Back from Wacken

Just got back from Wacken Open Air and I have to say it ROCKED. For those that don't know, it is the biggest heavy metal music festival in the world and takes place in a small town in northern Germany. I've just been there for the first time with Eimear, Jon, Leo and Robin. Photos to follow when Eimear finds her camera.

The trip there was a bit taxing; there was an accident on the autobahn near the town that resulted in us being stuck in a traffic queue for a number of hours and us pitching our tent long after dawn. From there on in things got better.

As festival campsites went it was pretty good. There were showers and flushing toilets if you were prepared to part with a few Euros and the campsite not too crowded. The town of Wacken seemed to enjoy all the extra business with extra market stalls and things put out on the street and the local supermarket building a temporary beer market extension. The atmosphere was on the whole pretty relaxed, so long as you don't mind your neighbours playing Rammstein at God-knows-when in the morning. Industrial grade earplugs sorted that one out a treat.

The festival ground itself was great, considering it had been turned to quagmire only days previous by heavy rain. This had been remedied by carpeting it in straw, something that lead to inevitable hijinks. Drink-wise, Becks and mead were the order of the day, preferably drunk from one of the horns for sale in the huge market area. Also for sale included lots of clothes, t-shirts, CDs and a whole plethora of accessories.

But what about the music? Given that it was a northern European festival, there was an emphasis on the black metal subgenre, which wasn't to my personal taste but Jon and Leo loved it, in particular the melodic stuff like Norway's Dimmu Borgir. However, that wasn't the be all and end all; the first band we saw, Rose Tattoo, were a classic Aussie hard rock band, their use of ZZ Top-style slide guitars setting them apart from contemporaries such as Aerosmith and AC/DC.

A lot of my favourite stuff over the course of the festival were those that really got the crowd going and Finnish folk metallers Turisas were experts at that. How many bands can you think of that replace the lead guitar with a fiddle and accordion, dress up in furs and war paint and proceed to sing about getting drunk and charging into battle? Even amongst metalheads, it either works or it doesn't but I for one loved it, as did Eimear and Robin. Also great on the small stages were the American thrash-hardcore outfit Municipal Waste, who by the strike of the first chord turned the crowd into a beer-fuelled, frenzied circle pit that only let up to let people crowd surf on boogie boards and watch an audience member do a beer bong on stage. The German band Heaven Shall Burn would also fit into this category; I'm not normally into death metal but their sheer amount of thrashy intensity and energy was impossible to dislike and made for a great mosh pit. Similarly superb were Electric Eel Shock, a Japanese three-piece playing classic metal and punk that make up for sophistication with sheer insanity and a totally carefree attitude. Just a shame they didn't have their regular drummer, which meant they only had two nutcases on stage.

There were some good listenable bands too. The German band Rage did an orchestra-backed set of progressive and power metal tunes that worked fantastically well. The performance by veteran US thrashers Iced Earth left me wondering why I haven't listened to more of their stuff previously and Italian goth metal band Lacuna Coil also far exceeded my expectations, with their set being much more energetic and varied than the recorded work I had previously listened to. Therion, another goth band, this time from Sweden, also blew me away. It wasn't for the instrumental work; they kind of meandered between styles such as symphonic, power and death metal but never really getting stuck into any of them. What did it for me was their use of operatic soprano backing singers. It sent shivers down me. The best theatrics had to have belonged to the German band Die Apokalyptischen Reiter, whose on stage antics worked well with their accessible brand of death metal. The highlight had to have been pulling a female audience member onstage to sing along with them for one song, then afterwards locking her in a cage with their gimp-suited keyboard player. Also deserving a mention are Faeroean folk metallers Tyr, if only for the sheer amount of testosterone on display. Think 300 with Vikings.

There were some stuff I inevitably didn't get. Brit classic metal veterans Saxon and German power metallers Blind Guardian didn't get me going like I'd hoped but I got the definite impression that they were playing to their existing fanbases (like Robin). The British band Napalm Death I saw just out of the general principle of them being the godfathers of grindcore, but they just reminded me that I don't actually like that style. The exact same could be said of Immortal and the Norwegian black metal genre and Americans Cannibal Corpse and brutal death metal, both of which only got a cursory glance from me despite the fact that they were some of the biggest bands playing.

Overall though, fantastic festival but one that I'm going to take a while to recover from. Later will come the inevitable question of whether I go next year. Given that Iron Maiden are already confirmed, it's a definite maybe.