Rammstein Concert Tour Rocked by Sexual Assault Claims

German rock band Rammstein has tightened security and canceled afterparty events for a series of upcoming concerts in Munich after several women came forward alleging they were drugged and abused at the band’s recent concerts.

The allegations, which the band has denied, have triggered a media firestorm around the popular industrial metal group and its controversial lead singer Till Lindemann amid Rammstein’s current pan-European tour.

Last Thursday, Shelby Lynn, a Rammstein fan from Northern Ireland, posted on Instagram that she had been drugged at a concert in Vilnius, Lithuania, and taken backstage, where Lindemann had asked her for sex. She refused and he left, she said, but she was disoriented and later discovered several bruises on her body that had not been there before the concert.

Over the weekend, German newspapers Die Welt am Sonntag and Süddeutsche Zeitung published independent investigations based on multiple similar accounts of young women who reported being drugged or abused at Rammstein concerts. Several of the women said they were picked to stand together in “Row Zero,” the first row directly in front of the stage, where they would be filmed and photographed, and, the women allege, selected to join Lindemann backstage for afterparty events.

Rammstein posted an official statement on Monday saying the group takes the allegations “extremely seriously” and condemn all forms of abuse, adding that the band’s fans should feel safe “in front and behind the stage” at shows. But the bandmembers also say they have a right to “not be pre-judged.”

Still, the allegations have already had an impact. Lindemann took down his own Instagram account over the weekend and corporate sponsors have distanced themselves from the singer. Cologne-based publisher Kiepenheuer & Witsch, who published two collections of Lindemann’s poetry, said they had immediately ended their collaboration with the 60-year-old frontman. German drug store chain Rossmann pulled Rammstein-branded perfume — which goes under the names “Sex”, “Pussy” and “Cocaine” — from its physical and online stores following publication of the allegations.

For the German arm of the band’s European tour, which kicks off with four concerts in Munich’s Olympic Park stadium this week — on Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Monday — there will be no afterparties and no “row zero”, according to organizers Propeller Music & Event GmbH.