Sunday was as normal a normal festival Sunday could be. I packed up my gear, threw out everything I didn't need, walked back to the festival for one last breakfast, then on and out to the bus to the train to the other train to Hamburg to walk to the subway to the right stop to walk to the hotel, where I checked in early, washed all the dirt and sweat off my nicely roasted skin, and fell asleep almost immediately, being on a bed rather than a mat on the ground.
Monday was a little more eventful. Waiting to get through outbound immigration, I saw Peter Steele walking down to another flight, but I couldn't get my camera out of my jacket in time, and my Vinnland flag was safely packed away in my pack, so I didn't really have anything for him to sign. SUCK.
Nine hours later, I was in Newark sweating through the bullshit that current meaningless security regs have imposed on Americans coming back from overseas and continuing on by air past the hub, then making a short run to the plane for a short flight back to Boston, where a short wait got me onto a quick train home. And I was back, but carrying Wacken with me in images, memories, stories, and merch.
-------
Band scoring by day:
Thursday: average 3/7, total 3 points. This is not fair and is affected by environmental factors.
Friday: average 5.6/7, total 84 points.
Saturday: average 6.13/7, total 49 points.
total festival: average 5.67/7, total 136 points.
I saw fewer bands this year, but more of them were better; if I'd seen the last two bands Thursday instead of the first one, or rated the two bands I sat in the beergarden for on Saturday night, I'd have tied last year for numbers and reported down even more greatness. This was a fantastic lineup and the bands gave for the most part incredible performances, and I'm still burned up about missing Morbid Angel and Korpiklaani, among a few others, but you can't be everywhere all at once. Next year will hopefully be as killer if not better, and I'll definitely be on hand again. Blind Guardian, Immortal, and Saxon are already announced, and the run-up to '07 has barely begun. I'll be putting my wristband on my jacket over the weekend, but definitely still leaving space for future fests.
-------
Germany stuff:
On the subway in Hamburg, I saw that there are 20 million traffic signs in Germany, about 1 every 30 meters. To say this is kind of insane is an understatement.
The clerk at the hotel when I checked out was a metalhead and a Leipziger, and as we talked about Wacken, and the bands, and stupid US security measures that don't help anything, and Saxony, I realized that I was just as nostalgic for that part of Germany as he was, and while extremely weird, it was at least understandable. When you really think about it, there is a lot that draws you back to Saxony, and for as long as I lived there and as good memories as I had, it does make sense that I can be homesick for Dresden, much more than anywhere I've used so far as a permanent address. Despite the occasional bad stuff like long hours and cars getting banged up, there's no better place to live, as long as unlike 13 percent of the population you have a job. I will go back at some point, probably sooner than later for work, but if the book hits, then sooner rather than later permanently as well.
Showing posts with label wacken2006. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wacken2006. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 09, 2006
Wacken 2006 Part 3: Saturday, or, Burned Up, Blown Apart, and Strung Out
So this brings us to Saturday, where another breakfast and another trip into the village led directly into the day's music, via camping the front row for Metal Church.
Metal Church - 7/7
Despite going on early in the day and on a smaller stage than they played last year, they delivered a top-quality, tremendously kickass set, probably driven on by the huge crowd for so early in the day. The material was a mix of the real old stuff as well as newer cuts from the stuff they've done since Vanderhoof came back, weighted as of course old, with the three classics from their self-titled closing the set. After this, they did "Mirror of Lies" again as an encore to film a video, and the crowd was strongly up for it again. We won't know for probably another month or so, but I may have gotten into this video, as I was standing in the front row and did a psycho Gene Simmons grimace right into the camera as the camera dude was running it by. As Quentin Tarantino says about Robert Rodriguez' films, all you have to do is be "the dog"; stay on your mark, look cool, and you'll get in the picture when the editor needs to fill a gap.
30 - Metal Church doing "Watch The Children Pray".
Caliban - 5/7
Pretty good, but they'd rather have been on the Party Stage (saying exactly as much), and while they recovered well from the power going out in the middle of their set, they never came off as much more than average, perhaps intimidated by the size of the audience. Also, even at a festival like this, you really shouldn't have to feel the need to explain what a 'wall of death' or a 'circle pit' is. People who show up to watch a metalcore band will know what this shit is.
31 - Caliban before the power went off.
Arch Enemy - 4/7
The electrical problems continued with Arch Enemy on the other main stage; the performance was pretty good, but the sound was totally fucked up, very trebled out to the point that the guitars sounded like junk. Angela had a couple problems with her mic as well that brought back memories of Metalfest, but that wasn't the dominant issue here -- the intermittent failures of the right PA tower to function were. Not a fun time for those trying to listen back in the audience.
32 - Arch Enemy, fortunately with only visuals and not their fucked-up sound.
Fear Factory - 5/7
I was doing much more sitting around and waiting for Orphaned Land to go on, but they seemed to put on a good show, even going back to their first disc to do "Martyr". Pretty cool overall, but this isn't a band I'm hugely into, and where I was sitting made the True Metal stage sound a little flat.
Orphaned Land - 6/7
These guys definitely did not disappoint, either musically or in the showmanship department. However, as good as they were, they weren't quite good enough to justify the huge media circus that formed up around them due largely to their national origin. Great music, but that wasn't all that the photographers hogging the front rail were interested in, which is a shame.
33 - Orphaned Land blasting and grooving.
34 - A crop showing the #2 and #3 reasons Europe is getting into Orphaned Land; being AWESOME is definitely primary, but the bandmembers having SCREAMING HOT girlfriends/wives definitely helps.
Gamma Ray - 7/7
I was much more listening to Orphaned Land's soundcheck, but the parts that I did hear of Kai et al did make me thoroughly regret missing the set. Even standing in front of another stage the sound and feeling of this were purely awesome, going through newer stuff as well as the classics, and blending everything together into a smooth and unbeatable whole.
35 - One of the robotic guitar units of the machine known as ATHEIS~2 gets some of its circuitry tightened up.
Atheist - 8/7
O. M. F. G. Atheist pounded the crowd into a fine powder with a nonstop barrage of ultimate brutal and technical death metal that was only intensified for me by being stapled to the front row, directly in front of the left-side PA cab. There's no band like this anywhere, and the crowd realized this as well, never giving a down moment and continuing to shout for an encore long after the crew started to take down their gear.
36 - Atheist crushing the audience.
37 - Three instrumentalists, three independent and totally sick riff lines wrapping around each other. Fuckin' A-theist!
38 - Tony "The Man" Choy laying down a totally sweet solo in "Mother Man". Suitable for screen background use.
Here are some fun facts about Tony Choy that you may not know:
- When Tony Choy fell through the stage in Italy, he did not stop himself by breaking his bass' neck. Tony Choy stopped himself by projecting a wave of pure AWESOME from his face, and the bass broke its own neck out of repsect.
- Tony Choy does not sleep. He plays Stu Hamm and Victor Wooten lines.
- Tony Choy's bassplaying can make women spontaneously give birth at a range of 50 yards. This may increase to 100 yards if the woman in question is already pregnant.
- Tony Choy was going to use his powers to resurrect Roger Patterson and Chuck Schuldiner for this year's Wacken, but Kelly Schaefer reminded him that Lemmy was going to be there as well, and that much concentrated AWESOME might blow a hole in the planet. So Tony Choy decided not to, even though he probably could've handled it.
- There is no endangered species list. There is merely a list of creatures that Tony Choy has not thumbslapped into oblivion yet.
- Tony Choy missed a note once. When he realized his mistake, though, he went back in time and played a totally sick syncopated-64th-note fill in its place instead.
- Tony Choy does not use the dials on his bass or his amp. He controls his sound directly with his mind.
- Tony Choy once met Chuck Norris. Chuck tried to roundhouse-kick him, but Tony was able to block the kick with a wall of totally sick notes. They have since agreed not to blow up any more galaxies fighting each other.
- Tony Choy's day job is playing bass on a cruise ship. His totally sick bass lines propel the boat through the water, and additionally destroy the zombie shark people who would otherwise take over the Caribbean.
- When Atheist was flying over to Europe, there were motherfuckin snakes on the motherfuckin plane. So Tony Choy grabbed like 8 of them and made them into a bass and played a totally fucking sick solo that made the rest of them all die. The airplane additionally spontaneously shat itself and dumped all their gear into the ocean, that solo was so awesome.
More Facts:
1. Tony Choy is a mammal.
2. Tony Choy plays totally sick bass lines all the time.
3. The purpose of Tony Choy is to flip out and play awesome bass solos.
Testimonial:
Tony Choy can outplay anyone he wants. Tony Choy plays insanely sick bass licks all the time and doesn't even think twice about it. I heard that there was this one time Tony Choy was eating at a diner. And when some dude said something bad about Roger Patterson Tony Choy flipped out and played this sick solo that blew up the whole town. My friend Mark said that he saw Tony Choy totally uppercut some kid just because the kid said that Soulfly was technical.
And that is some Real Fucking Ultimate Power!
Q and A:
Q: Why is everyone so obsessed about Tony Choy?
A: Tony Choy is the ultimate paradox. On the one hand he plays the world's most massively sick death metal bass lines, but on the other hand, he gets paid for playing on a cruise ship.
Q: I heard that Tony Choy isn't as good as Roger Patterson. What's his deal?
A: Whoever told you that is a total liar. Just like other mammals, Tony Choy can be as good as Roger Patterson AND not better than Roger Patterson.
Q: What does Tony Choy do when he's not touring with Atheist or playing on the cruise ship?
A: Most of his free time is spent at his house in Florida, but sometimes he smokes weed. (Ask Kelly or Rand if you don't believe me.)
........
Ok, silliness aside, back to the festival.
Emperor - 7/7
The set was a little short, but little short of perfect. There were some problems with the sound early, and Ihsahn forgot which album "...Nightspirit" was off of when he called it out, but they played about everything you could possibly want (I had to rack my brains to come up with "Ye Entrancemperium" to yell for the encore, since they had already done "Wordless Chamber" and "With Strength I Burn", my personal favorites), and Ihsahn even busted out the old shoulder armor for "The Loss and Curse of Reverence", even though no one was in corpsepaint. This is how a reunion ought to be, and I was hella glad that I got to see and take part in it.
39 - Ihsahn leading the Emperors' Return.
40 - The titanic crowd for Emperor.
41 - Ihsahn again, with better lighting.
With Emperor over and me thoroughly tired out, I headed up to the beergarden for some food, a few more drinks, and the chance to check out absolute gone lunacy while Motorhead and Finntroll threw down. Both bands did kickass sets, though I was concentrating a little more on the colorful terrain, as such:
- A dude who looked like Japanese cult TV personality Hard Gay/Razor Ramon standing on (and often falling off) tables, giving security a Fuehrerbefehl (literally, 'direct order from a superior', but it's got all the connotations you think it would) when they came to remove him. (Hard Gay in a rare sane and not-standing-on-tables moment.)
- A kid standing brain-frozen, a beer in one hand and his cellphone ringing in the other, not knowing what the hell to do.
- Fat people playing Surfin' USA when the person sitting on the other end of their bench gets up, popping it up into the air.
- A guy who stepped on someone's Holsten can and now for the life of him can't shake it off his foot.
- A guy so wide he can wear 3 backpatches side by side on his vest.
- Someone raising money for "alcohol research".
If you want to know what it's like, it's like lunch in junior high, except that everyone has been drinking, many heavily. Eventually, though, it had to end, and I had to go back to my tent and get some sleep.
Metal Church - 7/7
Despite going on early in the day and on a smaller stage than they played last year, they delivered a top-quality, tremendously kickass set, probably driven on by the huge crowd for so early in the day. The material was a mix of the real old stuff as well as newer cuts from the stuff they've done since Vanderhoof came back, weighted as of course old, with the three classics from their self-titled closing the set. After this, they did "Mirror of Lies" again as an encore to film a video, and the crowd was strongly up for it again. We won't know for probably another month or so, but I may have gotten into this video, as I was standing in the front row and did a psycho Gene Simmons grimace right into the camera as the camera dude was running it by. As Quentin Tarantino says about Robert Rodriguez' films, all you have to do is be "the dog"; stay on your mark, look cool, and you'll get in the picture when the editor needs to fill a gap.
30 - Metal Church doing "Watch The Children Pray".
Caliban - 5/7
Pretty good, but they'd rather have been on the Party Stage (saying exactly as much), and while they recovered well from the power going out in the middle of their set, they never came off as much more than average, perhaps intimidated by the size of the audience. Also, even at a festival like this, you really shouldn't have to feel the need to explain what a 'wall of death' or a 'circle pit' is. People who show up to watch a metalcore band will know what this shit is.
31 - Caliban before the power went off.
Arch Enemy - 4/7
The electrical problems continued with Arch Enemy on the other main stage; the performance was pretty good, but the sound was totally fucked up, very trebled out to the point that the guitars sounded like junk. Angela had a couple problems with her mic as well that brought back memories of Metalfest, but that wasn't the dominant issue here -- the intermittent failures of the right PA tower to function were. Not a fun time for those trying to listen back in the audience.
32 - Arch Enemy, fortunately with only visuals and not their fucked-up sound.
Fear Factory - 5/7
I was doing much more sitting around and waiting for Orphaned Land to go on, but they seemed to put on a good show, even going back to their first disc to do "Martyr". Pretty cool overall, but this isn't a band I'm hugely into, and where I was sitting made the True Metal stage sound a little flat.
Orphaned Land - 6/7
These guys definitely did not disappoint, either musically or in the showmanship department. However, as good as they were, they weren't quite good enough to justify the huge media circus that formed up around them due largely to their national origin. Great music, but that wasn't all that the photographers hogging the front rail were interested in, which is a shame.
33 - Orphaned Land blasting and grooving.
34 - A crop showing the #2 and #3 reasons Europe is getting into Orphaned Land; being AWESOME is definitely primary, but the bandmembers having SCREAMING HOT girlfriends/wives definitely helps.
Gamma Ray - 7/7
I was much more listening to Orphaned Land's soundcheck, but the parts that I did hear of Kai et al did make me thoroughly regret missing the set. Even standing in front of another stage the sound and feeling of this were purely awesome, going through newer stuff as well as the classics, and blending everything together into a smooth and unbeatable whole.
35 - One of the robotic guitar units of the machine known as ATHEIS~2 gets some of its circuitry tightened up.
Atheist - 8/7
O. M. F. G. Atheist pounded the crowd into a fine powder with a nonstop barrage of ultimate brutal and technical death metal that was only intensified for me by being stapled to the front row, directly in front of the left-side PA cab. There's no band like this anywhere, and the crowd realized this as well, never giving a down moment and continuing to shout for an encore long after the crew started to take down their gear.
36 - Atheist crushing the audience.
37 - Three instrumentalists, three independent and totally sick riff lines wrapping around each other. Fuckin' A-theist!
38 - Tony "The Man" Choy laying down a totally sweet solo in "Mother Man". Suitable for screen background use.
Here are some fun facts about Tony Choy that you may not know:
- When Tony Choy fell through the stage in Italy, he did not stop himself by breaking his bass' neck. Tony Choy stopped himself by projecting a wave of pure AWESOME from his face, and the bass broke its own neck out of repsect.
- Tony Choy does not sleep. He plays Stu Hamm and Victor Wooten lines.
- Tony Choy's bassplaying can make women spontaneously give birth at a range of 50 yards. This may increase to 100 yards if the woman in question is already pregnant.
- Tony Choy was going to use his powers to resurrect Roger Patterson and Chuck Schuldiner for this year's Wacken, but Kelly Schaefer reminded him that Lemmy was going to be there as well, and that much concentrated AWESOME might blow a hole in the planet. So Tony Choy decided not to, even though he probably could've handled it.
- There is no endangered species list. There is merely a list of creatures that Tony Choy has not thumbslapped into oblivion yet.
- Tony Choy missed a note once. When he realized his mistake, though, he went back in time and played a totally sick syncopated-64th-note fill in its place instead.
- Tony Choy does not use the dials on his bass or his amp. He controls his sound directly with his mind.
- Tony Choy once met Chuck Norris. Chuck tried to roundhouse-kick him, but Tony was able to block the kick with a wall of totally sick notes. They have since agreed not to blow up any more galaxies fighting each other.
- Tony Choy's day job is playing bass on a cruise ship. His totally sick bass lines propel the boat through the water, and additionally destroy the zombie shark people who would otherwise take over the Caribbean.
- When Atheist was flying over to Europe, there were motherfuckin snakes on the motherfuckin plane. So Tony Choy grabbed like 8 of them and made them into a bass and played a totally fucking sick solo that made the rest of them all die. The airplane additionally spontaneously shat itself and dumped all their gear into the ocean, that solo was so awesome.
More Facts:
1. Tony Choy is a mammal.
2. Tony Choy plays totally sick bass lines all the time.
3. The purpose of Tony Choy is to flip out and play awesome bass solos.
Testimonial:
Tony Choy can outplay anyone he wants. Tony Choy plays insanely sick bass licks all the time and doesn't even think twice about it. I heard that there was this one time Tony Choy was eating at a diner. And when some dude said something bad about Roger Patterson Tony Choy flipped out and played this sick solo that blew up the whole town. My friend Mark said that he saw Tony Choy totally uppercut some kid just because the kid said that Soulfly was technical.
And that is some Real Fucking Ultimate Power!
Q and A:
Q: Why is everyone so obsessed about Tony Choy?
A: Tony Choy is the ultimate paradox. On the one hand he plays the world's most massively sick death metal bass lines, but on the other hand, he gets paid for playing on a cruise ship.
Q: I heard that Tony Choy isn't as good as Roger Patterson. What's his deal?
A: Whoever told you that is a total liar. Just like other mammals, Tony Choy can be as good as Roger Patterson AND not better than Roger Patterson.
Q: What does Tony Choy do when he's not touring with Atheist or playing on the cruise ship?
A: Most of his free time is spent at his house in Florida, but sometimes he smokes weed. (Ask Kelly or Rand if you don't believe me.)
........
Ok, silliness aside, back to the festival.
Emperor - 7/7
The set was a little short, but little short of perfect. There were some problems with the sound early, and Ihsahn forgot which album "...Nightspirit" was off of when he called it out, but they played about everything you could possibly want (I had to rack my brains to come up with "Ye Entrancemperium" to yell for the encore, since they had already done "Wordless Chamber" and "With Strength I Burn", my personal favorites), and Ihsahn even busted out the old shoulder armor for "The Loss and Curse of Reverence", even though no one was in corpsepaint. This is how a reunion ought to be, and I was hella glad that I got to see and take part in it.
39 - Ihsahn leading the Emperors' Return.
40 - The titanic crowd for Emperor.
41 - Ihsahn again, with better lighting.
With Emperor over and me thoroughly tired out, I headed up to the beergarden for some food, a few more drinks, and the chance to check out absolute gone lunacy while Motorhead and Finntroll threw down. Both bands did kickass sets, though I was concentrating a little more on the colorful terrain, as such:
- A dude who looked like Japanese cult TV personality Hard Gay/Razor Ramon standing on (and often falling off) tables, giving security a Fuehrerbefehl (literally, 'direct order from a superior', but it's got all the connotations you think it would) when they came to remove him. (Hard Gay in a rare sane and not-standing-on-tables moment.)
- A kid standing brain-frozen, a beer in one hand and his cellphone ringing in the other, not knowing what the hell to do.
- Fat people playing Surfin' USA when the person sitting on the other end of their bench gets up, popping it up into the air.
- A guy who stepped on someone's Holsten can and now for the life of him can't shake it off his foot.
- A guy so wide he can wear 3 backpatches side by side on his vest.
- Someone raising money for "alcohol research".
If you want to know what it's like, it's like lunch in junior high, except that everyone has been drinking, many heavily. Eventually, though, it had to end, and I had to go back to my tent and get some sleep.
Wacken 2006 Part 2: Friday, or, Hail Satan, Fuck the Sun, Pursue the Vikings
Since I was occupied spending too much money on merch on Thursday and didn't get in to the Edeka in town, I decided to stop at the breakfast tent and get some fuel in me before I went into town to get additional cash. I got the basic drunk-and-can't-order breakfast set, which can be eaten piecemeal German-style, or combined Voltron-like into the most unappetizing-sounding yet awesome breakfast sandwich in history.
How to make a Wacken-style German breakfast:
Take a mini-baguette or other hard-crust, flattish roll about 6 inches long and split it, then put orange or peach jelly or marmalade on the bottom part. Put a slice or two of real cheese on top of this, then put about the same amount of salami on top of the cheese. Butter the top half and stick it together. Drink some good coffee or cold OJ with it, and put the nutella packet in your pocket for eating/depraved acts later. This will keep an adult metalhead awake and thrashing all morning.
On the way down to breakfast, I saw two separate cars just on the road that I walked in with an alphanumeric code on their license plates ending in 666. Given that a later more careful survey later found 10 cars with this element on the same road, I think we can rule out coincidence, despite the fact that I wasn't aware until now that Germany generally allowed vanity plates.
After breakfast, though, it was on in to town, to get some more cash from the fly-infested ATM booth, and to hit a local landmark:
10 - The world-famous sign on the town's only real hotel. This sign on the Gasthof Zur Post is de riguer for German-speaking metalheads, wherever they come from: Be Happy, You Are In Wacken. And truly, everyone should; 51 weeks a year, it's a perfect little farming town, and the other week, it's the most pure and perfect heavy metal city in the world. Things are not hard here, either for the festivalgoers or for the year-round residents whose economy they substantially underwrite by dumping in a substantial share of the 4 million euros in gate receipts
and buying up a colossal share of the food and beer in stock at the Edeka a little down from this sign, in addition to the money raked in by the households on the main drag that set up bars in their back yard or sell kegs of Warsteiner off their front porch.
At the Edeka I got some research, some food, and a souvenir that I unfortunately couldn't take away:
11 - Wacken beer from Flensburger. I was not able to bring back an actual bottle, so this will have to do. This beer was some good stuff, a nice clean pilsener feel, and a rich aftertaste of toast and coffee...though this may have as much to do with my own breakfast as with the breing process.
Both at the market and on the way back to the Festivalgelande, I noticed a lot more French, Italian, and Spanish being spoken in addition to English, German, Dutch, and the Swedish dialects from north of here. Some of it is that there are more people than there were in 2005, when the weather kept out all but the ultradiehards, but it's quite possible that part of it is an aftereffect from the World Cup, and the associated Europe-wide recognition of the fact that the Germans know how to fucking throw a party. Given the level of the bands and the fans there, Wacken is in itself the World Cup of heavy metal, except that, as with Queen's "We Are The Champions", everyone has already won just by showing up. Of course we win, it's fuckin' metal man!!
Finally, the bands start,
Mystic Circle - 4/7
These guys opened the Black Stage for Friday, and provided a decent start to the day with a mixture of black and death metal that at least got everyone into it, even if it was really kind of average. There's a reason they went on at 11 AM instead of headlining, after all.
12 - Mystic Circle kicks it off.
Wintersun - 5/7
The new project from the former singer of Ensiferum, these guys were genuinely epic and definitely got the surprisingly huge crowd pumped up, even if they started to drag a little by the end. They didn't really have enough unique riffs to fill out all of the space in some of their longer songs, though the initial impression was absolutely kickass.
13 - Wintersun totally rocking out.
Legion of the Damned - 5/7
This Dutch band is fairly original as the brutal thrash revival goes, but in this set there was a lot more kick and punch than original manner of doing such. However, that's just fine in a festival context (can't get Slayer in every year), and the intensity of the performance was to be marveled at. Watch for them on next year's DVD.
14 - Legion of the Damned thrash it up.
Danko Jones - 6/7
Despite starting out a little slow, including a crazy tirade when people turned to look at a low-flying Bundeswehr helicopter rather than at the stage, Danko eventually won the crowd over by the anthemic end of a punky and kickass rock set, probably the second-best non-metal set after Motorhead of the entire festival, which also included a lot of lunatic commentary that you're not going to get anywhere else. Hail Satan - fuck the sun - Danko Jones.
15 - Danko Jones and company playing some satanic rock'n'roll.
Ektomorf - 4/7
I wasn't really watching, but they had the whole crowd at the Party Stage jumping and pounding their fists. It's still mostly the same jumpdafuckup music that people would miss from Soulfly in order to watch Atheist on Saturday, but the delivery was ofcourse impeccable...and there's still the hope that this band will one day grow up and do something original.
16 - Ektomorf exhort the crowd to show their fists.
Six Feet Under - 5/7
Another band I wasn't really paying attention to, but I was leaning more this way while standing up at the front waiting for Nevermore to go on. The response was good, but the set was mostly average, somewhat formulatic deathgroove until Barnes opened up with "TNT" as the closer. Still good shit, but considering the pedigree of the band, they shouldn't have to borrow AC/DC's thunder.
17 - Chris Barnes and Six Feet Under covering some AC/DC.
Nevermore was the first band I went forward for this year, and the first time that I'd really, really gone forward for a band at Wacken. Last year I was concentrating mainly on the spectacle, but this time around, there was a real ton of bands that I was hugely into, so up to the front I went.
18 - The infield waits for Nevermore.
19 - Changing sides from SFU for Nevermore.
Nevermore - 7/7
A flat amazing set, with a crazy crowd response that you really had to be in the second or third row to see and believe. No mistakes, and never a down moment, and while we didn't break Bodom's crowdsurfer record from a few years back, I didn't break my fucking knee either, unlike the last time I got in a pit at Wacken. I did twist one up a little lifting this one crowdsurfer a little awkwardly, but someone else had just kneed me across the nose, so it was probably distraction as much as anything, and it had mostly cleared up as soon as I got out of the heavy lifting zone. Pure chaos, but pure bliss as well.
20 - Van Williams gets some help tweaking his drums.
21 - Van warms up.
22 - Jeff Loomis gets his sound dialed in.
Opeth - 6/7
They did a good job, and played out a smooth, awesome set, but in a setting like this, they really need to be the only band playing. They were on the Black Stage, whcih meant that the Party Stage was going at the same time, and the result is that from where I was standing, half of their dynamic variations and almost all of their softer parts were overridden by the Krach from fucking Soilwork. They persevered and put on a good show, but this isn't really the right venue for them.
Soilwork - 5/7
Since I was trying to watch Opeth at the time, I don't have much more than a peripheral feel for them, but they did deliver pretty well, and they certainly had their crowd going. Unfortunately, they were stomping all over Opeth's sound and not with music I particularly care for.
In Extremo - 7/7
I'd seen this stage set, and heard all of the material played, plus a lot more cool stuff besides, on the Dresden stop of their fall 2005 tour, but In Extremo showed off their masterful show coordination abilities as much as their musicianship by carefully selecting all and only the songs that would work best in the festival setting for their set here. The performance was totally killer, with everyone singing along on nearly everything, and a couple new fire gimmicks as well, including fireworks attatched to the ship's wheel that they could not have done in the narrow confines of the Alter Schlachthof.
23 - In Extremo's ship stage set.
24 - In Extremo playing "Macht und Dummheit".
Carnivore - 6/7
A cool set from a band that no one rationally thought they'd ever see again, but the day of this style of music has come and gone, and it's hard to look at the band and think that Pete Steele doesn't also realize and acknowledge this. It's pure nostalgia, but it's also nostalgia that remembers how it got its original edge, and fucks with the crowd by leaving after the intro music and only coming back when they hear people yelling about how much they suck, nostalgia that still gets topless chicks out to throw blood substitutes on the crowd, completely and throughout the twisted product of Steele and his warped, dark sense of humor. Cool almost as much for this as for the actual content.
25 - Carnivore setting up.
26 - Carnivore jamming on "Jesus Hitler".
27 - Carnivore in butchers' smocks for their second encore, "Sex and Violence", as the moon comes up.
Children of Bodom - 7/7
They tried but failed to break their own crowdsurfing record, but the rest of the set, by contrast, was marked by delivering exactly as expected. No surprises, ot from this band, butt lots of mile-a-minute melodic black metal, or blackened heavy metal, whatever you want to call it. I was way in the back, but this still turned out as a damn cool set.
28 - Children of Bodom get the place fucking crazy.
Celtic Frost - 6/7
A great set, full of the old, dark, doomy material, but unfortunately their really, really weird stuff didn't make the cut. It was a good balance between old and new, but Celtic Frost's most experimental period was in the middle, and not nearly as well represented...though in truth, their most psychotic stuff might not have been the best for a huge festival like this.
DespairsRay - 4/7
They hung over a little after CF finished, so I was able to hear a song or two for real from them. They were a jrock band, but fortunately didn't totally suck, which was a relief, and while I'd never in a million years skip Celtic Frost to listen to them, I'd definitely take them over Dir En Grey.
I didn't really hear anything at all from Ministry as I was up front waiting for Amon Amarth at the time, and the side of the Black Stage that I was at is in an acoustic shadow such that nothing intelligible from the True Metal Stage gets over. This was some important intelligence for Saturday night, allowing me to both camp for Emperor and avoid hearing Whitesnake at all.
Amon Fucking Amarth - 7/7
Amon Amarth, live headlining the biggest heavy metal festival in the world. A new song ("Runes To My Memory") off With Odin On Our Side, nearly two months before street. The Jomsvikings, battling it out during the interlude in "...Stabwounds..." in real Viking country. From "Pursuit of Vikings" to "Death In Fire", this was the perfect festival set from one of our era's greatest festival bands. Absolutely incredible, and this alone would have been worth flying over for, even if Emperor hadn't gotten back together.
29 - Johan Hegg throws up the horns at the conclusion of Amon Amarth's set.
I also ran into Andy and Lars from last year again, this time briefly after Celtic Frost, but we only talked briefly; with a festival lineup like this, there wasn't much reason to stay in one place. After Amon Amarth, it was basically back to camp, to sleep and recharge for another long hot day and long crazy night.
How to make a Wacken-style German breakfast:
Take a mini-baguette or other hard-crust, flattish roll about 6 inches long and split it, then put orange or peach jelly or marmalade on the bottom part. Put a slice or two of real cheese on top of this, then put about the same amount of salami on top of the cheese. Butter the top half and stick it together. Drink some good coffee or cold OJ with it, and put the nutella packet in your pocket for eating/depraved acts later. This will keep an adult metalhead awake and thrashing all morning.
On the way down to breakfast, I saw two separate cars just on the road that I walked in with an alphanumeric code on their license plates ending in 666. Given that a later more careful survey later found 10 cars with this element on the same road, I think we can rule out coincidence, despite the fact that I wasn't aware until now that Germany generally allowed vanity plates.
After breakfast, though, it was on in to town, to get some more cash from the fly-infested ATM booth, and to hit a local landmark:
10 - The world-famous sign on the town's only real hotel. This sign on the Gasthof Zur Post is de riguer for German-speaking metalheads, wherever they come from: Be Happy, You Are In Wacken. And truly, everyone should; 51 weeks a year, it's a perfect little farming town, and the other week, it's the most pure and perfect heavy metal city in the world. Things are not hard here, either for the festivalgoers or for the year-round residents whose economy they substantially underwrite by dumping in a substantial share of the 4 million euros in gate receipts
and buying up a colossal share of the food and beer in stock at the Edeka a little down from this sign, in addition to the money raked in by the households on the main drag that set up bars in their back yard or sell kegs of Warsteiner off their front porch.
At the Edeka I got some research, some food, and a souvenir that I unfortunately couldn't take away:
11 - Wacken beer from Flensburger. I was not able to bring back an actual bottle, so this will have to do. This beer was some good stuff, a nice clean pilsener feel, and a rich aftertaste of toast and coffee...though this may have as much to do with my own breakfast as with the breing process.
Both at the market and on the way back to the Festivalgelande, I noticed a lot more French, Italian, and Spanish being spoken in addition to English, German, Dutch, and the Swedish dialects from north of here. Some of it is that there are more people than there were in 2005, when the weather kept out all but the ultradiehards, but it's quite possible that part of it is an aftereffect from the World Cup, and the associated Europe-wide recognition of the fact that the Germans know how to fucking throw a party. Given the level of the bands and the fans there, Wacken is in itself the World Cup of heavy metal, except that, as with Queen's "We Are The Champions", everyone has already won just by showing up. Of course we win, it's fuckin' metal man!!
Finally, the bands start,
Mystic Circle - 4/7
These guys opened the Black Stage for Friday, and provided a decent start to the day with a mixture of black and death metal that at least got everyone into it, even if it was really kind of average. There's a reason they went on at 11 AM instead of headlining, after all.
12 - Mystic Circle kicks it off.
Wintersun - 5/7
The new project from the former singer of Ensiferum, these guys were genuinely epic and definitely got the surprisingly huge crowd pumped up, even if they started to drag a little by the end. They didn't really have enough unique riffs to fill out all of the space in some of their longer songs, though the initial impression was absolutely kickass.
13 - Wintersun totally rocking out.
Legion of the Damned - 5/7
This Dutch band is fairly original as the brutal thrash revival goes, but in this set there was a lot more kick and punch than original manner of doing such. However, that's just fine in a festival context (can't get Slayer in every year), and the intensity of the performance was to be marveled at. Watch for them on next year's DVD.
14 - Legion of the Damned thrash it up.
Danko Jones - 6/7
Despite starting out a little slow, including a crazy tirade when people turned to look at a low-flying Bundeswehr helicopter rather than at the stage, Danko eventually won the crowd over by the anthemic end of a punky and kickass rock set, probably the second-best non-metal set after Motorhead of the entire festival, which also included a lot of lunatic commentary that you're not going to get anywhere else. Hail Satan - fuck the sun - Danko Jones.
15 - Danko Jones and company playing some satanic rock'n'roll.
Ektomorf - 4/7
I wasn't really watching, but they had the whole crowd at the Party Stage jumping and pounding their fists. It's still mostly the same jumpdafuckup music that people would miss from Soulfly in order to watch Atheist on Saturday, but the delivery was ofcourse impeccable...and there's still the hope that this band will one day grow up and do something original.
16 - Ektomorf exhort the crowd to show their fists.
Six Feet Under - 5/7
Another band I wasn't really paying attention to, but I was leaning more this way while standing up at the front waiting for Nevermore to go on. The response was good, but the set was mostly average, somewhat formulatic deathgroove until Barnes opened up with "TNT" as the closer. Still good shit, but considering the pedigree of the band, they shouldn't have to borrow AC/DC's thunder.
17 - Chris Barnes and Six Feet Under covering some AC/DC.
Nevermore was the first band I went forward for this year, and the first time that I'd really, really gone forward for a band at Wacken. Last year I was concentrating mainly on the spectacle, but this time around, there was a real ton of bands that I was hugely into, so up to the front I went.
18 - The infield waits for Nevermore.
19 - Changing sides from SFU for Nevermore.
Nevermore - 7/7
A flat amazing set, with a crazy crowd response that you really had to be in the second or third row to see and believe. No mistakes, and never a down moment, and while we didn't break Bodom's crowdsurfer record from a few years back, I didn't break my fucking knee either, unlike the last time I got in a pit at Wacken. I did twist one up a little lifting this one crowdsurfer a little awkwardly, but someone else had just kneed me across the nose, so it was probably distraction as much as anything, and it had mostly cleared up as soon as I got out of the heavy lifting zone. Pure chaos, but pure bliss as well.
20 - Van Williams gets some help tweaking his drums.
21 - Van warms up.
22 - Jeff Loomis gets his sound dialed in.
Opeth - 6/7
They did a good job, and played out a smooth, awesome set, but in a setting like this, they really need to be the only band playing. They were on the Black Stage, whcih meant that the Party Stage was going at the same time, and the result is that from where I was standing, half of their dynamic variations and almost all of their softer parts were overridden by the Krach from fucking Soilwork. They persevered and put on a good show, but this isn't really the right venue for them.
Soilwork - 5/7
Since I was trying to watch Opeth at the time, I don't have much more than a peripheral feel for them, but they did deliver pretty well, and they certainly had their crowd going. Unfortunately, they were stomping all over Opeth's sound and not with music I particularly care for.
In Extremo - 7/7
I'd seen this stage set, and heard all of the material played, plus a lot more cool stuff besides, on the Dresden stop of their fall 2005 tour, but In Extremo showed off their masterful show coordination abilities as much as their musicianship by carefully selecting all and only the songs that would work best in the festival setting for their set here. The performance was totally killer, with everyone singing along on nearly everything, and a couple new fire gimmicks as well, including fireworks attatched to the ship's wheel that they could not have done in the narrow confines of the Alter Schlachthof.
23 - In Extremo's ship stage set.
24 - In Extremo playing "Macht und Dummheit".
Carnivore - 6/7
A cool set from a band that no one rationally thought they'd ever see again, but the day of this style of music has come and gone, and it's hard to look at the band and think that Pete Steele doesn't also realize and acknowledge this. It's pure nostalgia, but it's also nostalgia that remembers how it got its original edge, and fucks with the crowd by leaving after the intro music and only coming back when they hear people yelling about how much they suck, nostalgia that still gets topless chicks out to throw blood substitutes on the crowd, completely and throughout the twisted product of Steele and his warped, dark sense of humor. Cool almost as much for this as for the actual content.
25 - Carnivore setting up.
26 - Carnivore jamming on "Jesus Hitler".
27 - Carnivore in butchers' smocks for their second encore, "Sex and Violence", as the moon comes up.
Children of Bodom - 7/7
They tried but failed to break their own crowdsurfing record, but the rest of the set, by contrast, was marked by delivering exactly as expected. No surprises, ot from this band, butt lots of mile-a-minute melodic black metal, or blackened heavy metal, whatever you want to call it. I was way in the back, but this still turned out as a damn cool set.
28 - Children of Bodom get the place fucking crazy.
Celtic Frost - 6/7
A great set, full of the old, dark, doomy material, but unfortunately their really, really weird stuff didn't make the cut. It was a good balance between old and new, but Celtic Frost's most experimental period was in the middle, and not nearly as well represented...though in truth, their most psychotic stuff might not have been the best for a huge festival like this.
DespairsRay - 4/7
They hung over a little after CF finished, so I was able to hear a song or two for real from them. They were a jrock band, but fortunately didn't totally suck, which was a relief, and while I'd never in a million years skip Celtic Frost to listen to them, I'd definitely take them over Dir En Grey.
I didn't really hear anything at all from Ministry as I was up front waiting for Amon Amarth at the time, and the side of the Black Stage that I was at is in an acoustic shadow such that nothing intelligible from the True Metal Stage gets over. This was some important intelligence for Saturday night, allowing me to both camp for Emperor and avoid hearing Whitesnake at all.
Amon Fucking Amarth - 7/7
Amon Amarth, live headlining the biggest heavy metal festival in the world. A new song ("Runes To My Memory") off With Odin On Our Side, nearly two months before street. The Jomsvikings, battling it out during the interlude in "...Stabwounds..." in real Viking country. From "Pursuit of Vikings" to "Death In Fire", this was the perfect festival set from one of our era's greatest festival bands. Absolutely incredible, and this alone would have been worth flying over for, even if Emperor hadn't gotten back together.
29 - Johan Hegg throws up the horns at the conclusion of Amon Amarth's set.
I also ran into Andy and Lars from last year again, this time briefly after Celtic Frost, but we only talked briefly; with a festival lineup like this, there wasn't much reason to stay in one place. After Amon Amarth, it was basically back to camp, to sleep and recharge for another long hot day and long crazy night.
Wacken 2006 Part 1: Travel and Thursday, or Well, Quality Over -- Wait, *What*??
Because Emperor was reuniting for Wacken this year and I somehow knew that the US Heimatsicherheitsdienst would not allow Samoth into the country for the US shows, I packed up my pack again and flew off across the Atlantic to the metal Mecca for another year of "great festival - great bands - a perfect evening for METAL" (to quote Amon Amarth's Johan Hegg from last year's Rock Hard fest). I got my skull blown in by an absolutely stellar lineup, and will of course be going back next year; Blind Guardian, a reunited Immortal, and Samael are already announced, and there's of course going to be even more godlike bands announced over the next 11 or so months.
This is a documentation of how I got to and from Wacken, and little things about Germany and other places noticed en route, with some commentary and analysis that I was able to think and see about because I wasn't a newbie this year, and marveling at simply being able to take part.
----
2 and 3 August - Reise, Reise, Ankunft
The single signal mistake I made planning this trip was flying Continental instead of Lufthansa. Continental sucks, not least because everything crossing the Atlantic is routed through Newark. Now, some people may think that getting down on Newark isn't fair, but I have family in New Jersey, and even New Jersey people get down on Newark. Newark is so bad, it's the New Jersey of New Jersey...but in all fairness, Continental's other hubs are in Cleveland and Houston, so Newark is probably the least sucky of them. This is an awful and condemnatory statement.
Fortunately, they were able to at least get me and my gear in to Hamburg without losing any of it. Then it was over to the central station, and on a train to Itzehoe that turned out to be free because the ticket-taker's handheld ticket-printer was out of order. Hooray technology. Off the train and onto the bus, where I got to listen to a bunch of first-time attendees from Sweden and Finland talk in English about what they expected from the festival. I was smiling inside at their naivete, and at how much Wacken was going to exceed their expectations. Twenty thousand people? Try one and a half times again that many, and for the headliners almost all of them are going to be in the infield.
However, even I was surprised at how camped-up the place was. Last year, I got in later on Thursday and didn't have any problem setting up fairly close to the entrance, but this year I was out in East Siberia, as can be shown on the map. Getting there required walking almost all the way around the festival grounds, a great workout and a discouraging if simultaneously totally awesome reminder of how many damn people this festival draws. Next year, I'll go a day earlier; I'll get to see TSV Wacken get their butts kicked by St. Pauli, and maybe I'll even be able to get a reasonable campsite.
After setting up the tent, it was off to the festival grounds to get in some beer and merch, including a vital piece of equipment because I forgot to bring a carabiner for certain uses. After bolting it up, I was good to go:
01 - Wacken mug gear im vollen Effekt. A 3,60-euro goth wristband attaches the mug handle to the tool strap on the shorts. The liter-mug is the most efficient available drinks vessel, but kind of a pain to have in your hand all the time. This way, it's constantly to hand, but not necessarily in your hand.
While in the beer garden, I took a couple other pictures as well.
02 - New this year: festival banners on the old foundry tower. The Raiffeisen tower is a Wacken landmark, and for this year, the festival organizers were able to hang banners on it, probably due to their strong and ever-better program of village relations that makes it possible to hold a festival of 50,000 metalheads in a town of 2000 farmers -- and have most of the locals like it. Any way you cut it, this looks damn awesome, especially for festival veterans for whom it was not only new but different.
03 - This dude wears two backpatches by using one as a backflap. The big takeaway from Wacken, clothing-wise, is that there's no wrong way to build a patchjacket. Later, I encountered a guy whose vest was all patches, the underlying canvas having worn away, and a guy so big that he could wear three normal backpatches side by side across his back. Mine, worn constantly, was about average in badassedness level, as opposed to the US where it's one of the few and often one of the most kickass among that small number. I ofcourse picked up a number of new patches at Wacken this time, but only a few will fit on the current jacket; time to start building another one as soon as I find the right backpatch.
My first drink finished and some good pictures taken, I went down into the infield to wait for the first bands of the fest to go on, and took a few pictures that make a discount panoramic:
04 - Empty infield pan shot part 1.
05 - Empty infield shot part 2.
06 - Empty infield shot part 3.
I got a beer, stood about watching people fill in while drinking it, then sat down at the base of the bar to rest while waiting for Faster Inferno to start. It was at this point that things started to go wrong.
The first problem was that I fell asleep without noticing. The second problem was that when I woke up and tried to stand up, I didn't notice that my legs were still asleep, and unable to balance, I fell over on my butt. I was uninjured, but well aware of how dumb and lame I looked as I pounded and massaged feeling back into my lower limbs. This was not a good sign, as Faster Inferno was only barely getting started. If I continued to hang around, I would likely fall asleep again, and if I fell over again, I might get escorted out to get medical attention that I didn't really need; I wasn't drunk at all, just exhausted from travel and basically not having slept in the longer part of 32 hours. So I decided to return to base camp and get some sleep; with enough sleep I would be recharged for the rest of the festival and, besides, Faster Inferno was pretty bad.
Faster Inferno - 3/7. I only heard about half their set, but if the guitarist's last name wasn't Schenker, and if his dad (Michael) and uncle (Rudolf) weren't playing later in the same night with MSG and Scorpions, respectively, there is no way in hell that they would be even on the W.E.T. Stage, let alone opening the festival on a mainstage. Unoriginal and with crummy songwriting and arrangements, I should have just continued sleeping -- back at the campsite, and set an alarm for when Victory was going on so I could wake up and get merch before MSG.
On the way back to the site, the rain which had been dripping intermittently had cleared off, leaving a good omen behind:
07 - "At the end of the rainbow/With gold in our hands"; a good omen over the campground.
This would be the last notable rain of the weekend, with only a few drips on Friday during Nevermore.
Before dozing off, I snapped some shots of the huge merch haul. Most of this stuff is from the Metal Markt, but I also joined in the run on festival wear in order to get some good shirts for me and my brothers before they sold out. Stuff was selling out while I was in line -- it was fucking whack.
08 - Swag pile part 1: t-shirts, Eddie pin, and some CDs.
09 - Swag pile part 2: a whole bunch of CDs and some stuff from the last shot.
In amid this stuff you can see a Bifrost longsleeve, which is ultra-rare, and a Xentrix album, which while it isn't For Whose Advantage?, is still ultra-ultra rare. I actually asked the guy who was selling it if it was actually for sale, because the idea of Xentrix albums available for purchase is so foreign to be that I could not initially believe it. 25 euros for a used CD, and I still think it was him who got ripped off. I mean, it's FUCKING XENTRIX, man.
At around 2300 I had to get up and walk into the woods to take a piss, and I saw the Scorpions' lights and heard some of their music coming across the empty fields and crowded campgrounds. it was some good stuff, but I was still too bushed to go down in person. Yet another reason to fly in a day earlier next year, especially if it's Saxon doing the "Night To Remember"show.
This is a documentation of how I got to and from Wacken, and little things about Germany and other places noticed en route, with some commentary and analysis that I was able to think and see about because I wasn't a newbie this year, and marveling at simply being able to take part.
----
2 and 3 August - Reise, Reise, Ankunft
The single signal mistake I made planning this trip was flying Continental instead of Lufthansa. Continental sucks, not least because everything crossing the Atlantic is routed through Newark. Now, some people may think that getting down on Newark isn't fair, but I have family in New Jersey, and even New Jersey people get down on Newark. Newark is so bad, it's the New Jersey of New Jersey...but in all fairness, Continental's other hubs are in Cleveland and Houston, so Newark is probably the least sucky of them. This is an awful and condemnatory statement.
Fortunately, they were able to at least get me and my gear in to Hamburg without losing any of it. Then it was over to the central station, and on a train to Itzehoe that turned out to be free because the ticket-taker's handheld ticket-printer was out of order. Hooray technology. Off the train and onto the bus, where I got to listen to a bunch of first-time attendees from Sweden and Finland talk in English about what they expected from the festival. I was smiling inside at their naivete, and at how much Wacken was going to exceed their expectations. Twenty thousand people? Try one and a half times again that many, and for the headliners almost all of them are going to be in the infield.
However, even I was surprised at how camped-up the place was. Last year, I got in later on Thursday and didn't have any problem setting up fairly close to the entrance, but this year I was out in East Siberia, as can be shown on the map. Getting there required walking almost all the way around the festival grounds, a great workout and a discouraging if simultaneously totally awesome reminder of how many damn people this festival draws. Next year, I'll go a day earlier; I'll get to see TSV Wacken get their butts kicked by St. Pauli, and maybe I'll even be able to get a reasonable campsite.
After setting up the tent, it was off to the festival grounds to get in some beer and merch, including a vital piece of equipment because I forgot to bring a carabiner for certain uses. After bolting it up, I was good to go:
01 - Wacken mug gear im vollen Effekt. A 3,60-euro goth wristband attaches the mug handle to the tool strap on the shorts. The liter-mug is the most efficient available drinks vessel, but kind of a pain to have in your hand all the time. This way, it's constantly to hand, but not necessarily in your hand.
While in the beer garden, I took a couple other pictures as well.
02 - New this year: festival banners on the old foundry tower. The Raiffeisen tower is a Wacken landmark, and for this year, the festival organizers were able to hang banners on it, probably due to their strong and ever-better program of village relations that makes it possible to hold a festival of 50,000 metalheads in a town of 2000 farmers -- and have most of the locals like it. Any way you cut it, this looks damn awesome, especially for festival veterans for whom it was not only new but different.
03 - This dude wears two backpatches by using one as a backflap. The big takeaway from Wacken, clothing-wise, is that there's no wrong way to build a patchjacket. Later, I encountered a guy whose vest was all patches, the underlying canvas having worn away, and a guy so big that he could wear three normal backpatches side by side across his back. Mine, worn constantly, was about average in badassedness level, as opposed to the US where it's one of the few and often one of the most kickass among that small number. I ofcourse picked up a number of new patches at Wacken this time, but only a few will fit on the current jacket; time to start building another one as soon as I find the right backpatch.
My first drink finished and some good pictures taken, I went down into the infield to wait for the first bands of the fest to go on, and took a few pictures that make a discount panoramic:
04 - Empty infield pan shot part 1.
05 - Empty infield shot part 2.
06 - Empty infield shot part 3.
I got a beer, stood about watching people fill in while drinking it, then sat down at the base of the bar to rest while waiting for Faster Inferno to start. It was at this point that things started to go wrong.
The first problem was that I fell asleep without noticing. The second problem was that when I woke up and tried to stand up, I didn't notice that my legs were still asleep, and unable to balance, I fell over on my butt. I was uninjured, but well aware of how dumb and lame I looked as I pounded and massaged feeling back into my lower limbs. This was not a good sign, as Faster Inferno was only barely getting started. If I continued to hang around, I would likely fall asleep again, and if I fell over again, I might get escorted out to get medical attention that I didn't really need; I wasn't drunk at all, just exhausted from travel and basically not having slept in the longer part of 32 hours. So I decided to return to base camp and get some sleep; with enough sleep I would be recharged for the rest of the festival and, besides, Faster Inferno was pretty bad.
Faster Inferno - 3/7. I only heard about half their set, but if the guitarist's last name wasn't Schenker, and if his dad (Michael) and uncle (Rudolf) weren't playing later in the same night with MSG and Scorpions, respectively, there is no way in hell that they would be even on the W.E.T. Stage, let alone opening the festival on a mainstage. Unoriginal and with crummy songwriting and arrangements, I should have just continued sleeping -- back at the campsite, and set an alarm for when Victory was going on so I could wake up and get merch before MSG.
On the way back to the site, the rain which had been dripping intermittently had cleared off, leaving a good omen behind:
07 - "At the end of the rainbow/With gold in our hands"; a good omen over the campground.
This would be the last notable rain of the weekend, with only a few drips on Friday during Nevermore.
Before dozing off, I snapped some shots of the huge merch haul. Most of this stuff is from the Metal Markt, but I also joined in the run on festival wear in order to get some good shirts for me and my brothers before they sold out. Stuff was selling out while I was in line -- it was fucking whack.
08 - Swag pile part 1: t-shirts, Eddie pin, and some CDs.
09 - Swag pile part 2: a whole bunch of CDs and some stuff from the last shot.
In amid this stuff you can see a Bifrost longsleeve, which is ultra-rare, and a Xentrix album, which while it isn't For Whose Advantage?, is still ultra-ultra rare. I actually asked the guy who was selling it if it was actually for sale, because the idea of Xentrix albums available for purchase is so foreign to be that I could not initially believe it. 25 euros for a used CD, and I still think it was him who got ripped off. I mean, it's FUCKING XENTRIX, man.
At around 2300 I had to get up and walk into the woods to take a piss, and I saw the Scorpions' lights and heard some of their music coming across the empty fields and crowded campgrounds. it was some good stuff, but I was still too bushed to go down in person. Yet another reason to fly in a day earlier next year, especially if it's Saxon doing the "Night To Remember"show.
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
good thing I'm not flying out till Monday
......and that Hamburg is a 24-hour city. Look what I have a chance to get into: W:O:A afterparty .
I may or may not be able to get tix, and I may or may not be able to make it over and/or back to my hotel, but still, the chance to see Carnivore again! How cool is that? Plus, whoever they get for support, and more beer.
Unfortunately, Carnivore is not doing an autograph session, so I won't be able to get Peter to sign my Vinnland flag...at Wacken, anyway. Maybe here; if not, I'll just have to settle with maybe getting Orphaned Land or Nevermore to write on my jacket....if, again, I can get time off from actually seeing bands when they're available.
I may or may not be able to get tix, and I may or may not be able to make it over and/or back to my hotel, but still, the chance to see Carnivore again! How cool is that? Plus, whoever they get for support, and more beer.
Unfortunately, Carnivore is not doing an autograph session, so I won't be able to get Peter to sign my Vinnland flag...at Wacken, anyway. Maybe here; if not, I'll just have to settle with maybe getting Orphaned Land or Nevermore to write on my jacket....if, again, I can get time off from actually seeing bands when they're available.
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