Tales of an Amorphic Destiny

Wacken Open Air 2008

August 6th, 2008 at 11:18am James

Once more it was time for the biggest event on the heavy metal calender – Wacken Open Air!

Every year, the sleepy town of Wacken in the north of Germany becomes temporary home to tens of thousands of metalheads who travel from the four corners of the globe for a few glorious days of German beer, sunshine (hopefully) and of course, heavy metal.

This year we were once more sailing the good ship Sunny from London, heavily laden with a cargo of camping gear and leather boots. This time on board we had Lynda, (now firmly ensconched as an ex-pat in London) and Gareth, who was back over from Oz for his first taste of European festival lovin’.

After one night-time ferry, 10 hours and several hundred kms of autobahn, we arrived at the Wacken campground. We’d been directed to a spot miles from the main festival area, but being experienced Wackeners we knew better than to camp where we were told.

We loaded our gear on our backs and made our way to what has become our traditional camping spot. There we found Tanja and Leo, who’d saved ample room for us and a few others that were on the way. Soon enough we were settled in nicely.

Sarah and I caught up on some sleep and then headed back into Hamburg by train to see Jeff Martin. Getting back at 3:30am we caught some more Z’s and woke up on day 1 of the festival proper. Since we’d left, Gav had arrived from London and Eric, (bassist in Leo’s band Deus.exe) had also set up camp with his girlfriend Anja. Our campsite was complete!

After a camp breakfast and a beer or two to get the ball rolling, Leo and I went forth on another the great Wacken tradition – finding a suitable pole on which to raise the Australian flag. The search was hard and long, but the final result was most excellent.

Wacken tradition #263 – head into town to stock up on cheap food and beer. We managed to enlist the help of an enterprising young local girl with a cart who helped us wheel our purchases back to the campground for a very reasonable fee.

We got back to camp and put some beer on ice – yep, thanks to our eskies and the Wacken shop now selling ice the days of warm campground beer are over! Then it was in for our first band of the festival, Australia’s very own Airbourne!

After their outstanding show at Hellfest earlier this year we knew we were in for a great show. We also knew that with their AC/DC-like sound, the Germans would be out in force and we weren’t wrong. The band got a huge reaction and singer Joel O’Keeffe shined once again as the perfect rock ‘n’ roll frontman, belting out, (amongst others) Runnin’ Wild, Black Jack, and the anthemic Too Much, Too Young, Too Fast as the crowd screamed along.

The excitement was all a bit too much for this bloke, who just couldn’t resist the urge to get naked.

After Airbourne it was straight over to the party stage for one of our personal favourites, Leaves’ Eyes. They were bringing along their viking longboat stage setup that we’d seen at the Metal Female Voices festival and a big show was promised.

Of course they delivered in spades, Liv’s trademark voice in fine form as it melded with the powerful twin guitars of Mathias and Thorsten. The band’s new rhythm section of bassist Alla Fedynitch and drummer Peter Hornung seem to have slotted in perfectly too, with Peter’s use of acoustic drums adding substantially to the band’s live sound.

It wasn’t long before Alex Krull joined the band on stage, bringing his heavy vocals to bear for a rendition of the always excellent Ocean’s Way. He did a great job of riling the substantial crowd, (the biggest we’ve seen Leaves’ Eyes play for) and as with the Metal Female Voices show, there were plenty of pyrotechnics!

The set was made up of plenty of favourites, including Solemn Sea, Norweigian Lovesong and Temptation

and finished up with usual closer Elegy. After the set, Thorsten and Mathias came down to the front barrier to say hi to the fans, and we grabbed them for a couple of shots.

Iron Maiden’s first ever appearance at Wacken was always going to be huge and with 72,000 in attendance this was to be the biggest crowd of their Somewhere Back in Time World Tour. In fact we were to find out afterward that security eventually had to shut the gates to the festival ground, leaving many to watch the show from the beer garden or the big screen by the campground.

After seeing them at Twickenham Stadium a few weeks earlier we knew what we were in for, and so did the rest of the crowd the moment Churchill’s speech began to echo from the PA. The band burst onto the stage with Aces High and then went straight into 2 Minutes to Midnight, Bruce running around the stage like a hyperactive kid and the rest of the band clearly loving the response from the massive crowd of metal faithful.

The True Metal Stage had been kept clear for the whole day to accomodate Maiden’s beautifully over-the-top stage show, it’s Egytian theme taken from their Powerslave album. There were a few items missing from the extravagence that was the Twickenham gig but most of the show was intact, including a huge sphynx that opened to reveal a mummified Eddie!

The setlist was more-or-less the same as Twickenham, with just about every song a highlight. One standout was Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a track that’s rarely heard live due to it’s epic length of 14 mins. The Trooper was also a favourite with it’s requisite singalong chorus and it was great to hear some tracks from the Seventh Son… album in the shape of Can I Play With Madness and then Moonchild and The Clairvoyant during the encore.

The set and Wacken’s first night were rounded out with personal favourite, Hallowed Be They Name and with that, Iron Maiden had finally conquered Wacken in a big way. We made our way back to the campground and kicked on into the night with a few random Aussies that came by to visit.

The next morning I’d planned on catching Aussie stalwarts Mortal Sin, but ended up missing them due to their 11:55am timeslot and sheer laziness on my part. Cynic were up next and while I’d not heard them previously, Gareth played me their Focus album in the car on the way to Wacken. I was intrigued by their unique sound and determined to check them out.

In the end I was glad I’d made the effort. I found Gareth and we settled in to listen to Cynic’s unique take on technical prog/death metal under a refreshing patter of light rain. Their music was a perfect start to the day, employing a lot of dynamics and varying smoothly between clean and mellow parts. The musicianship on display was awesome to behold as well and by the end of their set I’d put Focus

on my “albums to buy” list.

Not long after Cynic’s set was done, the heavens opened over Wacken with a vengeance. I took refuge in a surprisingly clean toilet cubicle and waited out the storm, killing two birds with one stone. My rendezvous with Gareth at the merchandise stand was temporarily put on hold but eventually we found each other and went back to meet the others at the campground.

When we went back in an hour or so later for soilwork, the ground was a little damp. We’d come prepared with boots, but other festival-goers were forced to improvise…

Soilwork weren’t too bad, though not as powerful live as they have been in the past. It was good to hear old classic Bastard Chain

live though.

We ducked up to the Metal Market for some shopping and then made it back inside in time for Opeth. They played a solid set and being Wacken they focussed on their heavier tracks. Masters Apprentice had the huge crowd banging away and Drapery Falls sounded great as a closer.

Children of Bodom were the big draw of the evening and the ground was all but full as they took the stage. Frontman Alexi was as charismatic as ever and in front of their urban stage setup complete with the beat-up old car, the band put on a typically excellent show.

The final band of the night was Corvus Corax, though calling them a band is something of an understatement. They came out with a choir, orchestra, (complete with conductor), 5 blokes with strange bagtypes and all manner of enormous drums and other instruments. The music itself sounded like the soundtrack from Conan the Barbarian – very epic.

We gave Gareth a brief introduction to the Wacken beer garden and then turned in for the night.

After breakfast on day three we ended up with quite a crowd in camp Aussie. A couple of Gav’s mates from up north came along as well as some Swedes who were camped near us and we also met Ed, a Californian who now lives in New Zealand. He was looking for some other Aussies and spied our flag, but ended up hanging out and drinking beer with us instead. Being a Linux sysadmin, it wasn’t long before Ed and I were talking geek.

The death metal groove of Obituary provided a solid start to the day’s music, the band in much better form than when we watched them play Wacken in the rain a few years back.

Then after an hour or so it was time for the first half of Wacken 2008’s 1-2 punch. The reactivated death/grindcore legends Carcass took to the stage for a gig many never expected to see. After Hellfest we knew that we wouldn’t be disappointed…

The setlist focussed heavily on the Necroticism and Heartwork albums, from opener Buried Dreams through to Corporeal Jigsore Quandry, Death Certificate and a truly awesome rendition of Heartwork to round things off. There were also a few surprises in there too – Reek of Putrefaction

sounded great live and Keep on Rotting from not-so-critically-acclaimed release Swansong. “C’mon, that album wasn’t so bad” joked Walker after the song was done.

Bill Steer wasn’t quite as tight on the guitars as he used to be, not having had as much practice playing metal as his bandmate and Arch Enemy guitarist Mike Amott. But he held things together for the most part, and all of his old solos still sounded great live. Amott’s bandmate and partner Angela Gossow also joined the band on for Incarnate Solvent Abuse, which was quite cool.

As the band left the stage the crowd cheered until well after they’d gone – Carcass are a band that won’t be forgotten. Back at the campsite to avoid Killswitch Engage and then it was time for the other big reformation of 2008 – Sweden’s At the Gates.

Like Carcass we’d been lucky enough for a preview of this gig at Hellfest and so this time we could just sit back and enjoy the ride. The Swedes were played as if the12 years since their breakup had never happened, playing their unique brand of melodic death to an enormous crowd who lapped up every sweeping riff and howling solo.

I’d lost Leo during Carcass but this time we were in the same spot so it was good to reminisce with some of the old favourites from back in the day. After a thundering opening of Slaughter of the Soul they played just about everything we could’ve wanted to hear, including most of that record and a few choice cuts form their earlier releases.

Terminal Spirit Disease sounded particularly epic and it’s hard to express in words how amazing the grooves of Suicide Nation and World of Lies come across live. Truly a band that will never be equalled. The encore of Blinded by Fear and Kingdom Gone was enough to leave any fan witha  smile on their face.

We’d bumped into Ed again before At the Gates, (something of a lesson in Swedish melodic death metal for him) and so we joined him at the True Metal stage to check out Nightwish with new singer Anette Olzon. She has rather big shoes to fill and on the last night of Wacken, she wasn’t quite up to the task. The band sounded ok, but Anette’s voice just didn’t have the power of her operatically-trained predecessor.

And so we headed back to the beer garden for the, (almost) final hurrah…

After a quick beer, Gareth and I went back inside for Kreator, who kicked arse as always. Mille and Co. can always be relied upon to deliver a thrashin’ good time and tonight on home turf they were firing on all cylinders. The same old favourites were aired but at the end of 3 days of music festival tracks like Tormentor, Extreme Aggression and Flag of Hate are always gonna go down well. The huge number of assembled Germans certainly thought so.

I returned with the now famous knobbi (garlic) bread for all and we shelted from the patchy rain and drank into the night. A nice german bloke called Sebastian joined us, bringing with him a bottle of Jagermeister which was shared around. It was the last night but we were celebrating what had been a great 3 days, rather than mourning their loss.

The next morning of course was the dreaded pack up, made worse by the mammoth trek back to the car. We dropped Gareth, Lynda and Gav off in Hamburg but due to the atrocious traffic the normally 40-min drive took almost 3 hours and by then we gave up all hope of catching our 9:30pm ferry. We had a last supper at MacDonalds before leaving the intrepid travellers behind to plot their own course.

After many more hours of slow traffic and a few sleeps in German truck stops, we ended up catching a Eurotunnel at 4:45am. We made it home just in time to shower and head off for work – what a productive Monday that was. The things you do in the name of Heavy Metal eh? More pics from our adventures at Wacken 2008 are here. See you next year W.O.A! \m/

Entry Filed under: Asia, Europe, Gigs, United Kingdom