We have been covering quite some summer festivals this season already. Both in The Netherlands and across our eastern border with Germany, metal music is alive, like never before. All these metal festivals have something special, something cosy to it. But the climax of all these gatherings of the metal community is of course the annual largest metal festival week in the beginning of August, in the tiny village of Wacken in northern Germany. Wacken Open Air is not a local party, like all the others – no W:O:A is a true jamboree and we would not want to skip attending one year!
In the photo below, that we took last year, you can see why.
Can you already feel the magic in the air, of all these people celebrating their love for metal together?
Even if you have never been to Wacken Open Air, you can catch a small gasp of it, from our photo reports, we hope. Just 17 more days and then we all go loose!
So… what can you expect from Metalphoto at W:O:A this year?
Well, hopefully no more mud slides – we hope the rainy season will be over by then.
Looking at the vast program it will be hard to choose, but of course we will be true to our nature and you will see us at the stages filled with black and death metal mostly and of course to cheer our Dutch musicians.
What does our menu suggestion look like?
We start getting settled on wednesday evening while cheering at the Dutch band BLIKSEM. On Thursday there’s a bunch of appetizers on the Black Stage: Saxon, Whitesnake and Lemmy. And then you have Tsjuder and Marduk – black metal on the W:E:T stage, Vader on Headbangers stage before the main dish is served at the True Metal Stage with IRON MAIDEN !!!
Any other festival would be a big succes with this line up alone, but for W:O:A: this is just warming up day. After a good night’s sleep at the VIP camp ground intend to start the next day fresh at 1 pm with our own Dutch Legion of the Damned on the Black Stage. This is where we’ll linger the rest of the day to see Entombed, Eluveitie,Tarja and Ministry. Unfortunately this will make us miss Equilibrium, but we might take some strolls over to the W;E;T stage for 1349 and to the Headbangers stage to enlighten our spirits with Orphaned Land (maybe), Alcest and Ihsahn (certainly). Meanwhile we’ll also watch Blind Guardian at the true metal stage and maybe, just maybe, if we can stay awake, we’ll also go and watch Kampfar and Testament, in the small hours.
On Saturday we’ll probably be roasted, but Dragon Force will certainly get us back in our dancing shoes: party time at noon!
Later followed by Devil Driver at the Party Stage.Meanwhile we’ll check out Wackinger Village and the Metal Market.
Then, in the evening we’ll enjoy Auro Noir before banging our heads off at ARCH ENEMY!
Well this is just our plan; because you need one when there’s too much to choose from. We’ll probably see a lot of other bands that are just as great but still unknown to us. Beacuse Wacken has been the cradle to many metal stars. We hope to see some being born this year as well.
So check out our report later! See you at WACKEN from August 3-6, 2016.