Archive for July, 2009

Today’s the day

Sunday, July 26th, 2009

img-1069

Tonight we fly out… excited? You bet!

Last week I got the fan­tas­tic news that Metal As Fuck has been Wacken-accredited which means I can go in the press areas. Ooooohh­hhh :) As well as being very very VERY fuck­ing cool for me, it’s great because the site has only been run­ning for a few months, yet already it’s get­ting recog­nised as a seri­ous, qual­ity source of metal news, reviews, inter­views and gen­eral what-have-yous (haha that rhymes). So it’s yay for me and con­grat­u­la­tions to Leti­cia and Foss and the rest of the MAF team, just for being awesome.

So now we “just” have to pack and then we’re off. Right after I fin­ish upload­ing this client site, answer a few more emails and make some notes for the peo­ple look­ing after our cats, house and business.

And look, I even cleaned and pol­ished my trusty doc martens, which will be my feet’s con­stant and faith­ful com­pan­ion for the next three weeks.

Sunshine, but not too bloody much of it

Friday, July 24th, 2009

Weather in Wacken

I’ve been chat­ting with Markus, the dude who built the plan­ning tool, and he’s just alerted me to the weather fore­cast for Wacken for the fes­ti­val… and it’s lovely! Low 20’s, partly cloudy. Awesome.

Last year the weather was schiz­o­phrenic — 31 degrees and then the next day it rained like crazy. 31 degrees is too hot (yes, an Aus­tralian is say­ing this) and while the rain was good for bring­ing out the mud we can do with­out it.

62 hours till we leave!

Where the hell am I?

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009

The time is almost here to make the holy pil­grim­age to the beer soaked fields of old Deutsch­land. The pro­ce­dure is sim­ple… walk down to the field, find a good spot, pitch your tent, crack a beer and sit back.

Later that day you move your butt down to the stages, watch some bands and drink some more. You start stum­bling back to your tent… now where the hell was it? Ah wait, was it left at the rub­bish pile and right at the third passed out met­al­head, and across the sec­ond ditch? Or was that right at the pile, and across the sec­ond metalhead?

It may seem sim­ple, but put on your beer gog­gles, make it dark, and put up 65,000 tents and try again.

This small gad­get is awe­some – it’s a GPS loca­tor, allow­ing you store up to 3 places. Press a but­ton, and the arrow will point you in the right direc­tion, along with the dis­tance. No maps, no fancy fea­tures, just a “go this way” pointer and a bat­tery that lasts for ages. Too cool…

p2387_mainhttp://www.firebox.com/product/2387/ECCO-GPS-Keychain

PS: Don’t ask what is actu­ally in that ditch, chances are you will fall into it in the dark.

Just how metal?

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

Over the past cou­ple of months, the awe­some awe­some awe­some Leti­cia and I have col­lab­o­rated on a series of arti­cles about the phe­nom­e­non  that is Wacken Open Air.

20 Years of Wacken Open Air: Part One — the First Five Years (1990–1994)

20 Years of Wacken Open Air: Part Two — the End of the First Decade (1995–1999)

20 Years of Wacken: Part 3 (2000–2004) — Beyond the Music

One more part to go actu­ally — so stay tuned!

Tweetup at Wacken

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

image

image via http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/twitter-wallpapers-the-blue-bird/

Call­ing all Wacken-going Twit­ter users — join the Wacken tweetup!

It’s gonna be on the Fri­day, 31st of July, between 2pm and 3pm in the beer gar­den. Details here…

I’m not sure how we’re gonna know where… I guess I’ll just yell out Twit­ter and see who replies :)

Running order… decisions decisions!

Saturday, July 11th, 2009

Peo­ple are always com­plain­ing about line up clashes at fes­ti­vals but really I think there’s not a lot that can be done– no mat­ter how you arrange the bands some­one is always going to be dis­ap­pointed. Last year I missed out on some bands I wanted to see and no doubt the same thing will hap­pen this year.

To help peo­ple make sense of the order — there is, after all, about six dif­fer­ent stages — the organ­is­ers this year have made a plan­ning tool avail­able. Sim­ply check off all the bands you would like to see, and the tool gen­er­ates a timetable for you with the clashes marked.

I put in my pref­er­ences and this is what I got:

Wednes­day 29. Jul. 2009

22:00 — 01:00 down Movienight Soc­cer­field
00:00 — 01:00 up Mambo Kurt W.E.T. Stage / Head­bangers Ballroom
01:00 — 06:00 empty Metal Karaoke / Disco W.E.T. Stage / Head­bangers Ballroom
Thurs­day 30. Jul. 2009

17:00 — 18:00 empty D:A:D Party Stage
18:30 — 19:30 down Anthrax Party Stage
18:45 — 19:25 up 5th Avenue W.E.T. Stage / Head­bangers Ballroom
20:15 — 22:00 down Run­ning Wild Black Stage
21:30 — 22:30 up The Bosshoss Party Stage
22:30 — 00:00 down Heaven & Hell Black Stage
23:00 — 00:00 up Lacuna Coil Party Stage
Fri­day 31. Jul. 2009

14:15 — 15:15 empty Gamma Ray True Metal Stage
15:30 — 16:30 empty Walls Of Jericho Black Stage
16:45 — 17:45 empty Nev­er­more True Metal Stage
21:15 — 21:55 down Nerve­cell W.E.T. Stage / Head­bangers Ballroom
21:45 — 23:00 up Motör­head True Metal Stage
23:15 — 00:30 down In Flames Black Stage
23:35 — 00:15 up Eths W.E.T. Stage / Head­bangers Ballroom
00:45 — 01:45 down Doro True Metal Stage
00:45 — 01:45 up Sarke W.E.T. Stage / Head­bangers Ballroom
02:00 — 03:00 empty Amon Amarth Black Stage
Sat­ur­day 01. Aug. 2009

12:00 — 12:45 empty Napalm Death Party Stage
14:15 — 15:15 empty Cathe­dral Black Stage
15:30 — 16:30 empty Tes­ta­ment True Metal Stage
16:45 — 17:45 empty Bork­na­gar Party Stage
19:15 — 20:15 empty Pain Party Stage
21:20 — 22:00 down Engel W.E.T. Stage / Head­bangers Ballroom
21:45 — 22:45 up-down Machine Head Black Stage
21:45 — 22:45 up Enslaved Party Stage
23:00 — 00:30 empty Saxon True Metal Stage

Table Leg­end:
down: Time over­lap with next entry
up: Time over­lap with pre­vi­ous entry
up-down: Time over­lap with both, pre­vi­ous and next entry


That’s a lot of angry red clashes! I’ve got to do some think­ing over the next few days… plus, I’ve just realised that bands play­ing in the Wackinger — like Swash­buckle, who I def­i­nitely want to see — aren’t included in this tool.

Gah! tough deci­sions to be made. Who would you cut?

Wacken All Night, eh?

Tuesday, July 7th, 2009

Some­where, some­how, along my trav­els on the inter­nets I found a link to this video by a Ger­man metal band called The Past Alive.

It’s awe­some and hilar­i­ous at the same time. The photo slideshow was truly great. The sub-titles, not so much. But I think there’s some­thing in Wacken All Night for everyone:

Wacken All Night — an unof­fi­cial trib­ute by THE PAST ALIVE

Warrior at Wacken

Saturday, July 4th, 2009

Our side-trip to Switzer­land this year is largely homage to my love of two Swiss icons: H.R. Giger and Celtic Frost. While I haven’t had any luck try­ing to line up pur­chase of one of Tom Gabriel Warrior’s death masks, the tie-in just got a lit­tle cooler with the announce­ment that the ex-Celtic Frost front man will be per­form­ing on stage at Wacken with Nor­we­gian black metal super­group Sarke.

It’s like they knew I was coming!