Attending for my 13th festival, I can safely say now that I base most of my years plans around what has come to be the world’s largest metal festival, or from my humble perspective, Europe’s biggest party. It’s 75’000 metalheads, nearly 80 top notch bands, 1000’s of litres of beer, and simply a joyful occasion shared by all, no matter how bad the weather is. And for the last 3 years it’s been pretty bad.
This year was no different in terms of all mentioned above – yet another festival goes by all but too quickly, somehow sieved through the beer, company, and the plethora of refined live metal the festival always brings. But enough gushing. It’s the details you want, and the details you shall get!
Here are our experiences from this year’s Wacken Open Air:
Day 1: The Metalmen Cometh
Every Wacken regular seems to have their pre-festival traditions. While some are probably on a scale that surpass only Viking blood rituals, we’re happy to go ahead and explain ours.
It all starts from our early morning rise, screaming ‘WACKOOOOON’ against the dimly lit morning fog in the heart of London, ensuring our neighbours know it is that time of year again. Nautrally they are just as happy as we are to be woken up to the sound of metalheads and their mating calls at 4.30am.
It’s a quick train to the airport – dressed the nines in black, making competition with our crew of who can muster the obscenest t-shirt from the wardrobe. The journey always involves silently offending other travellers repeating the festival name, and flashing horns at any given moment, until we join with our fellow metal pilgrims in the Hamburg Hauptbahnof. It’s there where we begin our pre-festival ritual – 2 litres of Lowenbrau and a Currywurst. Sure, it doesn’t sound that exciting – but as non-Germans, it makes the hairs on our arms tingle.
That excited tingling translates on our train journey to the metal Holy Land, gleefully screaming and flashing more horns the entire way, with the occasional shot of Jager in place. No journey to Wacken ever passes by with us Anglophiles having to make a snigger at the train station of Itzehoe (pronounced ‘It’s a ho’), where we continue our journey by car, until we get to the tiny village that has suddenly swollen from a 3’000 population to a near 100’000.
One might gasp at the legions of metal fans that populate every space of the eye, but we see it this way – there’s a friend to make at every corner. No year has ever let us down in making lasting friendships – we all have that metal touch in common after all.
With the weather in its usual terrible state, setting up the tent normally turns into a challenge. We scratch our heads for minutes on end trying to figure out what goes where, awkwardly slurping on beers that seemed to materialise from nowhere…but once it’s figured out it’s straight to the Wackinger Village for the pre-festival liviations.
Over the course that this area become integrated into the festival grounds, the Wackinger Village has become somewhat of a roosting spot for our clan. It’s the medieval party culture that has made it so attractive – beer, mead, fire dancers, unknown folk metal bands, and traditional German foods. It’s our favourite Zyklopenspeiss that’s always first on the agenda – a giant pork stick soaked in a special Barbeque sauce. It’s amazing. Trust us.
It’s that first bite of meat, that first swig of beer, and that first ironic sound of the bagpipes that signals Wacken Open Air has officially begun. Rejoice!
Day 2: The Opening Ceremony
Whilst officially Wacken Open Air kicks off in the afternoon of the Thursday, the party has well and truly kicked off already. By morning, almost every festivalgoer has made it in, and the streets are lined with masses of humbling black. A beer outlet at every corner, we’re never short of a fine ale, and of course most of our day is spent in the Wackinger Village impressing our metal brethren with our natural Anglo savagery.
To keep us entertained before the main bands of the day start to warm things up, the Village always has some German ‘Mittlealter’ (Middle Ages, there’s no way to explain in English the genre association) like Fuchsteufelswild that spark interest. Somehow everybody already knows the lyrics, the dances, and exactly what to do when the frontman or woman makes some hand signal on stage. Clearly this kind of music has a cult following in these lands. But damn is it fun to watch, even trying to get involved. Our favourite was the muscle-bound, bearded Scotsmen of Saor Patrol. Pipes, whiskey and thick accents throwing insults. What’s not to like?
But alas, the opening ceremony begins. In traditional temper, Skyline, the Wacken personality supergroup including organiser Thomas Jensen, rumbles out covers of the metal classics. Of course it’s tradition to take a peek and raise our glasses to the fine crew that makes all of this happen. This year however we found it more important to venture over the small stages for a couple Metal Battle bands whose passion always delivers, and the colossal death metal machines, Aborted, Napalm Death and Nile.
Taking a break from the sweat and pits, we did manage to catch classic rockers Accept bring some heavy metal thunder along with cloud lining orchestra, sounding brilliant even a mile away from the stage – but the chance to return to the small stages and see bands that own a genre was more than often too good to pass up.
One does not tire at Wacken, so after the music had died down, it was off to the beer garden to make friends and frolic deep into the night…
Day 3: The Heavy Olympiad
Yes, one may not tire from Wacken – but one can certainly feel the effects of the libations the next morning. There is far too much metal to be had on this day though, and one cannot sit and stew over it.
It’s a quick trip to the town of Wacken to medicate ourselves with black coffee and bread, rolling past the sea of black shirts, and sweating out the mead from the night before on the hard mile. It’s this walk, as strange as it may seem, that has made Wacken such an interesting place over the years. It’s who you see out at 9am – people still drinking from the night before, people just starting their drinking, curious folk from neighbouring towns on a metal safari, or people just waking up and getting breakfast. Regardless of their reasons for being out in town at what could be considered an ungodly festival hour, there is always a fascinating story behind them.
After breakfast, it’s straight to the main stage to open the day with famed Italian goth metallers Lacuna Coil. Arguably the band is an easy start to the day, playing melodic tunes not overtly complex but certainly can help streamline a day of madness ahead. It’s a busy day ahead, with a lot of fantastic bands packed in both big and small.
Of course, in transit to the next band, a large beer is in order. Where else to get it than the village, paired with a Zyklopenspeiss? It’s just after that last bite where we stumble into Evil Scarecrow, representing the UK in this year’s festival – a band that put in a stunning performance getting the full tent involved in their wildly erratic antics. From there, it’s a wild journey through the day…
From Sonata Arctica, to Trivium, Dillinger Escape Plan, Apocalyptica, Emperor and Megadeth, all live up to their names and produce some great shows…but to share the experiences with 75’000 other metalheads, it’s something very hard to put into words. Sharing a pint with a complete stranger, singing ‘Symphony of Destruction’ with arms over shoulders is humbling. While the bigger bands mostly deliver (apart from Marilyn Manson, just awful), it’s the smaller bands deep into the evening that provided the open jaw moments of the festival.
The industrial influenced Cypecore on the Wasteland stage were a WOA favourite for me, bringing a 22nd century post-apocalyptic timeline to life, and the Nordic doomsters Ereb Altor that capture the ethereal atmosphere in such an intimate environment. Bands like these are what make Wacken great, and again, to share them with people who are enjoying it just as much as you melts your troubles away. Then it’s more mead into the evening…
Day 4: The Home Stretch
Each and every year, it seems that the 4 days at Wacken go faster and faster. Suddenly, it’s Saturday – the final day of the festival. Where the hell did the time go? Perhaps we find ourselves enjoying it more every year. As we get older, and more responsible, its times like these that we look forward to more, to let everything go and enjoy the music we love. Again it’s a standard trip to the town for breakfast, but hurriedly back to the festival grounds to soak in the final day of music.
The day begins with a personal favourite of mine, Rage. Back at Wacken with a brand new line-up, it’s certainly an excellent start to the day with some fast and greasy heavy metal tunes. It’s the bacon sandwich of metal wake-ups, and certainly got us reinvigorated to do all the things we simply had to do before the festival ends, and the dream turns back into reality.
Most of the things on the list were the traditions that fall slightly outside the music. This included trying all the German food that was not in abundance back home – Currywurst, Kasespetzle, Krakauer and of course that traditional Doner Kebab coupled with yet another large beer. A trip through the metal market was also in order, buying that merch that is far too offensive to be sold over the internet, or in any high street store. And finally, a short bar crawl in the town where we could get some remarkably average beer for £1 a pint.
But let’s not forget the bands we saw, which were thankfully a bit more spaced out than the packed schedule of the day previous. The larger bands viewed today seemed to take on a theme of ghoulishness and showmanship, with Powerwolf, Alice Cooper, Avantasia and Amon Amarth all bringing quite a stage spectacle in parallel to their music, and all as enjoyable as the last.
Smaller bands again made quite the impression, with Mongolian backed Tenger Cavalry managing to perform a metal show with almost exclusively throat singing, the charm brought by rising power metallers Serenity, the epic fantasy of Twilight Force, and the closing doom of the appropriately timed Onminum Gatherum.
As we return to the village for the last time, the bonfires are raging into the night. A signal that it’s time to put all the energy you can spare into one final party to see off the festival for the year. Naturally, that’s what we did. More mead, accompanying cage fights, fire shows, and an epic strip show end Wacken Open Air in such a flamboyant style – yet has become traditional, and competitive in a way that the organisers push themselves to top it for next year.
The journey home is gruelling, and the thoughts of stepping back into reality are ones that wouldn’t want to be put up for discussion here. What we do know – a great time was had by all, and we simply can’t wait for 2018.
