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.

Summer is coming, and for a dedicated metalhead, that only means one thing… festival season is upon us. And that means it’s nearly time to make our annual pilgrimage to the Holy Metal Land – Wacken Open Air.

It’s that time of year again when the world’s heavy metal elite in a place that can only be referred to by extreme music lovers as the ‘Holy Land’. 75’000 metalheads migrate to this patch of Northern German turf every year to pay homage to the metal gods, and revel in the good times with friends, old and new from all over the world. This is Wacken Open Air. And this is how we experienced it.

Our final day at Wacken was met with the weather finally turning in the fans favour with sun shining and temperatures rising – and yet another massive line-up greeted the last day of Wacken festivities!

After such a ‘Night to Remember’ it’s hard to think of how anything else in the festival could surpass the previous days events, but this is Wacken after all…there is always something on the cards!

Although most of the 75’000 die hard metal fans have already been at the holy Wacken land a while, today is the official start of festivities!

Over the summer we travelled to Northern Germany to once again attend the heavy metal mecca, Wacken Open Air. We start the 4-day festivities at the crossroads of joy and despair, as a torrential rainstorm strikes the festival in day one!