New Origin frontman Mica Meneke at Party.San

Well, the five week tour is over. Boy, do I have some stories to tell – not to mention photos to show.

In fact, the first set of band photos from Party.San day 1 are up on Metal As Fuck right now, featuring French black metallers Merrimack, Dutch black metallers The Devil’s Blood and Swedish black metallers Watain – it was a very black day indeed!

I’m not finished writing up my tour diaries yet – we’re still trying to cope with jetlag and the strange decrease in blood alcohol levels – but as soon as they’re done, I’ll be posting them here.

We’re already thinking about next year. I would really, really, really like to go to Metalcamp in Slovenia as I’ve previously posted, but because it’s so much earlier in the year than the other festivals, we’d need to take a completely different approach and maybe miss Wacken altogether.

It’s still a long way off though!

Sadly, we’re back home is a post from: hell bent for metal

Our Wacken companion from last year, Mr Vagrant, likes to cook. He’s particularly good at desserts: from his kitchen we’ve enjoyed chocolate soufflés, truffles at Christmas, giant oat and macadamia cookies, and a delicious chocolate semifreddo, to name a few.

After a few drinks the other weekend we “cooked” up a deliciously devious plan: appoint Vagrant the official 2010 tour muffin cook and demand campfire delicacies in the field. The deed was done on Facebook shortly thereafter:

I’m appointing you our official “Blitzkrieg Tour” Baker. You will be required to concoct some kind of delicious treat using only campground materials during Wacken, Party.San or Summer Breeze. Are you up to the challenge?

The response was favourable and the challenge was accepted:

Aye aye, cap’n. Expect me to bake under the influence. And probably shout things like “AH CAN’AE DO EET CAP’N” and “NO COOKIE FOR j00!” at random.

The next logical step was an official uniform piece. Mouths watering in anticipation, we found a chef’s hat and got it embroidered with “BLITZKRIEG TOUR PASTRY CHEF”, then popped it in a post bag an sent it off to Vagrant Inc’s offices:

We trust it will be better than “camp cooking with Stu”, pictured at the top of this post.

Full Metal Pastry Chef is a post from: hell bent for metal

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.

Today’s the day is a post from: hell bent for metal

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…

http://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.

Where the hell am I? is a post from: hell bent for metal

While Charp has dropped off the tour again (second year running… that boy is just unreliable) we have picked up a Vagrant and will be meeting up with several other peeps on and before the festival.

If anyone would like to catch up, we will have these German mobile numbers when we land in Hamburg on the 27th, so you can send us a text:

goatlady kay: +49 1578 453 0334
metalbeast dave: +49 1578 450 4479

The Ballroom, a metal club near the Fishmarket area in Hamburg, had a Wacken warm up party on the Monday night which is where we met Stu and Nicola who we ended up camping with and a whole bunch of other awesome people who we don’t really remember much about (there was a lot of alcohol consumed). We also met a bunch of Perth people which was quite amusing. They have a whole bunch of pre– and post-Wacken events planned and we will definitely be at one or all of them.

Looking forward to meeting some new metal peeps!

Coming to Wacken? Talk to us! is a post from: hell bent for metal

We’re all organised and ready to go!

Exhibit A: one tent. Note the queen size inflatable mattress which fits inside said tent. We forked out a big $38 for this baby, and we have high hopes that it will be an improvement on last year’s dwelling which rather cramped our style.

Exhibit B: camping choons:

Takes 2 batteries and an SD card wth MP3s. Music at our campsite, and all for $27.78 with free shipping. Bargain! It’s so small and light I’m a little concerned we’re gonna lose it in our bags.

I know we’ve been slack… more posts coming soon…

The countdown is on… is a post from: hell bent for metal

Um, that’s us there… in the blue tent, towards the left… [photo from official WOA Gallery]

We went and picked up a new tent in the post-Christmas sales, seeing as we left our last one pitched in a field at Wacken along with a whole stack of other stuff that we figured we would no longer be needing. We picked up some valuable tent-related camping tips last year, but not being experienced campers – or in fact, campers at all — we unfortunately learned these the hard way.

1. You may think, as we initially did, that seeing as you only get a couple of hours sleep a night (if that), that a spacious and/or comfortable camping arrangement is not important. On the contrary. Because you are only getting a couple of hours sleep a night, you want those couple of hours to be as comfortable and restful as possible. If you spend your two previous hours of rest time squashed into a corner wondering what that lump is digging into your ribs, you’re going to be very cranky when you finally do get up (at least you will if you’re me), in which case you might as well not have bothered even attempting to sleep. Metal karaoke goes until 6am and by 8am it’s far too hot to stay in the tent anyway, unless you’re unconscious.
2. A two person tent is big enough for two (undersized, perhaps dwarven) persons, but not big enough for two persons plus two persons’ worth of gear. Our new tent apparently sleeps three. Looking at the additional space, I think they would have to be three VERY friendly persons, but we should be able to get me and Dave AND our packs in there a little easier.
3. You don’t want your head to be in a vulnerable position. We had a good camping spot, nice and close to the grounds and facilities, but this meant that we had more foot traffic then we would have otherwise. Stumbling drunks + metal boots + your head on the ground near the edge + tendency for dudes to unzip and relieve themselves anywhere = recipe for disaster. This year, our tent is 220cmx200cm floor area (last years’ was 140cmx200cm). While the 220cm is meant to fit the three fictional persons across, we’ll be using to let Dave stretch his legs all the way out, which will hopefully mean there’s less chance of his head getting stomped or urinated on. Which is A Good Thing.
4. On day two it rained. Which meant everything turned to mud. Mud + boots + tent = more of a problem then you would probably realise. We needed our boots in the tent while we were sleeping so they didn’t get rained on, soaked with dew or urinated in (the most likely of the three). But because they were covered in mud we had to put them in a plastic bag and try to keep them upright in the corner or else everything else in the tent got covered in mud too. It was a real pain, but anyway our new tent has a zip-up verandah (or at least you’d call it that if it wasn’t so laughably, pathetically small). Which looks like a convenient place to take your boots off before you come “inside”. FTW!

Last year’s tent cost $29.95, thank you Anaconda. This year we splashed out – with the 30% discount, it came to grand total of $38. That $8.05 had better be money well spent.

Festival camping – learning the hard way is a post from: hell bent for metal

At least, we think we do. We got confirmation emails but our credit card has not yet been charged… I’m sure it will be though, in due time.

Ticket sales are announced on the site now, but they weren’t when we got them – we were tipped off by a very excited Stu and then found them on the Metaltix site. Dave had to use BabelFish to translate the page to double check that he was buying the right thing.

Not a single band has been announced yet, but Wacken 2009 here we come!

We have tickets, I repeat, we have tickets is a post from: hell bent for metal

At Wacken this year we met a lot of people who come to WOA every year. In fact, the oft-asked question when meeting someone was likely to be “how many have you been to?”.

Originally the plan had been that this would be a one-off trip. While staying in Poland we realised we HAD to come back to visit again soon – the plan was then revised to 2010 (just enough time for the budget to recover). However, since being back at home, it’s become increasingly obvious that 2010 is not nearly soon enough. 2009 is the 20th anniversary and while no bands have been announced, a special limited initial allotment of tickets are already sold out.

This weekend, Dave and I made it concrete: we’re going to WOA 2009. Saturday night, after a few drinks with Al, he confirmed that he’s in.

So it’s official: let the countdown begin. WOA 2009, here we come!

WOA 2009? Yes please! is a post from: hell bent for metal

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!

Udo! At Wacken! is a post from: hell bent for metal