Archive for the ‘festival’ Category

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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?

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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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Posted in festival, travel, woa2010 | 3 Comments »

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?

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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!

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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 :)

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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?

Posted in bands, festival | 4 Comments »

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

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