Archive for the ‘festival’ Category

Anyone been to Metal Camp in Slovenia?

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

Metal Camp 09

In 2008, we went to Slove­nia to stay with a friend – sadly, it was only for three days. It took less than one day to fall in love with the place – the breath­tak­ing nat­ural scenery, the his­tory that is all around you, the friend­li­ness of the peo­ple, the pivo – oh yes, the beer. Lasko, I miss you.

Lasko, excellent Slovenian beer In Slove­nia, not far from where we stayed, they have a five day metal fes­ti­val, Metal Camp. It looks fuck­ing awe­some but five days is a very long slog. How­ever, I just read a report from Metal Rules about Metal Camp 2009 and from their (14 page!) account, it actu­ally sounds really good, much more laid back than Wacken or some of the other big fes­ti­vals. (If you can’t be both­ered read­ing all of it, skip to page 14 for the sum­mary).

Notably, bands don’t start until early evening, which means that there’s time to relax and if you feel like it, visit some of the local attrac­tions dur­ing the day. Much more civilised than try­ing to simul­ta­ne­ously deal with a hang­over, exces­sive light, queue for break­fast food and watch black metal bands at 11am!

Unfor­tu­nately the dates for 2010 are in early July, which means it’s a bit too early for us to con­sider trekking to. But it’s worth con­sid­er­ing for future years I think!

Has any­one been? What did you think?

Is three festivals too many for one trip?

Sunday, November 15th, 2009

1001 gelbe Konzertfans

Wacken is set in stone. Party.San is look­ing good.

Would adding Sum­mer Breeze, the week after Party.San, be too ambitious?

Pros: Obit­u­ary are playing.

Cons: After two fes­ti­vals we’re likely to be a bit worn out and ever-so-slightly meh. Not to men­tion prob­a­bly broke.

What do you reckon? Over-ambitious or are we being emo?

Is three fes­ti­vals too ambitious

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Expanding the festival itinerary

Sunday, October 11th, 2009

Wacken 2010 tickets

The Met­al­beast and I have been now to two Wacken fes­ti­vals. We are of course in pos­ses­sion already of tick­ets for 2010 – but are think­ing it’s time to expand the fes­ti­val itin­er­ary and take in another event while we’re in Europe.

There’s so many to choose from that it’s going to be a hard deci­sion. Obvi­ously stuff that is close to Wacken – both in dis­tance and tim­ing – is one of the key fac­tors. We might be able to extend our trip to four weeks this time around, and what­ever else hap­pens we def­i­nitely want to spend time in Poland at the end.

Top con­tender for our sec­ond fes­ti­val in 2010 is, at the moment, Party.San. It’s only a few hours from Wacken and is a week after. They have announced a hand­ful of bands already and as their line­ups are typ­i­cally all black and death metal, it’s look­ing very appeal­ing indeed. We could hire a car after Wacken, drive down there in half a day, and use the vehi­cle as a place to store all the crap we will have accu­mu­lated by then. We will prob­a­bly have at least three other Aussies with us so hir­ing a van might be an eco­nom­i­cal and cool option.

Because we have mates in the UK, there’s also the pos­si­bil­ity of Blood­stock. It’s also the week after, although it’s slightly more com­pli­cated to get there. The only thing going against it are the fact that it’s quite expen­sive to eat and drink there, even more so as the Aussie dol­lar is not as strong against the pound as it is against the euro. On the plus side, they’ve already announced Behe­moth (Dave’s favourite band) and Obit­u­ary (my favourite band) for 2010. Given that both those bands are tour­ing in 2010 it’s likely they’ll end up on other bills too, so that’s not too com­pelling a fac­tor just now.

A cer­tain per­son also would like us to go to Headbanger’s Open Air. It’s the week before Wacken, and also in Ger­many, but it’s all thrash and as such, not our cup of tea, so to speak.

Where to go, where to go? Ideas anyone?

Over for another year…

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

horns up!

So Wacken came, went and fuck­ing destroyed.

My full fes­ti­val diaries will be com­ing soon to Metal As Fuck, so I’ll link them here when they’re pub­lished. For now though, we just have the inevitable feel­ing of sad­ness that it’s over for another year

Some­time while we were recov­er­ing from the fes­ti­val in Ham­burg (fes­ti­val recov­ery involves numer­ous hot show­ers, drink­ing beer that is actu­ally cold, eat­ing things con­tain­ing veg­eta­bles and sleep­ing) spe­cial “X-mas pack­age” tick­ets, lim­ited to 10,000 and includ­ing a t-shirt, went on sale for Wacken 2010. A mere ten hours later, before we’d even noticed it had started, the X-mas pack­age sold out. That’s nuts.

For­tu­nately the day we came back an Aus­tralian friend noticed that reg­u­lar tick­ets were on sale so we snapped ours up. Wacken 2010 here we come!

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