With news dropping pretty much weekly of members of the band saying snippets, such as they're planning to tour for 3 to 4 years with this album and they're currently doing the final mix, we're placing our bets on the album dropping within the month. And with the album dropping, this gives the scope for this European tour to debut potentially the whole affair live. Without the restrictions of a festival slot, where they are playing to a crowd of both fans, newcomers and non-fans, a dedicated show, where they can pick the timings, create the staging with no limitations and can write whatever setlist they dream of, there is potential to play both an entire new album (potentially from start to finish) and also give a handful of greatest hits.
These European dates may be the pinnacle of Rammsteins music career to date. We aren't sure, but we'd rate the chances highly. Either way. It's been 10 years and we're hungry for Mehr.