Who else attended the
Wacken Open Air festival in Germany this year?
I've been studying in Germany for a year now so it was pretty easy for me to attend the festival, I probably couldn't say the same for all of you who live across the pond. Still, there were quite a few Americans and Canadians attending, as well as a whole bunch of people from various countries in South America. It's a real pleasure to see how much of an international celebration
heavy metal can be, and IMO no festival does this better than Wacken.
Once you're at Wacken there's this mood of extreme goodwill in the air, that everyone's there to have a good time and to party, and nothing else.... and it's bloody marvelous. Never experienced it anywhere else. You could just scream "WACKEN!!!" for no reason while walking past tents and you'd probably hear replies of "WACKEEEEEEN!!!" being yelled all around you
There's plenty of Viking imagery, helms, chain mail, armor, and horns!! Those are the best, either for holding drink or just blowing a long "TOOOOOOOOOOOT" to scare away the Christian infidels (just kidding).
The moshpits are the wildest and most enjoyable that I've ever been in
If you fall, people help you up immediately. When crowdsurfing, people are actively involved in making sure you get all the way to the front so the security guards can pull you out of the crowd and send you out
I got some massive crowdsurfing action during Hatebreed (twice... this was the only band I crowdsurfed to), and it was ****ing awesome!!
Also, if I was just standing in the crowd and some crowdsurfer was headed my way I would almost always get a tap on my shoulder from the guy behind me to alert me to the incoming crowdsurfer. If you don't see them coming you can get a pretty bad head / neck injury but this never happened during Wacken, which is quite a feat considering I spent Wednesday through to Saturday evening watching bands pretty much all day.
For me the most outstanding bands were two death metal pioneers - namely, Carcass and At The Gates. Both had been separated / inactive for 12 years so for me to be able to see them now is literally heavy metal history... It'll be something to tell the kids if they listen to death metal.... which they will anyway
Iron Maiden was the headliner this year and I nearly got trampled unconscious while watching them. IRON MAIDEN RULES!! (haha Metalocalypse joke
) No but seriously it was quite unsafe, at least during the beginning of the show. It wasn't so much because there was a moshpit, because there wasn't, it's just that there were 70,000 people all trying to stand in front of a stage that couldn't take that many people, so there was a lot of pushing/shoving going on, and in the end entire groups of people at front and center would collapse and fall flat on the ground from the pressure coming in from the crowd at the back and sides. I was lying under five men at some point (during "The Trooper") and I just tried to relax and believe that I'd be saved... and I was... but it was really vicious. All I could do was focus, try to keep breathing, try to stay conscious, there was no point in screaming for help if the five guys lying on top of me were already doing so. So yeah, I'm glad I survived that
IRON MAIDEN RULES!!
So... in conclusion... if heavy metal means anything to you... GO TO WACKEN!!
