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In the end, the rain comes and fireworks explode in the sky above the Wuhlheide. Tokio Hotel play “through the Monsun” and the rain machines do a great job. As a precaution, the rain capes branded with the logos of the band and a large telephone company were distributed to the 17,000 spectators.
The final point and for many highlights of a concert with which the band from Magdeburg celebrates the anniversary of their career start: exactly 20 years ago, “through the Monsun” ran on the radio for the first time. There were the twin brothers Bill and Tom Kaulitz 16.
In the audience, many who were probably between 12 and 18 at the time, some accompanied by their parents, others with their own children. Many tattoos and an above-average number of fan shirts, many of the different tours of the band, the “Ich-War-Dabei” trophies. The generation Tokio Hotel, which at a time when gender fluidity was not yet a trademark, identified with Bill Kaulitz, which differed in his self -determined eccentricity from other young stars to be had.
But there were also significantly younger fans in the Wuhlheide, and not just from Germany. They sing the newer, English -language songs of the band, may have been released in the crawling group when “by the Monsun”. Tokio Hotel has apparently succeeded in doing something less likely: a second career as a band, not just as an entertaining duo Kaulitz & Kaulitz.
It was a way: grew up in the village of Loitsche in the Magdeburg Börde, Tokio Hotel became a teenage sensation of the nuller years, five years later the twin brothers moved to Los Angeles. An escape from the narrow, even from anti -queer attacks. They are now singing English, pumping their music with electrobeats, looking for international recognition. And also at its anniversary concert in Berlin, the set is divided a bit into the pre- and after-La. Time, even if the efforts of the four musicians are clear to level up the songs. Tokio Hotel Today is a kind of glam-rock, tired, electrified, capable of stadium.
All smartphones on Heidi Klum
Heidi Klum, however, sets the first highlight on this evening when she marches with her retinue and camera team from the backstage- in the VIP area, and turn all smartphones in their direction. Also sighted there: Palina Rojinski, Wilson Gonzales Ochsenknecht, Olli Schulz.
Bill Kaulitz wears a sequence of racing drivers and silver shimmering platform boots when he is left on the boards on a steel rope from the stage sky. Bill Kaulitz wears black jeans and a van-dutch shirt, bassist Georg Listing very black and drummer Gustav Schäfer an official merch shirt. Everyone on their own hydraulic platform. But Tokio Hotel is obviously a band, and still in terms of primary line -up, which Bill Kaulitz seems to be surprised.
“Ready Set Go”, the audience sings along from the start. And no longer stops. The show is a spectacle, as you don’t know it from German bands, may be targeting Rammstein. Everything is driven on (and from): hydraulics, rotary modules, fire fountains, fog swaths, light domes, laser flashes, snippet waterfalls, glitter cannons, Hug cams, drones. A noise-colored LED flicker, slogan and image flood as if you had put power plant on LSD. Placatively like Tom Kaulitz ‘rich heavy riffs and the EDM length in tracks such as “The Heart Get No Sleep”. Imperial like Bill Kaulitz’s change of costumes – to “Love Who Loves You Back” he steps onto the stage with a mixture of crown and caesaren helmet and pink fur guitar, crazy kinky and nicely. He conducts his audience, not only through the practiced choreo, but also with a dozen more or less spontaneous.
The teenagers from back then, still touched today
With “Dead lover” the first German -language song and, interestingly, a reduced acoustic set with twenty -year -old hits like “I am not me” and “save me”, self -loving pain lovers who still seem to move deeply, today in the middle. In the sky a bombastic drone light show, a hi-tech spectacle bleached.
Oversized? Clear. Like everything here, and yet very coherent in his cheerful overwhelming, between Kaulitz ‘down-to-earth champagne joke and the grip for the show starry sky. The fact that strength club singer Felix Kummer jumps onto the stage with Bill Kaulitz then refers again to the East German background of the band, from which both Tokio Hotel and Kraftklub have long since grown out, which has also shaped them.
And when Bill comes on stage again in front of the water fountain final with a new costume (a kind of diamond-occupied cat) and starts a dressed version of “Careless Whisper”, it becomes clear that it is not so clear and simple. But you get a feeling for what teenagers it means twenty years ago, you can hear a 16-year-olds from Saxony-Anhalt, who was styled at the time with black mane, nail polish, nail polish and tons of quays, that everything will be fine when you only fought through the monsoon.