Decibel magazine’s blog has some timely death metal tourism advice for us in Adam (Hate) Lists Top 5 Things To Do In Poland.

1. While we won’t be actually doing suggestion Number 1 – Play Polish death metal – we’ll certainly be trying to find some local stuff to check out in the numerous bars of Krakow.
2. Number 2 is Fight Christianity – well, that’s all in a day’s work, right?
3. Next up is Climb Tatra Mountains – that one is on our todo list also.
4. Spend time by the Baltic Sea eating pierogi and kilbasa – we’ll be doing a variation of this one, but just in Krakow. I for one intend to consume pierogi pretty much for breakfast, lunch and dinner, although Dave can keep the kilbasa (sausage) all for himself.
5. As for number 5, Visit Białowieża – that will be a little difficult in our limited time. This forest, home of the rare Polish bison “zubr”, is quite some way away from where we’ll be. But Dave recently finished off some Polish bison vodka – complete with prairie grass stalk in the bottle – and we’re both pretty amazed by the Zubr web site (super-cute!) so that will have to be close enough.

The German people are known for their efficiency, organisation and industriousness. Is it any wonder then, that for the trifling fee of 120 euros, you can have your very own lockable portable toilet for the duration of the Wacken Open Air festival, positioned near your allocated camping area, cleaned daily with military precision by sanitation crews? A small price to pay for convenience and sanitation, methinks.

Of course, we have put our names down for one. We trust it will be of a higher calibre than the image above.

Just read the announcement that Girlschool, described in the press release on Blabbermouth as “veteran British all-female hard rock band”, have been confirmed for Wacken. This is pretty cool – a real piece of metal history. Their guitarist Kelly Johnson sadly passed away last year, and the only other thing I really know about them is that Lemmy said they kicked arse and could drink him under the table. Which is as good a recommendation as any, right?

Wacken starts in 33 days. We leave for Europe in 15 days. ROCK.

I’m pretty happy about this. Udo Dirkschneider, the crazy little man out the front of German power-metallers Accept and now U.D.O. is going to be doing a guest spot with Lordi at Wacken.

Just one song, mind you, but still… Udo is a bit of a legend as far as I’m concerned. Balls to the Wall rates as one of my all time favourite songs from my childhood (I tried to slip it into the playlist at Gossy’s wedding, but the only 80’s power metal that made it past the DJ was Judas Priest’s Turbo Lover).

We’re a man down – Al will no longer be joining our epic journey of epicness – but we’ll raise the horns for our fallen comrades and battle on, only 6 weeks til Wacken itself and a shade less than 4 weeks until we leave Australia. Wootage!

Dave found this on the Polish language version of the site: the full list of songs available each night during Wacken Open Air for heavy metal karaoke.

Gotta say, there’s some gems in there. Dio’s Holy Diver? Slipknot’s Wait and Bleed? Pantera, Nine Inch Nails, Monster Magnet?

There’s also some WTFs. Eye of the Tiger? John Farnham’s Your The Voice - you mean that was even released outside of Australia? Any Poison song - and there’s more than one?

Should be interesting and highly entertaining. I’m not planning to participate myself, by the way. There would need to a be a LOT of alcohol consumption for that to happen.

An important part of a trip like this one is budgeting. Enter Pint Price - a web site that shows the price of a pint of beer in 140 countries. A very useful metric indeed - the site claims to be "the only travel and short-break holiday guide you really need" and I’d almost be inclined to agree.

Baseline: Australian average price according to PintPrice.com: AUD $5.04 (Perth specifically shows $4.41)

Poland: AUD $2.26 (Krakow $1.79 - woot!)

Slovenia: AUD $3.17

Italy: AUD $7.16 (Rome $8.54 - ouch!)

Germany: AUD $4.37 (no specific price listed for Hamburg)

What this means is that Poland and Slovenia could be very messy indeed. Germany will be about the same as home, and Italy… well, let’s just hope we can find some cheap pubs.

The Wacken organisers have announced the contents of the "W:O:A Full Metal Bag 2008". Well, actually the posted a picture of what’s in it. It looks to be some kind of showbag that ticket-holders pick up when they get there.

From the picture, it seems there is:

• a "history" card game (intriguing)
• a sticker (always useful)
• a patch (ditto)
• a postcard (why not)
• a pen (to write on the postcard, presumably)
• a poncho (because we WILL be rained on at some point)
• a trash bag (very handy)
• a condom (many of which will no doubt be blown up and batted around)

Plus "special gimmicks like CD’s and much more!"

Sounds awse. I’ve heard stories of certain other European metal festivals being not well run, but Wacken has a reputation for military efficiency and precision so I’m expecting nothing less. They are German after all.

The only thing more epic than tales of old battles are power metal songs about tales of old battles. We all know I have a huge skeleton in my closet in the shape of a huge dragon slain by Ronnie James Dio that represents my love for power metal. Not too long ago I compared some of the strangely named bands to my MP3 collection. I was delighted to find I had a few songs from compilation cds from

• Ensiferum
• Kamelot

Funnily enough I found Ensiferum in a folk-metal compilation and again in a viking metal list. and had a few Kamelot songs from a while back. I also decided to check out:

• Sturm Und Drang
• Sabaton

On the Wacken page, Ensiferum are described as battle metal. The two songs I have on my playlist are Token Of Time and Guardians Of Fate off the self titled album released in 2001. They play a speedy brand of power metal and the vocals jump between the clear chanting often associated with say, irish ballads and whatnot, to some really nice metal growling vocals. The guitars play a great style of folk-sounding tunes and I really enjoy it. If it sounds interesting to you, give them a look.

Kamelot are a band that have done their time in ye olde metal circuit since the early 90s and play a bit of progressive metal and use a whole array of instruments to make a huge melodic sound. Although the band had success their real breakthrough was with ‘The Black Halo‘. I actually quite like what I have heard because it’s a lot of fairly simple melodies, but done well to get such an epic sound. Speaking of epic, check out their video for March of Mephisto. Invisible sandwich at 2:10.

Sturm Und Drang aren’t really power metal as such, I just picked them from a Harry Potter-esque sounding name. I was looking for another folk sounding band, but I was pretty happy to find another band that would be more akin to Airbourne than the other folky metal I picked out. The myspace page only has a couple of samples, and the boys do look very young, and I hate to say it, a touch emo, but geez, they rock and rock hard. They only released their debut last year and they are very old school rock/metal. I can’t say too much about them because, well there isn’t much around about them. These guys could very well be finding their way into my usual listening very soon. Fucking rawk!

Sabaton was a band I pretty much chose to look at because sabatons are parts of armour and well, you can’t slay dragons withour armour, so you can see where I went from there. First thing I thought of was, holy camoley, this band is fronted by Tim Silvia. Once I realised how stupid that was, I was treated to some more awesome epic battle metal. These guys will be yet another one to add to the awesome power metal list. Although they don’t “seem” to take in as many instruments as other bands of the power genre, they still use primitive drum beats and ‘yelling’ vocals that will no doubt give the crowd a perfect opportunity for some synchronised headbanging.

Okay, okay, I know I just wrote a post, but I was looking through the band list and noticed there was one more logo than usual(last time I checked the columns were even). After working from the bottom of the list back up, I finally for to the top and saw that Airbourne have been announced. For those not familiar, these boys are the closest thing to pub rock we have left. They had toured with my liege, Lemmy Kilmister and Motorhead but went back to do US shows and didn’t make the Perth gig, which I was pretty annoyed at. Their debut album Runnin Wild was released in Oz last year and after hearing 1 song(I have no idea where) I grabbed a copy. It has gotten kickass reviews everywhere I have looked and I’m unbelievably excited not only that an Australian band will be there on a big stage, and that it’s not Powderfinger or Silverchair.

In the past year, Perth has had a pretty lucky run with international metal acts coming over for a beer and a lamington. We were visited by bands the likes of Motorhead, Heaven and Hell(Black Sabbath), Megadeth, Static X, Trivium, MachineHead, Amon Amarth(I could go on, but there is only a limited amount of merch in my line of sight).

With lots more metal coming up for the year there are a few chances for Wacken-bound Aussies to double up and see bands in our homeground for small shows and again in the massive crowd where the experience will by completely different. So far, within the last year(give or take a month) punters could have seen Hatebreed, Killswitch Engage, Iron Maiden and Obituary. We can also watch the melodic awesomeness of Soilwork and the epic riffs of Children of Bodom before ‘W Day’. Where some people might think doubling up is a bad thing, these bands all rock. Seeing them go nuts in a smaller crowd, then a full stage show with tens of thousands of metalheads from all over the world are both awesome ways to see bands you love. How do I know? Well, I don’t really, but I will let you know in August.