Suomi Finland Tourkele part 12: Move On!

8/14 - Berlin

I didn't write anything on the actual trip out due to circumstances; jetzt, Nachfassung.

Around 7:45, Mitzi came by to pick up the Gwynbleidd shirt I'd been holding for her since Thursday. With this, it was all up; down to 5 Rampant Decay buttons out of about 35 buttons, 2 shirts, 90 CDs, and 150 or so stickers imported. I didn't think it'd all go, but it went; a light pack makes a light soul.

It's a bit disappointing to have only seen so few bands -- like 20 at Wacken, and about 10 here -- but I missed those bands having more fun, not sitting in a tent being miserable. In addition to keeping up with the two crews from last year, I hung out with a new huge bunch, and met or brought into the orbits of the above a bunch of other more tenuously-connected people, singletons like myself, going alone for that reason, to meet new folks, swap stories, and go halves on crates of 29. I've seen a lot of great music at festivals, but little that will be a stronger memory than Dennis literally falling over himself laughing as Müller attempts to push an unconscious Knut back into his tent by shoving him in the butt. Fucking balls-off hilarious.

All good things must end, though, and I had to drop my trash, hike to the bus, and then spend the better part of five hours getting back to Berlin. Decompression's hard when the train's overflowing and you're standing in the hall the whole way. Despite the Invalidenstrasse being completely dug up, the hotel was a little better in this regard: shower, shave, real Turkish food, a 6-pack, and Real v. Barca, and I'm almost acclimated to civilization.


8/15 - Berlin

All caught up; now I just need to catch a plane, and hope my pack makes it back ok.




445. Good news on the plane to Dublin. Aer Lingus is really good with legroom, but more is always better.

Dublin

In Dublin I dropped exactly 10 euro on lunch (water, ploughman's, cookie, so not exactly 100% worth it but airport prices), cleared US customs, and got on the plane, all told, with a couple minutes ot spare despite like 3 security checks. The flight across the Atlantic was long enough to listen through the new Motörhead and Social Distortion records a couple times, write up some interview questions based on the experiences of the trip (there's that old-and-getting-consumed-by-work thing again from the first post), watch Jeremy Clarkson call God a loser (a redeeming feature at last, but he obviously isn't a Lordi fan), put together the thankslist before I forgot people, and observe, via the cute education-policy funcionary seated next to me, that it's not uncivilized, among Irish people, to put jam on butter on a scone. I was going to do it anyway, because you eat the calories the airline gives you for free, always, but you never know how embarrassed you're supposed to be. Land in Boston, strap up, negotiate the T, short hike through the rain, pick up the car, and somehow, home again.


Years have passed, closer to the grave; this may be the last such expedition, but this was a good one, and you never go out on a high, because you think "yes, I can do it again" straight on until the point where you fail, and can't. I will continue to go out and do adventurous things until my body breaks down, and Party.San was so good, in environment and music, that I still want to go back, likely pairing it with Summer Breeze rather than Wacken, but Amon Amarth and Forbidden and Scorpions and Henry Rollins have already announced for next year. We'll see how this shakes out: the struggle between Kommerz and DIY is an eternal, and perhaps, a political struggle, but hopefully one that the rebels will win. In the meantime, there's Party.San, our own fortress island hidden in the Thuringian heartland, where only "heavy metal is the law", and if you've got at least one in the set [beer,booze,bratwurst,craic], you'll get hooked up with the rest, from some of the coolest metalheads on the planet, in practically no time at all.


Final stats and points:
--
Wacken day 1: 5 bands, average 5.6/7
Wacken day 2: 8 bands, average 5.69/7
Wacken day 3: 8 bands, average 5.56/7
Wacken total: 21 bands, 118 points, average 5.62/7
--
Party.San day 2: 5 bands, average 6.1/7
Party.San day 3: 3 bands, average 5.83/7
Party.San total: 8 bands, 48 points, average 6/7
--
trip total: 29 bands, 166 points, average 5.72/7

Yes, Party.San was that good, and yes, Wacken was that good, even with the mainstream stuff playing boat anchor. That's an improvement of nearly 0.3 from last year, and even Party.San is up trivially over last year's wicked good results. Even if you're going for the first time, fucking go: the ancillary stuff only gets tiresome enough to weigh down the fucking awesome music when you've been a few times, and are in that demographic that will end up scoring free bratwurst and playing Dosenfußball while cranking Scaphism and Exhumed, which just makes the awesome experience more awesome.

Suomi Finland Tourkele part 11: Heathen Tribes

8/13 - Schlotheim

And yet here it is, 7AM, I'm done with breakfast, and still writing. Maybe get a beer or two, then go back to camp and sleep on the table; the bill for today is fuckin killer, and I need to make it to and through At The Gates.

As noted, I'm down to the square root of nothing merch-wise. I have half a pack of Bluntface stickers, the Blessed Offal record that I haven't technically managed to move yet, and then it's frickin buttons. I wasn't sure I'd be able to move all I had from FA and the BCS stack, but it's all gone. The sign helped; I'll be bringing my own markers over next time to make sure that goes out for Wednesday/Thursday. However, the sign wouldn't've helped anything if the people at this festival weren't honestly interested in all corners of the scene.

But seriously, I'm moving buttons? Come on.

Yes, seriously. I took the morning slow, hanging out with the Erfurt guys after moving the Blessed Offal record onto one of Timo's dudes (to the girl who got buttonholed by them, if you're reading this, leave comment = get rip of Bone Ritual demo; apologies that I didn't bring next to any black metal stuff over) -- old Broken Hope counts, right? -- and took part in the demolition of a decent bottle of Moskovskaya.

I also met the Chörnyj Woron guys again, by total accident; the same themes from two years ago about the coming end (or not) of the superfests are still relevant. After they left, Mitzi came by, which was more good craic, and eventually someone decided christ, we're all drunk again at 2 in the afternoon, let's go see some bands so our friends won't laugh at us when we get home.




437. Panzerchrist in Festivision.

The lack of focus nearly captures the haze you get when you and your friends are playing soccer on the road to the campsite and need to empty another 5l keg every time the "ball" gets too beat up to use, or dribbled off with by some random dudes...in addition to having a live can in your hand the whole time.

Panzerchrist [5.5/7]
Good, hard-hitting thrash music; a good pick-me-up in the middle of the afternoon. During this set Mitzi ended up rounding up, by chance, most of the rest of the Israeli contingent -- including Omer, who'd been operating for a year under the misapprehension that I was Scottish. This is why it matters what booze you back; in the absence of other information, it's an easy, if often terminally incorrect, ethnic signifier.




438. Panzerchrist gives the crowd a kick in the teeth.

Heidevolk [6/7]
This was really the only other band that I was an-sich motivated to see, so it was really good that I was in the infield and not completely wrecked. Much like on CD, this was a strong but not outstanding performance right up until "Vulgaris Magistralis", at which point people went bananas. Heidevolk is a good band, but that one song is so good, especially live in a festival context, that people may be tempted to write them off as a one-hit wonder.




439. Heidevolk, done with the ooga-chakas and hailing the crowd.

Here, we split; more drinking with various dudes, a bite to eat, and I end up on bench with the dudes from camp, yelling at people to smile. Success rate is about 50%; maybe high for stereotypical growling metalheads, but this is Party.San.




440. Knut demonstrates for Aktion Lächeln.




441. Knut with his glasses off. I promise this isn't Ryan from Autumn Above on the other side of the water.

Time went by, we played more Dosenfußball -- a big reason for the popularity of soccer worldwide is not only that you can play it with a crumpled-up minikeg in the middle of a crowd, but that since you're not allowed to use your hands, you don't have to put down your beer -- and eventually, I went back in for what would end up being my last band of the festival.

Watain [6/7]
Watain war's wert. This set wasn't as good as the one from last year, but you can count on this band to kick ass, always, and that they did.




442. Watain - to the death!




443. The audience by night.

Ground down by another hard-partying day, it was back to the site, to half-hear Enslaved and trade "4AM whiskey/soaked wisdom" with the other old dudes from the group. Haasi'd gotten the Disinter CD he was after, but there was still time and beer to go on about those hard, crystallizing moments when death is right there in front of you, in or out of your control, and if you survive, your fear is what dies. Heavy, maaan....but still, as shown, a hell of a time wrapped around and through.




444. Beersoaked, yet unbowed: left to right, Misha, Haasi, Sven, and me. Here's to comrades, near and far.

Suomi Finland Tourkele part 10: This Is The Song That We Chose To Sing

8/12 - Schlotheim

There is little cooler than dancing around to Benny Hill, while drinking beer, at 6 in the morning. \m/. Unless, of course, it's having to switch off the music due to complaints from dudes half the campground away....and cranking it up again as soon as they leave.

It's absolutely going to rain today. Only question is when. I will see bands today, too; I'm near out of CDs, and have a flag to throw at Primordial.

In addition to just moving the CDs, I got some reactions as well; people, at least from the Erfurt crew that heard Dennis playing the BCS split from his car, were very impressed not only by the musicianship and songwriting of the bands, but also the professionalism of the recording. Big ups to Eric, Eliot, and any other engineers involved on this end; we have a lot of good recordists as well as good bands in New England, and the former definitely helps the reception of the latter.

Wow. I was wondering why my kutte felt so light (well, besides all the CDs being out of it) and was letting so much wind through; closer inspection reveals that almost all the dirt has been washed out of it. Yeah, it rained that hard on the last day of Wacken. Five years of mud, sweat, and beer, all gone.

It rained a little (knock on wood) and I spent most of the morning drinking with the Terror Blade NRW crew, at the beerwagon, in camp, and around the Flunkyball tourney. Now, in to the fest!

Urgehal [NR]
I only saw the last song from this bunch; pretty decent, all told, and if/when they play somewhere normal closer to home (one would probably suspect PT-109 or another DIY space for this kind of black metal band), it'll be worthwhile checking them out.

Skeletonwitch [5.5/7]
A little short, but a hard-kicking set of American blackened thrash including a couple off the new/forthcoming record. They hit nice and hard, but seemed to clear out a little fast.




410. "Upon Black Wings", Skeletonwitch take the stage.




411. Full band banging.




412. Hero shots "Beyond the Permafrost".

It was in here, or maybe just before, that I got the requisite "bum picture" taken by a few people I ran into before Watain the next night; me napping at the rail between bands, them at the side giving the horns. If you have this pic, send it in. Short sleep + eight hours of drinking + old age = big wreck of a carcass piled against a metal fence.

Desultory [5.5/7]
A crunching, puching set of Swedish thrashing death metal that beat back the rain and kept us tough folk who endured that downpour satisfied. Killer shit; I don't know nearly as much about this band as I ought to, and that's got to get corrected going forward.




413. Desultory steps out.




414. Blasting the crowd.




415. These dudes will never be "Enslaved".




video6: The weather tarp over the bass cabs kicks along with Desultory.

Absu [7/7]
Not perfect, but what a fuckin' set. Tremendous from start to finish; this kind of second-wave mayhem was supposed to be extinct, but not here. For a black metaller of my generation, there's not a whole lot better than "Never Blow Out The Eastern Candle" when played this hard. Amazing.




416. Proscriptor setting up. And yes, he's even better than advertised as a drummer/vocalist, which considering his rep is pretty difficult.




417. Absu assaults the stage.




418. Ezuzu, hero shot.




419. Vis Crom shredding the fuck out.




420. Uh oh, somebody smuggled in a political banner. This one isn't controversial, but security might want to think about what might've been if this'd been a Starry Plough or something.

Primordial [6.5/7]
No Grave Deep Enough
As Rome Burns
Bloodied Yet Unbowed
The Coffin Ships
Empire Falls

Killer set, and as can be seen, nearly all new material. There were some tech problems, and security was up on me about the flag (and also, they didn't close with "Death of the Gods", which would have got it chucked regardless), but as regards actual music this was amazing. Even more new stuff might have made it better, but they kind of have to play "Coffin Ships", and there's only so much time in a festival set. To the bitter end!




421. Alan is wicked pissed.




422. Michael, hero shot.




423. Ciaran ripping.




424. Pol laying it down, and Alan gets in the shot because that's what lead singers do.




425. Simon back behind his kit behind Michael.




426. No stage deep enough.




427. Full band, full stage.

Melechesh [6/7]
The hits keep coming; killer, first-class black metal with their unique Mesopotamian edge. I only saw the first half of this one from the front, the rest from the back, but this was still and absolute class performance following three other absolute class performances.




428. Melechesh setting up.




429. The band invokes the tones of war.




430. Guitar intifadeh.




431. A better shot, if not as low as Paul Proteus' ninja stance.




432. Ashmedi slashing away at the crowd.




433. Bassist on the far side.




434. Full band in full cry.




435. Moloch with his hood off. It lasted one song before being too hot to justify.




436. Hero shot of Ashmedi because he was also there. This camera's too slow to get a two-shot of the guitarists here as well.

When I came off the rail, I thought I'd hit the head, get dinner and a drink, then be back after Belphegor. This turned out not to e the case: it was quickly clear that I was, for lack of an equivalent expression in English, "völlig auseinander". Eight beers (that I can remember), a half pint of vodka, and a couple hits of whiskey between 0700 and 1400, followed by standing on a rail in sun and downpour for the better part of four hours without food or water will do that to you. By the time I was rehydrated -- which also included passing out a decent amount of promo stuff - I'm down to buttons, seriously - to Tank from Zombieslut -- I was about ready to pass out. I saw a bit of Belphegor (decent, but not enough of a sample space to actually rate), picked at some pakora (not working this year), then sacked out. I need to get better at sleeping in the morning and staying up at night.

Suomi Finland Tourkele part 9: Die With A Beer In Your Hand

8/10 - Bitterfeld

Getting the time and energy to write this all up from the past few days took till the outbound train; Schlotheim is a little further from the main centers of Thuringia, so I need to stay awake. The changes between trains are extremely tight, but as long as we don't get delayed, I should be in Mühlhausen no problem around 1 PM, then over to Schlotheim before the rain gets too bad.

Schlotheim

As it happened, I got in to Party.San, period, by about 1, and with the help of Roger got my tent up. This would've been very difficult to pull off alone; the wind blows constantly from west to east across the airfield, and the ground is hard and dry. This leaves some hope that we'll be able to escape what looks like inevitable state-wide rain tomorrow, but regardless, enemy #1 this year will almost surely be the wind.




405. Hike up to hell.




406. Customizations. This obviously weakens the tent against water, but allows the wind to go right through without the threat of snapping the poles, which was a real danger beforehand, at least early on Wednesday before the campground filled up.

I also customized my tent with some stickers, since the cuts obviously condemned it to the bin once this trip was over, but they blew off almost immediately. This was some hardcore wind. A few of them got salvaged for Müller to paste on the tablecloth protecting the picnic table, but not many.

I ended up tenting on the edge of a larger campsite, which provides greatly enhanced party opportunities. Cheers to Dennis and crew for the hospitality, as well as taking a bunch of promo stuff; I'm still going to have to take time and pass stuff out manually as well as at breakfast and in the infield.

In the afternoon, Roger, Sven and I made an expedition into Schlotheim proper in search of beer and other necessities; we ended up hiking all through this small, cool town, vainly searching for a supermarket that hadn't been plundered of its can beer. After coming up dry at the Netto (they had "Schloss" brand "beer", but the similarity of that name to the "Schlitz" that Americans will recognize is truly serendipitous; Roger I think boosted a can by accident and later gave the verdict "well, it has alcohol in it"), we ended up back at the Edeka across from the bus stop, waiting for 1700 and the truck to get in with the beer. The celebrations when that occurred, and the staff finally wheeled the pallets of 29 in to the store, were a sight to behold.

On the bus back, we gave away a few beers to people who weren't carrying their own slabs, and I gave away a Forced Asphyxiation CD to this guy from Melbourne. I tried to also move the BCS split, but he already had it -- Boston's own Wren had sent it out to him earlier due to a prior acquaintance. Small world -- or maybe just that this is the magnet festival for those with itchy feet and hardened eardrums.


8/11 - Schlotheim



407. This doesn't look good. Walls of gray clouds from horizon to horizon; there's light in the west, but more clouds behind it. Not a good omen for the day.

I'm feeling much better than in Berlin, if a little chilly; we'll see if things pick up after breakfast.




408. View back from the breakfast tent.

Things did pick up; it somehow didn't rain, and over beer after breakfast, Roger introduced me to Mitzi and to Alex (from last year), again, by weird accident, and from there things snowballed. Between the "beergarden" and two campsites, I spent the day drinking with old friends and new, moved damn near everything from the promo stacks, and took part in a couple weird adventures, including holding a sign -- on the back of the sign that moved all those Boarcorpse and Forced Asphyxiation CDs -- for Mitzi's Aktion Rausziehung that was probably an active discouragement to the cause. When a cute girl is going around with a sign advertising free beer for bare tits, it's a lot more effective than when it's carried by a hairy auld kuttenträger. Hitrate was about 2%, not including dudes, most of whom did not meet the mass requirements for "tits" (the one or two who did, of course, did get beer for it, because otherwise it would've been gender discrimination), for anyone planning to try this in the future. Despite being hairy drunk dudes, we had more absolute success with Aktion Lächeln later in the weekend, but any time you sit on a bench and wander in the road drinking beer and barking up spontaneous social interactions with passers-by, it's a success. But especially if there's tits.




409. View up into the east at sunset -- Hammer!

The party later got even more chaotic; it's difficult to have ten people thrashing out in a VW van without it getting to that level. It was probably here that I got that burn putting out someone's cigarette with my palm by accident, but I'm not completely sure I remember. Party fuckin' San.

There were, of course, bands playing on Thursday night, but we weren't keeping track of time, and we didn't hear any bands start, which is normally the trigger to go inside the festival grounds. This was because, as I found out later, the roof blew off the main stage due to the winds, and the Thursday night bands got moved inside to the beertent. I was a little bummed at missing Negura Bunget and Aborted, not to mention how Decapitated was going to work as a revived band, but the sound was allegedly kind of crap -- understandable, since the PA in there was only set up for this roots-rock band Cashley who were supposed to play Saturday morning. Win some, lose some.

Euro 2011 concluded; here's to comrades near and far

The trip's over, I'm back, and I should be following up on emails/facebook/etc in the near future and getting the trip report out by the end of the month, since there are so many fewer pictures this time. Thanks and greets go out, in no particular or even greatly rational order, to at least the following:

The bar staff at Scandic Sydhavn, malfunctioning ticket machines, SG Dynamo Dresden, Kostenkorva vodka, the Sector Illusion dudes, Dennis, Lars, and the rest of the Aarhus crew, Martin, Eric, Sobo again (hab nix Gudrun angetan, ehrlich), Aeon Throne, the Hamburg police department, Daniel the world bum (dude, you shoulda stabbed that Bavarian pedophile, or at least told us you did) and the various Swiss and Austrians we breakfasted with, the tent robber for not taking anything actually important, Roger, Deutsche Bahn and associated regional rail in northwest Thuringia, Dennis and the Erfurt crew, inklusiv Müller, Knut, Renate, Haasi, Djorsten (did I misspell that again?), Mischa and family, and anyone else I forgot (big site), Sven der Saxe, Alex and Max and Hugo and crew for another year of bus/tent/van/early-morning-Benny-Hill madness, Donnie der Klohüter, Mitzi, Omer (still naw Scots, aye? ;) ) and the rest of the Israeli metal diaspora, Sara and Michael TerrorBlade and crew again (congrats again on your marriage, thanks for the vodka, apologies that I was too messed up to meet up Friday night), those Romanians from our raid on the Flunkyball tourney, the quarterfinalists that we boosted Köstriker off of (thanks & hails!), Kevin the undercover Aussie, Morne and Gwynbleidd for going above and beyond with merch, to good effect, Donald from Washington, the lovely girls who took active part in Mitzi's Aktion Rausziehung and the game dudes who made up the numbers, Tank and Zombieslut, Timo and crew (order your own Mortician shirt), cudgel.de, Andreas and Gerald, the long-suffering staff of Edeka Schlotheim, the Aussie dude who knows Wren (sorry, both sick and drunk at the time, no good for remembering names), 29 Pils, and of course everyone else who shared a beer or some railspace, took a CD or a sticker, and to the bands here that set me up with said promistuff and the bands over there who make it possible to get up these sick fests.

Here's to you all, us all, comrades near and far; raise a glass, raise your voices, raise hell. Next year may take us all closer to the grave, and may not take me back over, but we've no regrets and no remorse for the memories and braincells spent.