Suomi Finland Tourkele part 8: Zwey Seele Wohnen Ach! In Meiner Brust

8/7 - Wacken

The rain came down so fucking hard through Children of Bodom and Subway To Sally that I was unable to write, and the notebook was so waterlogged as to be unusable until the end of the Berlin phase; three goddamn days out of the jacket, on top of the vents on an old CRT TV to dry out. Things were a little out of order there, but have been rectified in this publication, and despite the wet, I kept going, and got the following shots and observations in.

The rain trailed off in the morning, and I packed up, got breakfast, and packed out.




398. Flaneurisme Wacken; metal hands and windmills in the distance from the breakfast tent.

On the buses out, I got to listen in to some other Wacken experiences; everyone's is different on the surface, but fundamentally the same. We come in, drink heavily, meet new friends and have fun with old ones, grapple with the exigencies of the festival, and yet have a great time seeing awesome bands. Averaging over a sample space of n=70000, this is the Wacken story.

However, Wacken is not so simple. As was more obvious this year than ever, Wacken is a brand underwritten by other brands. It is brought to you by national beer and energy-drink brands, and its distinctive logo is printed on about everything that will carry it. It does promo for punk bands decrying "brand synergy" in synergy with national TV broadcasters. Wacken is a mess of commercialism and self-contradiction....but it is also a mass of 70,000 mostly-anticorporate metalheads, who strain against the bounds of Kommerz to establish their own synthesis of what Wacken should be. In seven years, the meme goes, every molecule in your body is completely replaced. I don't know that I'll be back next year to do the comparison, but I would suspect that the same idea will hold. Already, there is little left of the festival I saw in 2005; "Planet Wacken" exists, but much more as a circumscribed rather than a created space. The DIY tendencies here, weak then, have gotten further limited. Wacken is still a good festival -- this year, musically awesome, maybe even better than '06 -- but it's a huge and commercial festival, and the things that make it cult, rather than just another among German rock festivals, are fading. We'll see if things change, but the only way that things might be altered is if the wave of people drops, then flows crosswise to another festival in defiance of the power law. As long as Wacken sells out, Wacken will keep selling out; a guaranteed max headcount is a recipe for stasis, not change.


Berlin

I got in from Hamburg in decent order and found my way up to the hotel, which was located directly under the main approach to Tegel. Shutting the windows helped cut down the airplane noise, but the primary concern was like always: shower, eats, sleep.


8/8 - Berlin

Like usual, I went out to do laundry, and since I was feeling like crap, decidd to just go to the known-good laundry in Friedenau rather than mess around trying to find one in my own neighborhood. U6->U9, go.




399. Umbau in der Neidstraße. The feeling of the steel I-beams jutting out where balconies used to be just looked cool.




400-402. Some different views of the church, trees, and clouds at the end of Friedrich-Wilhelm-Platz. They're decent as they are, but I'm still not sure the scene eventually came out as intended.

With laundry done, I headed back and ended up sleeping a lot. Sick again.




403. Hotel Bärlin and clouds over Kurt-Schuhmacher-Platz.



404. Dinner. The Lidl by the hotel was out of spoons and forks, so I was restricted to combinations of stuff eatable with a plastic knife. There are people who do this shit, and then there are people who aren't hardcore enough about pack weight.


8/9 - Berlin

Pretty much the entire day needs written off. I was sick to a degree that I hadn't been for a long while; maybe the old hotel, maybe the jet fumes, maybe some strange bug picked up from the nonexistent sanitary environment of the W:O:A. (See previous years' comments about inevitable cholera epidemics.) Regardless, I slept, then got in a lot of groceries to try and retank on nutrients before heading off to another camping weekend. It seemed to kind of work, at least until I woke up coughing at 1 AM. Bad air; it'll heal itself once I get out in the field.

Suomi Finland Tourkele part 7: I'm Never Gonna Shave My Beard

8/6 - Wacken

Pretty sure I'm not sick any more, at least as sick as I was yesterday. I'm blaming the fucking mayo on breakfast sandwiches and not eating them any more: choccy bread and coffee, like when I was living here for real. After like an hour writing up last night, it's getting on promi time; Crashdïet goes on in about two or three hours, and I've got a new coatful of stickers to move.

Under CDs, things have been about as slow as expected. I've moved nearly all of the Kinzel material, though, due to being extremely aggressive with it. I can't really take that into Party.San, where the expectations of extremeness are much higher; Wormwood Prophecy I might, but I'm likely to clear their remaining discs by the end of the day, and the main issue at Party.San is probably going to be keeping adequate stock of the BCS and FA "core competencies"....that and finding a bad enough dude to take the Blessed Offal record.

While in line for the ATM -- 100 euro Erstärkerung will get me through the day and likely to Berlin -- I ran into one of the guys from Aeon Throne. Unfortunately, I don't know shit about the band, and made the connection (artist pass, stage wristband) too late to pass him any of my promistuff. Oh well; it's all getting out one way or another.




video5: Dudes with a mobile stereo wagon for a personal soundtrack.

That video did a number and a half on the battery. It's been pretty good about regenerating, but it's got to be all normal pictures till I get to Berlin and a wall socket tomorrow.




369. Impromptu metal Scrabble game.

So far, I've done one survey and one live interview with the festival info staff. Maybe, the anticommercial, anti-tech, pro-DIY, pro-local-integration message is getting through, but it'll probably get lost as a view from terminally outside the target audience. Any German festival lives and dies on Germans between 16-25; us oldies and Ausländer are just bonus.




370. Hefeweizen bee trap. This is the second bee I've had drown in a glass at this fest. You'd think that the local population'd evolve an avoidance response, but I guess not.

Notice: as long as the Wacken newspaper follows Bild in page-1-ism, it, like Bild, will not get bought, because it will be presumed to be, like Bild, full of shitty journalism that needs tits on the front cover to foist itself on readers. There are enough good-looking girls just walking around the festival, there's no need to slap T&A on the paper just because.

Bulletbelts are weird. They obviously have bullets in the cartridges, at least most of the time, but the primers are all struck, at least those I've seen so far. A bulletbelt with "unstruck" (empty, of course) primers would be significantly more threatening, provided you're close enough to notice and know anything at all about guns. Ok, stupid idea, strike that.

Moonsorrow [7/7]
"Kivenkantaja" into "Sankarihauta" -- it gets better only with "Jotunheim", and this was an opening set, without a lot of room for a 20-minute song, even one that incredible. This wasn't as magical as '09 in P.SOA, but it's about as good as an opening set is ever gonna get. Two mugs may be making a positive filter, but a lot of beer and an amazing set is kind of standard operating procedure here, even at 11 in the morning.




371. Moonsorrow setting it off.




372. "Kivenkantaja" - simply perfect.




373. The Fenni are still unconquered.

Crashdïet [5.5/7]
No "Ticket to Hell", but we did get "Riot In Everyone", and that they're back at all, and on this stage, is a minor miracle in and of itself. They're still ultimately a Swedish riff on Motley Crue, but they bring enough punk energy in the package to make it work.




374. Crashdïet hit the stage.




375. ...and there's a "Riot In Everyone".




376. Simon takes it to the crowd.




377. The band collects plaudits from the audience.

Now it was time for a long-range quick-switch: out to the Bullhead tent for Onslaught, with a stop en route for food. To avoid undercooked meat problems, like last night, I grabbed a bowl of pasta, and used my Italian racial ability (Devour Pasta, 1 lb/round, the other being Garlic Immunity, Full) to completely scarf it down before getting processed in.

Once inside, I met a dude with a Ramming Speed patch on his rig. He wasn't a huge fan, but described them as "a drunker, less professional version of early Metallica", which I think Ricky, Jonah, and the boys would be very proud of.

Onslaught [7/7]
Not better than Moonsorrow only by a matter of degrees, this was an amazing set that fell, really, under the Heathen Rule: when a band that has no business being back plays an awesome set, you're not allowed to complain about their song selection. All that was missing was "Fight With The Beast", but a full hour of classic Onslaught old and new will get full marks every fucking time.




378. Onslaught smashing out.




379. "Metal Forces" united.




380. Blasting out the thrash...




381. ...with "Power From Hell".

Very little of these came out, but it was wicked awesome, I promise.

Dir En Grey [4/7]
I saw the end of their set while waiting for Knorkator, and like the Japanese, I can't understand why they are "big in kaigai". Give us Barbatos in this slot, or at least Aphasia if you want to go more mainstream. Or Jesus Christ, what the fuck is wrong with Metalucifer? They don't suck any more, and this is a country that goes nuts for HammerFall and Manowar.

Knorkator [6/7]
The pictures don't do this set justice. No still images, and probably no words, really can; Knorkator demands to be seen and heard in full motion to even be identified, let alone appreciated, because any kind of understanding is out of the question. "NDH gone a-trolling", maybe, for the uninitiated, but that doesn't capture half the mayhem that was on offer, from either the band or the audience. At least one crowdsurfer in a fursuit, and another toting a kiddie pool: that's a partial picture right there.




382. Knorkator's, erm, unique stage setup.




383. Alf inside his hamsterwheel.




384. "Der ultimative Mann" ist...blau? (Actually, purple, as I was told by non-colorblind people when they looked at these. Screw your correctly-functioning eyes, I saw what I saw.)




385. Full band, momentarily less crazy.




386. Alf without the camera in the way.




387. Stumpel takes off the gimp hood (the rest of the bodysuit would come off later, of course) for "Buchstabe".




388. Security somewhat unsuccessfully prevents Stumpel from diving into the crowd.

It was about here that we got one of the Teletubbies (see above pic) coming over the rail; he got to dance around for a while before the secus got him out, because the singer of the band on stage was right next to him, doing the exact same thing, in nearly so silly a costume.




389. Alf steps out for some lead vocals.

Mayhem [5/7]
I dunno if I'm seeing them next weekend (answer: no, they weren't playing) or not, but if not, I'll wait to see them inside in the States. The sound was good, but a little too good, a little too precise, to evoke that old feeling. Good to see them, but I need a bigger sample space than the one I got coming back from Knorkator.

The Smack Ballz [3.5/7]
There are some things that don't work on accordion. The intro from "For Whom The Bell Tolls" is one of them, and that this is even mentioned is a strong indicator of the band's compositional sense, or lack thereof. It's hard to lose patience with a beergarden band, but there are gimmicks, and then there are stupid gimmicks. "Average" is probably their ceiling.

Iced Earth [6.5/7]
I went up to check on the video walls in case Matt was singing. Others, I can take or leave (as in '07), but you go in for Barlow Iced Earth. Period. Rather, you went in for Barlow Iced Earth, because this classic, Something-Wicked-trilogy-reviving, vintage Iced Earth set was, at least to current information, Matt's last with the band. It's happened before, but in this case, with this public farewell, it's more likely to be permanent. Darkness and silence, man; another of the heroes of old passes away from the face of the earth, and off into the West.




390. There are the "Burning Times".




391. The only way to actually see the band, really, at this distance.




392. Wide shot; this is about how the infield always is.




393. Brothers of metal, parting the ways.

I had no interest in "Sepultura" with no Cavaleras, and I was tapped out anyways, so I went to grab some more pasta and another beer. Of course, about 10,000 other people were of the same mind.




394. This is what Wacken thinks of modern Sepultura. Everyone's waiting for Avantasia and/or Motörhead, so they're not back in camp, but they're certainly not in the infield.




395. ...and when there is no room in hell, the dead will eat and booze standing up. I eventually found somewhere to sit and write up, but the place is feckin mobbed.

For some reason, I've been running into a lot of Americans today, and numbers of American women completely out of line with prior projections. Good on yees!

With similar sentiments, I found a KTDF flyer that I could actually read, and noted that Funebrarum's playing; good on the band for getting over, and good on the fest that they can cover the flights.

Not pictured: beer mug tattooed on cellulite-filled bare ass, on a table during Hayseed Dixie (again, ratings-wise, pretty much second-verse-same-as-the-first). Half no time to haul out the camera, half concern about potential war crimes charges.

Only in Wacken: I just had a 45-minute conversation in German with a Frisian Dane; my second language, his fourth. We could've swapped languages like kung fu masters in a HK chopsocky flick switching styles (both of us useful in at least four languages, with fairly minimal overlap), but that would've just been stupid.

I'm not putting any ratings on Sepultura, Avantasia, Kreator, Motörhead, Children of Bodom, or Subway to Sally due to extenuating factors: these sets were deliberately "written down" to do promi in the beergarden, and the loss of what I sacrifice to talk to people and pass out CDs and stickers in an environment where they'll get picked up isn't fair to pass on to the end-reader. Good stuff (well, maybe Sepultura less so), but I wasn't listening closely to rate the performances or, more importantly, talk remotely intelligently about them.

I hate to self-promote, but after pushing my death metal allocation on Martin from Norway and talking DIY bass shop with him, I kind of had to pass on at least the name Coelem. Now I actually have to eventually finish that EP. Fuck.

That makes four now that I've seen here at Wacken in the world famous hoops of Celtic FC. That's nearly as popular as Barca and St. Pauli; a certain west of Scotland club should look at where "don't be a dick, seriously" can get you, then take a look at themselves.

In the rain, I met Eric the Swede, who shares my philosophy of life, if a little harder-formulated: you only live once, and you only regret the things you don't do. So do it, and accept whatever comes with no regrets. Drink up, thrash hard; nothing is guaranteed.




396. Still remains; my advertising is getting eyeballs, some way or another, still, two years on down the road.

The clouds opened hardcore as the night wore into the early hours; I ran into Sobo again, along with some other interesting people, and probably gave out an incorrect email address because I was worse for wear and/or drink at the time. It should be noted at this time that despite the debits of facial hair that some people may be aware of from the next week, there are decided benefits as well. Hence ripping off Thundermug for today's post title.




397. The first buses head out in the dark of the morning.

Suomi Finland Tourkele part 6: How Can I Laugh Tomorrow

8/5 - Wacken

Before the festival, I went on a tear about how tent crime doesn't happen; it does. I got jacked for 70 euro this morning; they nabbed my wallet out of my shorts as I slept, took everything paper, and put it back. This sucked, but more importantly, it wasn't as bad as it could've been. They took no credit cards, no personally-identifying information, and didn't end up taking my passport. Also, I didn't go to the ATM at the end of the night, so the hole in my accounts, while still bad, is not as big as it might have been. Lesson learned: sleep in, or at least on, anything you don't have nailed down.

I worked through the experience hiking to and from the village, then eventually tanking up at a festival ATM. I then got some breakfast and killed half the morning talking to various cool dudes; only an hour or so until the bands go on.




353. The Wacken crest comes to traditional German ornamentation.

With the organizational improvements, you don't really need to go into the village for much, but if you don't, it feels like you're missing part of what makes Wacken Wacken.

Man, is it ever fucking cold. The sun was out for like five minutes and it was burning, but it's probably going to rain again and be terrible all day.




354. Panorama of the infield.




355. Priest's Epitaph banner -- might as well get it now.

I'm set up central, more to the True side, so I can see Ensiferum, then Suicidal direct, then Morbid Angel and still split if it gets too hardcore radikvlt. Come on the bands.

Ensiferum [6/7]
Good set, but not as good as I've seen off them before. There's a lot of playback in that's either new, or that I hadn't noticed, and their Sergio-Leone-isms in that regard can get a little trying, but when the band's in full cry, the sweep and hitting power of their spaghetti viking sound is just huge.




356. Ensiferum banging away on "Twilight Tavern".

I pussed out halfway through and hit the head; the blastbeats were doing a number on my ears from the front row, and inside the toilet cabin, the feeling was like nothing so much as seeing the set from inside a bass drum, the kicks of the speakers coming through the walls, ceiling, and floor. We'll see how much of today I can survive.

Suicidal Tendencies [6/7]
They had some sound issues at the start, but once these were ironed out, they were little short of incredible. This sort of wall-of-sound funk-metal sounds as fresh and vital now as it did in 1987, the execution was great, and Mike's rants/sermons were, at least to me, perfectly pitched and never so long as to detract from the set. Great stuff.




357. Suicidal gets the crowd amped up.

I'm seeing Morbid Angel next weekend (unless they're terrible here, or, as actually happened, I get peer-pressured by a pretty Israeli into drinking all hours with last year's crew of madmen). All the other bands except Priest I've seen. I can take a break, unwind my back, do some promo, and try to figure out how to beat whatever I'm sick from. I suspect it's "diet consists solely of beer and Krakauerwurst", but there's not a ton I can do about that.

Apparently, Killtown (noted last year) is doing a second year; good on them, and as usual, go if you're going to be in the area.

Morbid Angel [5.5/7]
The old shit is still quality, but the new material is pretty consistently inconsistent. They had the good sense to not play "Hardcore Radikult" in public, and "Where The Slime Live" kicked as,, but all in all, I've seen better Morbid Angel sets.

The traveling softcore show is back; they might as well go it, though, as it tends to be only dudes here who take their clothes off in public for free.

Sodom [6/7]
It took them a little whole to get cranked up, but this was a good solid Sodom set, closing in hammering fashion with "Agent Orange" into "Blasphemer". Just absolute fucking wreckage.

I'm still tired, but less sick. Just need to hold on till 11 when Priest finishes, than I can sleep. This assumes my shit isn't completely ransacked when I get back; it hasn't yet in 7 years, bt as the morning showed, there's a first time for everything, and looking flat broke doesn't always work.




358. Blaas of Glory go on a hike through the midway area.

The length of the ATM lines is a clear indicator that something's wrong. Either people are getting looted left and right, like I was this morning, or prices, particularly on drinks, are too high. In this heat, though, it's probably the latter: it's pretty easy to drink thorugh 80 euros of liquids without really trying, especially if you're alternating beer and water to keep hydrated.

Trivium [4/7]
I didn't really listen to As I Lay Dying for several reasons, but I did have to hear Trivium, and they were about as not-very-good as expected. Like Ill Niño last year, these guys are proficient musicians, but they don't write or play interesting stuff with their own band. Oh well; next is HSB, from the infield at least, then Priest from somewhere closer to the front.




359. Trivium, mediocre but ceaselessly grateful. Since so much of Trivium's music is so barely arranged, they feel like a fan band blown up huge; you'd expect this kind of performance and style from an early set on a DIY bill. Matt's enthusiasm for metal, though, is genuine and ceaseless, and you get the feeling that even if they weren't playing, they'd still be here, going bananas for HSB and screaming along to Judas Priest. Next time, please do, and lass die "Musik" liegen.

Heaven Shall Burn [6.5/7]
For 30 minutes -- until Priest came on and did what Judas Priest does -- this was the set of the day. It didn't quite hit the heights of that '07 outing, and the circle pit didn't quite catch that one for size or energy, but this was a ceaseless, remorseless audiovisual pounding that knew not pity nor fear, and shot off more pyro than any other band I've seen with the sun still up. There was a lot of stuff from the last record -- "Combat" is simply fucking immense live, and "The Omen" even bigger than on disc -- but no "Sevastopol" and not, at least as I could hear, "The Weapon That They Fear". Superfans may argue that "Combat" is a better "Weapon", but this ignores the fact that "Weapon" is maybe the best metalcore song ever written, and that what we're arguing about is a fundamentally great set from a genuinely awesome band. They are a giant among midgets (not exactly a God Among Insects) in the universe of contemporaries like AILD and Trivium, who got shoutouts from the stage, but they can also hold their own among the real giants of metal.




360. HSB comes out with a bang.




361. The gulf. It's a full 10 meters, minimum, from the first row to the stage.




362. "Electric Eye" of the BKA on the prowl for pickpockets. It feels a little odd to be watched over by machines of loving grace, constantly in the frame of surveillance drones, but as an American, I can't really say anything so long as our robot death planes are ceaselessly looking down at Pakistan through missile sights.

After HSB wrapped, I caught the end of Morgoth's set; not enough to rate, but much better than I've heard from them on record, and I'm really excited to see them at P.SOA.




363. Manual maintenance. In the hole in the middle of Dirk's belt buckle (the main image on the video wall is from Edguy's "Robin Hood" video) is a hand poking through and tweaking some non-working panels through an access pane. Sure, nerd content, but it's still cool.




364. Catching the scrim banner as it falls.

Judas Priest [6.5/7]
No KK, and no points of comparison for me, but you shouldn't need points of comparison for Judas Priest nailing shit from all over the place out of a 40-year career. Glen still rips, Rob still has all of his mind-blowing range, Scott still has it locked down on drums (and Dave is still locked up, lolz), and Ian Hill still looks like he's about to keel over of old age in the next second, but continues to pound away at the workmanlike bass lines whose perfect execution has kept him in a job for longer than most musicians will work, period. If you name a good Judas Priest song, they probably played it, from "Breaking The Law" on through "Victim of Changes" and "Diamonds and Rust" to "Beyond The Realms of Death", and they pulled out good stuff like "Starbreaker" that more than a few people (yeah, self included, duh) had forgotten they'd even recorded. They made "Turbo Lover" sound good and vital live, and ripped damn near everything to pieces with "Painkiller". The only debit on this set was that it ran for 2 and a half hours; great for ample provision of classics, but not so good for standing up the whole time. Thus, rather than waiting around for "Solar Angels" after "Heading Out To The Highway" (see stupid obsession), I went back to the beergarden, which resulted in the tail end of the set getting run over by Hayseed Dixie.




365. Judas Priest jumps out behind a sea of horns.




366. The Metal God doing "Metal Gods".




367. Judas Priest FIRIN THAR LAZERS

Hayseed Dixie [5/7]
At one point, the singer just stopped between songs to state: "This is the weirdest show we've ever played." Sure was; you never expect, as a band, to be handed the assignment "play over Judas Priest to people who are also trying to listen to them simultaneously", but they adapted well enough given the circumstances, and put out a good set of rebel rock'n'roll that was, at times, due to the strict Appalachian instrumentation, absolutely indistinguishable from Celtic folk. There's a huge political can of worms to be opened when people are holding up Confederate battle flags in a country and at a festival where the emblems of other racist regimes are explicitly banned, but intentionally leaving that aside, this was good music under difficult circumstances.




368. Hayseed Dixie pickin' 'n' grinnin'.

After this, it was off to bed -- due to the crime drama, I was up at like 4 and under heavy stress till like 7, then did a full day of Wacken -- tired, but on the upswing. I shoved my wallet and Paß down my grundle and set some thief traps, but was awakened only, as completely normal, by beer demanding to be recycled against the fence. Back to the routine.