WACKEN OPEN AIR 2007
It was the year of 1997 when the two mainmen of www.metal-festivals.com Lotte and Tobi Wan Kenobi travelled to a festival in a little northern village called Wacken. We and two friends of us travelled in the one and only Bock Tours bus and experienced an unforgettable weekend on an open air visited by 15000 metalheads.
Well, ten years later we were able to celebrate our own Wacken anniversary. In the last decade the WOA had evolved from an insider tip to the Metal Mekka visited by thousands of fans from all over the world, and I mean all continents by that. Behind the scenes there’s a team starting the festival as a little pub idea which they were able to develop to a big well-working organisation. You can say they have fulfilled their vision they once had created. Probably even more than that!
Over all those years our online-mag has grown, too. Started as a little hobby we have extended our coverage as the number of our writers year by year. Nowadays we are prowd to serve metalheads from all over the world, and I also mean all continents by that! As we can see a huge number of them always watches out for our Wacken Open Air-reports!
This year the weather made the organisation of the WOA to a mission impossible. So this time the Wacken-organisation did an unbelievable sensational job to realise the festival! What had happened? One week before the festival-weekend it started to rain, and this rain was supposed to become permanent over this week! The camping- as festivalsite- meadows became set under water. So in the last days the organizors, hundreds of helpers, different tractors and even helicopters blowing the waters in therefore digged ditches realised the impossible: The Wacken Open Air happened like every year!
Changes on the campsite were necessary which was the only way to guarantee camping to all visitors. For another time the Wacken organisation showed their big abilities when it was up to eliminate a fire on the festivalsite on the early Friday afternoon. One man had coordinated the crowd from the stage till the firefighters did their job. The situation was totally under control!
This year’s line-up offered for another time a big variety of different sounding acts on a very high quality level! A change was made on the festivalsite: The organizors enlarged it by a special new area for the Party Stage which was a big upgrade! After adding the W.E.T. Stage to the Thursday-program the latest two years this time the organizors added the Pain Stage, too. On Thursday it became named Hellfest Stage and mainly offered so-called Metalcore-bands except for its stage-headliner. At this year’s Wacken Open Air 90 bands (plus the all-evening Mambo Kurt-sessions in the beergarden) appeared on four stages in the three days for about 70000 visitors (For the first time it was sold out weeks before!).
Thursday
Black Stage
Blitzkrieg The NWOBHM-legend started the big-stage-action of this year’s Wacken Open Air. The fivepiece from Newcastle around the only left original member and vocalist Brian Ross is mainly well-known by Metallica who had covered their self-titled hit, but they showed by material from their brandnew album (released one week later) “Theatre Of The Damned” they still rock.
Rose Tattoo The Australian Heavy Rock – legend had become a steady guest in Wacken which is very popular in the Wacken-community. And they showed why by another Rock ’n’ Roll- party celebrating classics like “Rock ‘n’ Roll Gypsy”, “Rock ’n’ Roll Outlaw, “Scarred For Life”, “Bad Boys For Life” and the hit “Nice Boys (Don’t Play Rock ’n’ Roll)” without ignoring their new release “Blood Brothers” promoted by “Black Eyed Bruiser” and “Man About Town”. Another cool party with the formation from Down Under around mainman Angry Anderson and the new old bassist Geordie Leach.
Sodom The Sodom-appearance was announced to be performed together with guests. So after four tracks from the new self-titled release (including its hit “Axis Of Evil”) different ex-members of the Sodom Thrash Metal-history entered the stage like the sixstringers Michael ‘Grave Violator’ Hoffmann, Frank ’Blackfire’ Gosdszik, Andy Brings as drummer Atomic Steif to play several rarities like “Magic Dragon”, “Tarred And Feathered” and “Christ Passion”. Bandleader Tom Angelripper enjoyed this trip through the history of his band which ended with the classics “Ausgebombt”, “The Saw Is The Law”, “Sodomy And Lust”, “Outbreak Of Evil” and “Bombenhagel”.
Saxon The alliance between the NWOBHM-legend and the WOA-organisation is a very stable one. The band always fulfills all approaches you expect from a headliner. Besides new “The Inner Sanctum”-material like “Let Me Feel Your Power” which had become dedicated as their new WOA-hymn by singer Biff Byford in 2006 the band celebrated classics like “Witchfinder General”, “Wheels Of Steel”, “Denim And Leather”, “Crusader” and “To Hell And Back Again”, supported by a great light- and pyro-effect-show. Cool became the duet interpretation of “747 (Strangers In The Night)” between Biff and guest-vocalist Tobias Sammet who is known from Edguy. Another strong show by the British Metal-institution!
Hellfest Stage / Party Stage
The Sorrow The newcomers from Austria had just released their debut “Blessings From A Blackened Sky” which had convinced totally by their Killswitch Engage-influenced Metalcore. After some sound problems the fourpiece rocked the stage by “Far Beyond The Days Of Grace”, “From This Life” and showed their Metal-credibility by playing an extract from Amon Amarth’s hit “Pursuit Of Vikings” to let follow the hit “Knights Of Doom”, “Death From A Lover’s End” and “Savior Welcome Home” causing a little circle-pit. Especially the talented fronter Mätze convinced by a professional performance while his bandmates have to improve this issue on themselves a bit.
Narziss Metalcore with German lyrics – we’re of course talking about Narziss from Jena. An aspect which makes the band unique and which didn’t seem to disturb anybody! No, the crowd celebrated songs from their current “Solang Das Herz Schlägt”-release as (“Und Du Verblasst”, “Meine Kleine Seele”) as older “Die Hoffnung Stirbt Zuletzt”-tracks (“Gotteskrieger”, “Entstelltes Bild”) by a not too small moshpit.
Neaera The Metalcore-shooting stars from Münster showed a strong appearance. The fivepiece around shouter Benny introduced the title track of the forthcoming album “Armamentarium” which earned a lot of applause. The crowd supported “Walls Instead Of Bridges”, “Broken Spine” (And not Spiderschwein! ;-)) or “Let The Tempest Come” fanatically by different moshpits. So the band definitely succeeded.
Animal Alpha The Norwegian Rock-band left a strange impression. Their frontwoman Agnete Kjolsrud looked like a female blonde version of Waltari’s Kärtsy Hatakka and played a very strange interpretation of Rock music introducing their debut-longplayer “Pheromones”, but they didn’t win mentionable support for tracks like “Bundy”.
All That Remains This was supposed to change by the Metalcore-fivepiece from Springfield. But first of all the sound didn’t work at all. From “Not Alone” on it became better, but it was easy to notice bandleader and fronter Phil Labonte didn’t have his best day. Most of the clean vocals got sung badly or just got grunted by him. Just in the end of the appearance Phil seemed to have refound his voice to sing “For Salvation” as the second hit of the current “The Fall Of Ideals”-album, “This Calling”, as they should have been sung. Because of the strong stage-action this was finally a good gig, but I know they can do much better, especially Phil. Bad luck he had such a bad day in front of the hugest European crowd they’ve ever played for.
Hatesphere The Danish Death- / Thrash-commando changed this aspect totally and ruled for 45 minutes. Supported by a very agile stageacting the very motivated band from Arhus introduced songs from the new album “Serpent Smiles And Killer Eyes” (“Floating”, ”Let Them Hate”) and earned even more and wilder support by the crowd for well-known hits (“The Sickness Within”, “Disbeliever”). So this show became a real triumph to the motivated shouter Jacob Bredahl & his fellows.
Overkill Even after Wacken had been sold out the WOA-orgnizors confirmed by the Thrash-icon from New York City another popular band. Beginning with “Rotten To The Core” and “Elimination” it was no matter to Bobby ‘Blitz’ Ellsworth, D.D. Verni & Co to rule the Hellfest Stage-crowd. This went wild to smashers like “In Union we Stand”, “Wrecking Crew”, “Necroshine” and “Fuck You”. We’re really curious about the forthcoming output being published this year’s autumn.
W.E.T. Stage
Electric Eel Shock The Japanese weirdos showed people from their island are also able to celebrate real rocking parties. And the crazy trio really knows how to party. The multi-active musicians showed an exciting stage-action added by several cool jokes and gimmicks. So the audience supported Rock ‘n’ Rollers like “Do The Metal” without any hesitation.
Maroon Two years after the first special guest Hatesphere the magazine Metal Hammer invited a new one before their Thursday night party was supposed to start. The Metalcore-band with definite Death Metal-influences from Nordhausen started into a confident show in a crowded tent although they played against Saxon and Overkill. Of course fronter André Moraweck was again in a good mood and announced after a few songs those had been just slow shit before playing by “My Funeral Song” a track from their forthcoming album “The Cold Heart Of The Sun”. A bit later he requested the fans to throw with mens’ underwear at their friends from Heaven Shall Burn while their appearance and took of his pants throwing it into the crowd to continue this performance in underwear. The crowd raged to “Annular Eclipse”, “Chosen By Fate” and “Wake Up In Hell” after which André invited by Sodom’s Tom Angelripper a singer from a band pointing out they’re creating good music in strict contrast to his own band. After this self-ironic comment they covered the Sodom-classic “Ausgebombt” to close the best show of the evening.
Friday
True Metal Stage
Amorphis Before Suomi’s finest was able to appear a fire (mentioned in the introduction) disturbed the regular run. So about 45 minutes later, after Napalm Death had played therefor their show on the neighboured Black Stage the band was allowed to enter the stage without endangering the fans in front of it. Opening by the new “The Smoke” and the classic “Against Widows” the band caught the absolute support of the audience. The fans applauded, headbanged and sang to songs from all the band’s different creative phases (“In The Beginning”, “Sign From The North Side”, “Summer’s End, “House Of Sleep”). The new vocalist Tomi Joutsen seemed to be totally accepted by the fanbase and the band itself enjoyed their gig becoming a home match. They closed their celebrated set by their Death Metal-hymn “Black Winter Day”.
Therion The Symphonic Gothic Rock / Metal-formation around Christofer Jonsson introduced their new singer Thomas Vikström who sang all songs very well, but should just work about his motionless stageacting. Supported by three classic background singers the sixpack presented tracks from their new “Gothic Kabbalah”-release (“Son Of The Staves Of Time”, “The Falling Stone”). But of course the final “To Mega Therion” earned the most following.
Grave Digger The Teutonic True Metal Band appeared on the right stage. Not just because of its name, also because of the number of fans being bound by Chris Boltendahl and his companions. Those celebrated a best-of-setlist consisting of the opener “Liberty Or Death”, “Knights Of The Cross”, “The Grave Digger”, “Rebellion (The Clans Are Marching)” and the finisher “Heavy Metal Breakdown”. Not my cup of beer, but okay.
J.B.O. The Comedy Metal-quartet from the Bavarian town of Erlangen returned to Wacken to entertain the visitors for another time by “Rock Muzik”, “Lalelu”, “We Will Rock You”, “Wir Ham ‘Ne Party”, “Ein Guter Tag Zum Sterben”, “Ein Fest”, “Medtl Gschdanzl” or by the idea to rebuild the chorus of “Guantanamera” into “Guantanamo”. I had seen a few bad gigs of JBO, but this was a good one.
Blind Guardian Krefeld’s Fantasy Metal-kings magnetized about 60000 fans to get “Into The Storm” to be “Welcome To Dying”. Being supported by choirs of thousands of voices Hansi Kürsch and his friends performed a greatest-hits-performance containing “Born In A Mourning Hall”, “Nightfall”, “The Script For My Requiem”, “The Bard’s Song (In The Forest)”, “Bright Eyes”, “Time Stands Still (At The Iron Hill)”, “Mirror, Mirror” and “Lord Of The Rings”. The band played tight, the stageacting was okay and the light show was brilliant, but the most impressing aspect about this appearance were the supporter’s choirs creating a special atmosphere.
Iced Earth The Power Metal-band of Jon Schaffer has a problem: They create wonderful music, but they lost their voice and the image Jon had built by different comments in the latest years is not the best one. So the fans also supported tracks from the new “Framing Armageddon” like the single “Ten Thousand Strong”, but they appreciate classics from the Matt Barlow-era like “Burning Times”, “Violate”, “Vengeance Is Mine” and “Birth Of The Wicked”. Of course Tim ‘Ripper’ Owens showed his vocalist abilities many fans shared the opinion he’s in the wrong band. Anyway, supported by a cool stage design and some pyros the band from Indiana fulfilled a bombastic show.
Black Stage
Suidakra The formation from Düsseldorf were the big W.E.T. Stage-surprise the year before, so they returned as the opener of the much bigger Black Stage. Arkadius and his comrades showed their Melodic Death Metal works well, especially live. New “Caledonia”-material (“A Blackened Shield”) as older stuff (“A Vision’s Demise”) elated the spectators.
Napalm Death Birmingham’s Death-Grind-heroes were forced to start their appearance 30 minutes earlier than planned because the mentioned fire in front of the neighboured True Metal Stage didn’t leave another choice. So after some time of orientation on the spectator’s side they realised Barney Greenway & Co were devastating the Black Stage, musically of course. The earned positive reactions for new “Smear Campaign”-material (“Puritanical Punishment Beating”), but the mob went wild to the “Scum”-medley. “Nazi Punks Fuck Off” also kicked ass and emphasized again a final clear statement.
Possessed The long-awaited reunion of the genre leaders became a pretty disappointing one. The only original member and vocalist Jeff Bercerra got backed up by four musicians of the band Sadistic Intent. Jeff who had been wheelchair-bound since an accident didn’t emanate the old spirit which made a song like “Death Metal” unique. So most fans got bored by an uninspired show of a formerly great band.
Turbonegro In contrast to the band mentioned before the Norwegian madmen inspired the crowd to party hard which felt easy while “Deathtime”, “All My Friends Are Dead”, “Get It On”, “Prince Of The Radio”, “Are You Ready (For Some Darkness)?” “Fuck The World” or the final “I Got Errection”. Those party-TNT kept the crowd in motion and fronter Hank van Helvetes funny statements entertained a lot.
Lacuna Coil The Gothic Metal-leaders from Milano mainly forced their live-activities in overseas, so the fans were very curious to see the Italians. Surrounded by the warm sun slowly leaving the horizon the external conditions realized a nearly perfect atmosphere for songs like the opening tracks ”Swamped”, “Fragments Of Fate” and “To Live Is To Hide” as for “Fragile”, “Closer”, “Senzafine” and the Depeche Mode-cover “Enjoy The Silence”. After their biggest hit “Heaven’s A Lie” the outstanding singer Cristina Scabbia who harmonized well again with her male college Andrea Ferro thanked all the fans making this big Wacken-event possible before they left with “Our Truth”.
Dimmu Borgir Ten years after we had seen the Norwegians for the first time while an extreme hot afternoon the band had evolved to the (commercial) leaders of today’s Black Metal-scene. In the past I had watched several Dimmu Borgir-appearances with to much routine and too less power. This didn’t happen in Wacken, the band definitely rocked. After a pretty long intro Shagrath, Silenoz & Co started with sound problems while their opener “Progenies Of The Great Apocalypse”. But those disappeared, so new “In Sorte Diaboli”-tracks like “The Sacrilegious Scorn and “The Serpentine Offering” as classics like “A Succubus In Rapture”, “Kings Of The Carnival Creation, “The Insight And The Catharsis” and the final hit “Mourning Palace” got celebrated a lot. And of course bassist Simen ruled again by his fantastic backing vocals. What a cool gig! More of that!
Die Apokalyptischen Reiter After they had filled up the old area around the Party Stage last year which had been much too small, the group from Weimar appeared on the much bigger Black Stage. They brought a lot of gimmicks to Wacken like a rubber boat, blue balloons and rubber balls. Besides that the formation didn’t convince me for another time. After new “Riders On The Storm”-stuff (the title track, “Revolution”) the pretty big crowd partied to “Seemann”, “Reitermania”, “Himmelskind” and “We Will Never Die”. The fans supported them, me didn’t.
Party Stage
Black Dahlia Murder The Melodic Death Metal-fivepiece from Detroit had the job to get the fans really woken up, and how they did! By hammers like “Apex”, “Funeral Thirst”, “Statutory Ape” and new material from their forthcoming third longplayer “Nocturnal” as by a very agile performance the quintet around front-madman Trevor Strnad should have won a lot of new fans.
Communic Without a live-keyboarder the trio fascinated hundreds of spectators with their Nevermore-inspired Prog Power Metal. Of course the Norwegians around Oddleif Stensland are not a typical live-band, but they convinced by their special aura combined with epics like “Watching It All Disappear”, “The King For A Thousand Years”, “They Feed On Our Fear” they earned much applause.
Volbeat It had taken 30 minutes after their regular stage-boarding time till the Danish shooting stars actually entered the stage. Nearly nobody had left meanwhile knowing what they’re supposed to get: A first class Rock ‘n’ Roll-show! Starting with “The Human Instrument”, in which front-Elvis Michael Poulsen placed a cool fart-sound gimmick, the whole crowd moshed, headbanged, danced and shouted. Just after two longplayers the fourpiece have so many rocking hits everyone can party to like “Soulweeper”, “Pool Of Booze Booze Booza”, the Dusty Springfield-cover “I Only Wanna Be With You”, “Radio Girl”, “The Garden’s Tale” and the Johnny Cash-tribute “Devil Or A Blue Cat’s Song”. So the afternoon-appearance became a big triumph to the Danish rockers.
Falconer Power Metal with Folk-vibes was served on the Party Stage in the late Friday afternoon. The nice sounding mixture was welcome for another time and the voice of singer Mathias Blad makes it self-contained, but for another time it was easy to perceive he’s not a live-fronter. So the appearance just made fun acoustically by “Upon The Grave Of Guilt”, “Perjury And Sanctity”, “Mindtraveller” and “The Clarion Call”.
Enslaved The original Viking Metal-band appeared while the sky darkened increasingly. A perfect time for the Norwegians to inspire the crowd by “Ruun”, the surprise “As Fire Swept Clean The Earth” and of course the classic “Isa” which all worked well with the crowd., and of course with me.
Schandmaul The Folk Rock-formation from Munich surprised three years ago when they acted in Wacken for the first time. And this year they filled up the whole new Party Stage-area. The masses celebrated songs from the current “Mit Leib Und Seele”-release (the opener “Vor Der Schlacht”, “Kein Weg Zu Weit”) as material known from the further outputs (“Herren Der Winde”, “Vogelfrei”, “Dein Anblick”) before the sixpiece finished with the ballad “Dein Antlitz”.
Samael The four musicians from Samael played for the second time in a row the last dance of a WOA-day. A role they filled out very well. Ten years after I had watched them on the formerly Main Stage in the early evening they created a unique atmosphere by their very technical music as by their nice light show. Vorph, Xy, Makro and Mas presented by “Ave!” and “Slavocracy” new “Solar Soul”-songs which earned mainly positive reactions, the older ones like “Rain”, “The Cross”, “Jupiterian Vibe”, “On Earth”, “Oriental Dawn”, “Baphomet’s Throne” and “Year Zero” got more support. A nice appearance ended by “My Own Savior”.
W.E.T. Stage
Drone The winner of last year’s Metal Battle-competition returned to the place of their success from one year before like the first Metal Battle-winner Gorilla Monsoon had done in 2006. The fourpiece from Celle around fronter Mutz presented powerful Neo-Thrash influenced by Machine Head and introduced many songs from their new release “Head-On Collision”. Cool gig!
Saturday
True Metal Stage
Sacred Reich The long awaited reunion gig held in Germany happened in Wacken. The Thrash Metal-legend around main actor Phil Rind hadn’t lost any quality and performed one of the definite highlights of the whole weekend. Of course, considering the song choice: The opener “American Way”, “Death Squad”, “Who’s To Blame”, “Independent” the Black Sabbath-cover “War Pigs” which was sung by hundreds of voices and the final “Surf Nicaragua” left no doubt! This hammer-reunion has to continue!
Stratovarius The Finnish Power Metal-institution had become a steady guest in Wacken over the past years since they appeared for the first time in 1998. Beginning with “Hunting High And Low” the band around the two mainmen Timo and Timo entertained a really huge crowd which celebrated “Father Time”, Black Diamond”, the brandnew “Last Night On Earth”, “Kiss Of Judas” and “Forever”. Like everytime the sixpiece performed an entertaining show, but somehow they had lost their fire.
Rage Ten years after Rage headlined the 2007-edition by a special Metal meets Classic-appearance with the Lingua Mortis-orchestra the trio returned with their symphonic vision. This time they got assisted by the symphonic orchestra of Minsk, probably hired by guitar-genius Victor Smolski who originally derives from Belarus. In contrast to 1997 Peavy Wagner & Co had an earlier position, but “From The Cradle To The Grave”, “Alive But Dead”, “Sent By The Devil” and “Turn The Page” also worked while the brighter sunny atmosphere.
Type O Negative This appearance was a long awaited as a much discussed one after their comeback-club-tour which had bared physical problems of Pete Steele. And on stage he didn’t really look sane, especially the zoomed pictures on the screen showed he’s not in the best mood. Anyway, the show predominantly rocked. With the new “Dead Again”-single “Profit Of Doom” the quartet opened a cool show which got a break after “Love You To Death”. Somehow ridiculous, but we had been warned before. Pete who wore a cylinder (of course a black-green-coloured one) seemed to need the break while drummer Johnny Kelly took one of the stage cameras to film the fans. After this break they finished their to short appearance (They could have played ten minutes longer!) by their two “Bloody Kisses”-hits “Christian Woman” and “Black No. 1”.
In Flames In 1997 the genre-leaders of Melodic Death Metal acted in the W.E.T.-Stage-tent which had been a much smaller than the nowadays known one. Ten years and a few WOA-performances later they acted in a headlining position. The Gothenburg-fivepiece performed another hammer-show, no wonder with “Pinball Map”, “Trigger”, “Episode 666”, the “The Jester Race”-classic “Graveland”, “System”, the title track of the new masterpiece “Come Clarity” after which fronter Anders Fridén proclaimed if he could he’d come down sleeping with each fan. Instead of that he preferred to continue with “Only For The Weak” including a ride with the moveable stage camera, “Cloud Connected”, “The Quiet Place”, “Take This Life” and the final “My Sweet Shadow” which made clear for another time: In Flames are always a highlight on every festival! Anders declared their 2005-WOA-appearance as their career-highlight and organized an atmosphere-competition in which the 2007-crowd succeeded. Supported by a fantastic pyro, light and special effect show the band left thousands of happy people after their outstanding performance.
Subway To Sally Somehow it seems like the sevenpiece from Potsdam had got the steady role as the WOA-finisher which worked very well. Like 2006 the popular Folk Rock-band appeared as the last band on a big stage between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.. You think most people were asleep? Not at all, the festivalsite was pretty crowded with Subway To Sally-fans celebrating a best-of-setlist consisting of classics like “Henkersbraut”, “Feuerland”, “Der Schrei”, “Erdbeermund” and “Ohne Liebe”. Nice live-action-conlusion!
Black Stage
Sonic Syndicate The Melodic Death Metal-shooting stars convinced like they had done a month before on the With Full Force. Again the five men and the nice female bassist inspired the crowd by their ‘good-mood-music’. The pretty crowded festival area partied to their “Only Inhuman”-debut-songs like “Aftermath”, “Flashback” and “Enclave”. Got your job well done guys – and girl! 😉
Moonspell Darkness was supposed to reign over Wacken in the early bright afternoon. But somehow it worked: The Portuguese around bandleader and vocalist Fernando Ribeiro created a cool atmosphere by their performance full of passion and atmosphere. The crowd got inspired by their aura as by “Vampiria”, “Opium”, the “The Antidote”-single “Everything Invaded” and “Alma Mater”! Cool performance!
Dir En Grey The (former) Visiual Key-band / Rockers from Japan showed a very strange performance. When fronter Kyo hurted himself bleeding I just can conclude with one word: No! The music didn’t really sound less weired: New “The Marrow Of A Bone”-material (“Dead Tree”, “The Final”) as older ones (“Clever Sleazoid”) didn’t convince me at all and it seemed like just a few younger girls celebrated them!
Destruction Because of their 25th anniversary Schmier and his two companions celebrated a special show: After Thrash Metal-classics like “Mad Butcher”, “The Butcher Strikes Back”, “Nailed To The Cross” and “Death Trap” Schmier invited the ex-members Harry Wilkens and Tommy Sandmann as the well-known friend-vocalists Bobb ‘Blitz’ Ellsworth (Overkill), Peavy Wagner (Rage), Tom Angelripper (Sodom) and Oddleif Stensland (Communic) on stage to perform the Metal-hymn “Alliance Of The Hellhoundz”. After the assistance of some half-naked women and of three drummers while the final “Thrash Till Death” the band closed a gig which was definitely birthday-party-dignified.
Immortal The reunion of the Black Metal-icon from Bergen was followed by an absolutely crowded festival area which showed their popularity. Abbath, Horgh and the new bassist Apollyon opened by “The Sun No Longer Rises” to let follow “Withstand The Fall Of Time”, “Sons Of Northern Darkness”, “Tyrants”, “One By One”, “Wrath From Above” which seduced the crowd to freak out to the mighty hymns from the north side. Of course Abbath didn’t renounce his typical fire-breathing while playing “Unholy Forces Of Evil”. Thousands of fans kept headbanging celebrating their Black Metal-idols. The Norwegian threepiece closed their performance by their classics “Battles In The North” and “Blashyrk Mighty Ravendark”. After 75 minutes the Black Metal inferno was over, but most of the fans hadn’t enough hoping to see their heroes back soon.
Cannibal Corpse The Florida Death-Grinders offered a solid barrage for another time. On a show of the fivepiece from Tampa you know what to expect. So they motivated a legion of rock-all-night-maniacs to headbang to smashers from the current “Kill”-release like “Maniacal” and “Make Them Suffer” as two classics like “Fuck With A Knife” and the long time missed “Hammer Smashed Face”. The instrumental section showed again they’re one of the tightest and the Corpsegrinder himself demonstrated his windmill-activities besides his grunts.
Party Stage
Disillusion The Progressive Metal-geniuses from Leipzig began the Saturday by the opener of the new masterpiece “Gloria”, “The Black Sea”, and with its title song another new one. Singer Schmidt used two microphones standing right next to each other, one for the clean vocals, one for the effect-vocals. Of course the fourpiece didn’t forget tracks from their longplayer-debut “Back To Times Of Splendor” like its title track and “And The Mirror Cracked” or their “The Porter”-classic. With the current video-single “Don’t Go Any Further” the band finished a brilliant gig that inspired the pretty big noon-crowd. One of the biggest weekend-highlights by the probably most talented musicians of the billing!
Heaven Shall Burn After they had appeared in the W.E.T. Stage-tent in 2003 the German Metalcore-machine filled up the Party Stage-area. And the mob raged from the beginning marked by the “Echoes”-intro, the opener “The Weapon They Fear” as the following two tracks from the recent album “Deaf To Our Prayers”, “The Final March” and “Profane Believers”, and created a wall of death for the beginning of “Voice Of The Voiceless”. And Heaven Shall Burn set new standards. Shouter Marcus Bischoff animated the crowd to organize a circle-pit around the beer- and the merchandise-stands placed right in the middle of the Party Stage area, and hundreds of madmen followed to create the probably biggest circle-pit of the world. It was pretty okay that no one followed Marcus joking idea to bring him a Döner Kebap with Tzatziki sauce from a Turkey stand from the other end of the Party Stage area. After the also new “Counterweight” it felt easy to conclude I had seen a great gig with a new pit-record. And the idea to use a girlie as a backdrop was pretty cool!
Dimension Zero The project / band of In Flames-guitarist Jesper Strömblad and ex-Marduk-fronter Jocke Göthberg played a very tight set consisting of new songs from the new “He Who Shall Not Bleed”-album like its title track or “Unto Others” as older songs like “Hellmet” or “The Murder Inn”. In contrast to the last time I had watched them right after their debut when they just appeared in front of less than 50 visitors, this time they motivated numerous of supporters to headbang. Good show, but next time please use your whole time and don’t leave the stage much earlier like this show.
Norther The Finnish fivepiece around Petri Lindroos served Melodic Death Metal which had evolved a bit from the Children Of Bodom-touch it once had had. And the appearance showed Norther had built a big fanbase in the shadow of Petri’s more popular band Ensiferum. So, new “Till Death Unites Us”- songs (“Everything”, “Omen”) became celebrated like older ones (“Day Zero”, “Midnight Walker”, “Released”). The band also introduced with “Frozen Angel” a brand new track from the forthcoming album. A cool appearance from an act we’ll hear from.
Stormwarrior The German True Metal-formation started playing own material which showed this couldn’t have caused the 75 minutes they got to fill and the astonishing number of fans in front of the stage. In the middle of the set Kai Hansen entered the stage to perform with Stormwarrior several Helloween-classics. Of course the audience supported “Murderer”, “Ride The Sky” and “I Want Out” much more than the Stormwarrior-tracks, so read the lines above.
Haggard The second appearance with symphonic musicians on this year’s WOA didn’t work as well as the first one of Rage. Ten years ago the Gothic-Metal-meets-Classic-idea had been a very innovative one, but over the last years it had seemed they had just repeated themselves. An impression Asis Nasseri and his companions couldn’t disprove. And the number of supporters celebrating tracks like “Eppur Si Muove”, “Of Might Divine”, “Introitus”, “Final Victory” and “Awaking The Centuries” had become smaller. So this gig was nothing special at all!
W.E.T. Stage
Fair To Midland What happened in the Saturday afternoon became very unique in my long festival career: I went into the W.E.T. Stage-tent to watch this unknown newcomer-band and they totally blew me away performing the best show of the whole first-class-Wacken-billing. The fivepiece from Dallas which had got discovered and signed by System Of A Down-fronter Serj Tankian rocked the half-crowded tent and inspired the former passive crowd to support this agile show considering the compositions from their debut album “Fables From A Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times Is True” by its strong opener as video-single “Dance Of The Manatee”, “April Fools And Eggmen”, “Kyla Cries Cologne”, “Walls Of Jericho”, “Vice/Versa” and “Tall Tales Taste Like Sour Grapes”. The songs as the motivated performance convinced every ‘tent-meanwhile-inhabitant’ although the stage-action of the brilliant vocalist Darroh Sudderth felt sometimes a little strange. But in the end he brought the biggest stunt climbing the backline and moved on sidewards by his hands hanging from the roof till he let himself fall to continue the show. What an ingenous insanity!
Swallow The Sun After their disappointing performance at this year’s With Full Force the Finnish Melodic Death Doomers showed a much improved appearance. In front of numerous of fans the sixpiece felt more comfortable on the tent stage than on any Main Stage. So band as fans headbanged to “Out Of This Gloomy Night”, “Descending Winters” and “Swallow (Horror Pt. 1)”. In contrast to their latest mentioned appearance this performance worked very well. Strong performance!
Moonsorrow Although there was playing with Immortal the biggest possible competitor the tent was absolutely filled up with manics who all wanted to see the Finnish Black Metal-band with Folk-influences. Headbanging motion as singalong action reigned over the tent getting turned into a party tent celebrating songs like ”Unohduksen Lapsi” and “Sankatarina”. The quintet showed an agile performance the writer of these lines absolutely enjoyed.
Conclusion:
As I mentioned in the introduction a big respect goes out to the organisation which had to fight against the worst weather conditions they had ever had! But they realized the impossible! The ‘usual’ organisation of the festival left no wishes open! Especially the new Party Stage-area was a big gain! So did the billing: For another time the WOA offered a first-class-billing combining top bands of all different sub-genres, successful Metal-giants as hopeful newcomers in each of them!
The prices for food and beverages stayed the same as the last years before (e.g. 3,00 € for a o,4 l beer or softdrink).
And the Wacken Open Air 2008 seems to become a killer one, too! The first announced bands are: Iron Maiden, Avantasia, Children Of Bodom, Kreator, Soilwork and Sonata Arctica! Iron Maiden in Wacken: Holy shit! And the other mentioned bands are also known for great shows! We enjoyed our ten years of Wacken-participation and are looking forward to our 12th one! See you in Wacken 2008 – rain or shine!
Special thanks go out to Britta Kock, Sheree Hesse and the WOA-team!!!!!
At the Wacken Open Air rocked, drank and partied Tobi Wan Kenobi, Sebi Sebericks, Helga and Nicole!!!!!