Ever since last year, when I was finally able to pay a visit to the Mecca of metalheads, Wacken Open Air, I’d been looking forwards to revisiting the festival. The mixture of meeting people from all over the world and seeing great bands from the entire metal-spectrum for three whole days is something you can’t help but love, and the tiny German town Wacken is the ideal place for getting just that. Since I arrived at the campsite on Tuesday, I had a whole day to settle down and catch up with old friends, warming up to the party that was soon to follow.
Thursday
The first concert I decided to attend for this year’s festival was the Romanian pagan black metallers Negura Bunget I had already seen them play in a totally crowded club in Oslo during the Inferno Festival back in April, and knew that I could expect a great show with a nice flavor of eastern-European mysticism thrown into the mix. Seeing them play inside an almost packed Headbangers Ballroom was a different and less intimate experience, but the band still didn’t fail to impress me. The absolute highlight of their set was the last song, the masterful and incredibly atmospheric “Ţesarul De Lumini”,which seemed to carry the audience away from hot and sunny Germany, and into the vast forests of the Carpathian mountains.
Even before the Romanians had left the stage, it quickly became clear why the tent was so full of people. Suddenly people could be seen wielding blow-up swords, and a loud chanting of “Alestorm! Alestorm!” erupted, leading to almost the entire audience singing the Scottish pirate metal outfit’s raunchy “Nancy The Tavern Wench”. Roughly half an hour later the band was ready to conquer the stage with their unique mix of folk metal and the soundtrack from Pirates Of The Caribbean. Unfortunately they suffered from very poor sound, and the guitars were drowned out by the crowd, who were running wild (pun definitely intended). Still, the atmosphere amongst the audience was incredible, and it was very obvious that these young buccaneers are ready to take on the world.
After the Scotsmen had said goodnight and the chanting was dying out, everyone inside the Ballroom hurried as fast as they can to see the evening’s (and the entire festival’s) main attraction, namely the seemingly ever-young Iron Maiden. Unsurprisingly, everybody else at Wacken had already arrived for the concert, so it was hard to find anywhere to stand where you could still see the band. However, when Bruce Dickinson and his crew appeared on stage and the opening notes of “Aces High” emerged from the speakers, the fear of being too far away to enjoy ourselves quickly burned away. The sound of 70 000 metal fans roaring wasn’t enough to quell the air raid siren, and it truly felt like an almost religious experience. Since the band is currently touring to promote their Somewhere Back In Time compilation album, the set-list consisted of material strictly from the eighties, with classic after classic being served to the hungry crowd. Amongst metal-anthems like “The Number Of The Beast”, “Run To The Hills”, and “Fear Of The Dark”, my personal highlight of the show came in the form of the almost fourteen-minutes long epic “Rime Of The Ancient Mariner”. Hearing this under-appreciated masterpiece in its wholeness was an unforgettable experience, and the nostalgia was flooding the overcrowded festival-area like a tsunami. To see a band that have kept it going for more than 30 years and still have the power to spellbind an audience of such magnitude is an amazing experience, and I’m convinced that every metal-fan has to see Iron Maiden at least once in their lifetime.
Friday
Opening the second day of the festival the morning after an Iron Maiden concert is no dream-task, but if any band could face up to the challenge it must be Ireland’s prodigal sons Primordial. Getting the worst playing time of the entire festival, at the ungodly hour of 11 AM, didn’t help things, but they more than proved worthy by delivering a terrific show anyways. Mainman Allan Nemtheanga was as charismatic as ever, captivating the tired and hungover audience with masterful pagan metal of the highest class, and with brilliant songs like “Empires Fall”, “Gods To The Godless”, and “The Coffin Ships” filling their only 45-minutes long set they really made the absolutely best of what they had been dealt. If the band keeps storming forward like they’ve done with last years’ excellent To The Nameless Dead, I would not be surprised to see them play one of the large stages the next time they come to Wacken.
Because of the strong sunlight and exhausting heat while Primordial were playing, it was time for a long beer-break afterwards. The best thing about Wacken is that you’ll have at least as much fun back at your camp as in front of a stage, so these hours of relaxation were more than welcome. Around an hour before Ensiferum were going to hit the stage, the skies opened and we were blasted with a harsh rainstorm. Fortunately the bad weather slowed down significantly when it was time for these northern Vikings to pillage Wacken, but due to the bad weather I arrived late and missed my favorite song of theirs, “Tale Of Revenge”. The rest of the set was plagued with a horrible sound, where one could almost only hear the bass drum and vocals, and even though singer Petri Lindroos blamed the rain on Sweden it still didn’t save the concert from being a wet and mediocre experience.
Luckily for us, the next concert was to take place inside the relatively dry Headbangers Ballroom, where the British gorehounds of The Rotted (formerly known as Gorerotted) were going to tear everything apart. To the disappointment of many Gorerotted fans the setlist consisted exclusively of songs from their new album, Get Dead Or Die Trying, but eventually the band was able to convince people that even though they’ve lost the gore, they haven’t lost their edge. In spite of singer Ben McCrow looking like a hip-hopper in his baggy jeans and big sunglasses, the most interesting view was found in the huge moshpit, where you could see everything from a bearded man in a revealing pink dress to the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler heiling while gleefully charging his peers. Incidentally, this concert was bassist Wilson’s farewell gig, and to make it memorable he ended up crowdsurfing while playing, which led to the otherwise quite violent moshpit stopping their antics in order to carry him around. It was a very cool and somewhat touching moment for a death metal concert, and even though I wouldn’t have minded to hear some Gorerotted-material I see a bright future for these guys.
After hurrying out of the now unbearably hot Ballroom to get some air, we had time to drink a few beers before Opeth were playing. When returning to the concert area after said drinks, the crowd seemed hopelessly large again, but after a little waiting and pushing we found ourselves close to the front of the area. Mikael Åkerfeldt seemed to be in a good mood, and his banter between the songs was as hilarious as ever, amongst other things happily calling anyone who didn’t like their songs “cunts”. These comments lightened up the mood significantly, and the excellent music didn’t hurt either. Personally I’m not the world’s biggest Opeth-fan, but their concert was good enough to convince even the biggest skeptics that they’re capable of progressive brilliance.
My next band lined up for the evening was Gorgoroth, but since they didn’t play until 5 hours later I decided to go see The Haunted with some other guys from my camp. I’ve never really listened to this band before, but the metalcore-singing of their vocalist ruined an otherwise good concert for me. However, this show was my first real experience so far with a wall of death, so at least something good came out of it. After the show there was still two more hours until Gaahl and his boys were going on stage, and since I have already seen them twice, and because at this point I was quite drunk and tired, I decided that a good night’s sleep seemed like a better alternative.
Saturday
In spite of going to bed early the night before, my sleep was cut brutally short when the people next to our tent decided to play Amon Amarth and Unleashed very loudly in the middle of the night. Therefore my mood was not the best when I headed to the Black Stage to see Canadian heavy-metallers 3 Inches Of Blood at noon the following day. The band played a decent set, but failed to impress very much despite having got rid of their terrible backup-singer. They ended their set with announcing that they were leaving to see Exodus at the True Stage, which means that they must have been just as disappointed as everyone else when the legendary thrashers didn’t show up. Apparently there had been a change in the schedule, and instead the nostalgic NWOBHM-act Sweet Savage were playing. What I saw of their show was ok, but it became painfully obvious that they’re best known for Metallica covering some of their songs when the singer promised that they would “play the Metallica-songs later”.
After leaving the concert area in disappointment because of the Exodus-fiasco, the next few hours were spent looking around the huge Metal-Market and getting hyped for my personal highlight of the festival, the recently reunited Carcass. When the time finally came to behold these monsters of death, enough alcohol had been consumed for our mood to skyrocket. Unfortunately the same could not be said for most of the Wacken-crowd, who barely moved during the 75 minutes the band had been assigned. It’s worth noting that the Arch Enemy leading lady Angela Gossow showed up for one song, after which Jeff Walker exclaimed that he “still hates Arch Enemy”, probably to make fun of fellow Carcass-member and Arch Enemy founder Michael Amott. The band plowed through several classics spanning their entire career, but the true highlight of the show came in the form of ex-drummer Ken Owen coming to the stage for a drum-solo. Owen suffered a brain haemorrhage in 1999, and after being in a coma for almost a year he has slowly recovered enough to play the drums again. Seeing this former pioneer of death metal drumming barely being able to walk onto the stage to thank the audience was a very emotional moment, and the following cheering from the audience only strengthened this impact. Sadly, this was the only time the crowd gave much response, and thus the show felt tragically static, which was a big disappointment when looking at the amazing previous achievements of the band.
With the hope of resting our feet and grabbing some food, we decided to retreat to the camp before At The Gates started playing. When passing the Beer Garden there was quite a commotion going on, and it was apparent that the cult organ-maestro Mambo Kurt was entertaining the patrons there. While watching him covering everything from Slayer to Abba, time started flying, and it soon became apparent that there would be no time to see At The Gates. This came as a let-down to me, but unfortunately sometimes food has to come before music, and sitting in the camp hearing the Swedes giving their everything while the rain poured down still felt a little satisfying.
Luckily the next bunch of concerts scheduled all took place in the Ballroom, so the rain did not stop us from heading to Dream Of An Opium Eater. This project, which features members from Enslaved and Killing Joke, was originally a commission for the Roskilde Festival, which apparently worked out so well that they went on to play more shows. The concept of the band is to play trippy doom metal to create a psychedelic sound while various short horror movies play in the background, making for a unique visual and aural experience. This combination proved to be both original and very interesting, and the nature of the project means that it will never work in anything other than a live setting, so go see them if you get a chance.
After the intense experience provided by Dream Of An Opium Eater it felt good to let the mind calm down for 30 minutes while the stage crew started putting up large inverted crucifixes and skulls. The Swedish orthodox black metallers of Watain emerged on the stage covered in blood and corpsepaint, and pounded everyone with their raw uncompromising blast of sound. The band sounded good, but I find it hard to shake off the feeling that they are a poor man’s marduk, both aesthetically and musically.
Before my last band of the festival were going to play, we escaped from the tent just long enough to see Kreator perform their essential “Enemy Of God”. It sounded like the band was in top-shape, but we had no time to stay since Lord Belial were playing in a few minutes. Meanwhile it seemed like everyone had fled the Ballroom after Watain in order to catch the last half of Kreator, which left the place almost empty. This lead to one of the best concert experiences of the festival, since it was no problem to go almost to the front of the small crowd, supplying a perfect view of the band’s melodic black metal. They played a good set, but when leaving the concert-area for the last time I felt a little snubbed that they didn’t play my personal favorite, “Fleshbound”. It should also be said that the Finnish monster-band Lordi were playing after Kreator, and unsurprisingly it seemed like very few metalheads wanted to stay to behold their wacky glam rock antics.
Postscript
The following day the entire camping area was bearing strong signs of too much alcohol and too little sleep. Everyone shuffled away to the bus, which was organized much better than last year, trying to get back to showers and soft beds as fast as possible. However, looking at the days that have passed, I have no doubt that most of these metalheads will find their ways back to this small German village next year as well, and the years after that. Just like last year the organization was top-notch, the people friendly, and even though the prices are high you don’t need to be rich to have a great time. Yes, one could argue that some bands did not belong on the line-up, but this just leaves more time for having fun in the camping area or Beer Garden. Wacken Open Air is truly a must-visit place for anyone who likes metal, and that should mean everyone reading this. You know you’re in a great place when your biggest problem is that you can’t decide if you’d rather see your favorite bands, or just hang out with your friends over some tasty German beer.
