hell bent for metal

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.

Based on the Wacken forums, there will be approx­i­mately 64,997 crazy met­al­heads join­ing us for the fes­ti­val. Nice of all those peo­ple to make the trip out just for us, really.

One of the most impor­tant parts of the plan­ning will be work­ing out our base camp. A big ass Aussie flag is defi­nately in order, but we prob­a­bly also need the Jolly Roger too, just like the one hang­ing in our lounge room. It’s a pirate thing… it’s… ahh… too hard to explain right now.

Fur­ther to report­ing that 60,000 tick­ets to WOA 08 had been sold… it’s now com­pletely sold out. Accord­ing to the site, “camp­site maps, run­ning orders and vol­umes of the full metal bag” will be released in the next few weeks.

Run­ning orders — that’s when the real plan­ning begins. With 60 bands announced so far and only three days… well, you do the math.

What they don’t tell you is exactly how many tick­ets that is. What’s capac­ity, 65,000? 70,000? More?

Accord­ing to Blab­ber­mouth, 60,000 tick­ets have been sold for Wacken 2008 so far. We have three of ‘em right here, num­bered in the low 16,000’s — yeah, we didn’t mess around (too much).

All I can think is that’s a LOT of peo­ple crammed into a 1km square paddock.

So Kay kinda spoiled it all by giv­ing away the plot line… hrumph. Vis­it­ing Poland will cer­tainly be inter­est­ing, I have not been back since I was 8, which was… a long time ago, no more needs to be said. 6 days is nowhere near enough to go and explore every­thing, but it’s a start for now.

I really hope we can catch some death metal there. Behe­moth would be excel­lent — their Perth show this year was mind blow­ing, and they are one of my favourite bands. Vader would like­wise be an expe­ri­ence, we have not had a chance to see them live yet.

I would really like to see Decap­i­tated again (after their amaz­ing show here in Perth last year), but since the band is on hia­tus this will not hap­pen. For those not in the know, their tour bus crashed in Rus­sia late last year, and Witek (their drum­mer) died from his injuries. Covan (lead singer) was badly hurt but is recov­er­ing. It was a hel­luva shock when I read the news, it really hits you in the gut to find out that some­one who was so young and had so much tal­ent will not be around any­more — RIP Witek 1984–2007.

Vis­it­ing my friend in Slove­nia will cer­tainly be an expe­ri­ence. We’ve never met before, but we have done work for the com­pany he works for, so we get to talk quite often. When I asked the ques­tion “how about we drop in for a beer in July?”, his first reponse was “omg, I need to stock up on sup­plied”. So that will DEFINATELY be an expe­ri­ence in liver pun­ish­ment… but we all know, the liver is evil and must be punished.

With a fes­ti­val the mag­ni­tude of Wacken, there are bound to be quite a few bands I’m not famil­iar with. Look­ing over the cur­rent lineup, I can see just under half the bands I have heard, a few more I have ‘heard of’ and the rest are new to me. And by new, I mean, have prob­a­bly been around for ages. To rem­edy this I need to visit a hell of a lot of myspace pages. I’m not expect­ing to start learn­ing lyrics by heart, but it will give me an idea of who plays what so I know which bands to drink dur­ing and which ones to watch, or in some cases, both may be appropriate.

So here we go. Months of stren­u­ous liver con­di­tion­ing and exten­sive heavy metal analy­sis await. It will be tough, it will be loud, and it will be awe­some \m/

Ahhh the inspired ideas that come out on New Years Eve after a sig­nif­i­cant amount of fer­mented bev­er­ages have been con­sumed. The fun­ni­est thing the next day was my ini­tial worry whether I had ordered 3 or 5 or 30 tick­ets. I know I had trou­ble focus­ing on the screen, so who knows what I actu­ally bought. It could have been tick­ets to a Sealion Dion extrav­a­ganza for all I know…

Luck­ily it turned out fine, the email receipt con­firmed 3 tick­ets. For Wacken. In 2008. Phew!

Set the (prob­a­ble) scene: Kay and Dave’s lounge room. Some­time in 2007. Prob­a­bly a week­end, def­i­nitely late at night. Present: Dave, Kay, Al, Gem, pos­si­bly also Ben and Deb. Large vol­umes of alco­hol have been con­sumed. The most excel­lent doc­u­men­tary “Metal: a Headbanger’s Jour­ney” is in the DVD player.

Dave comes up with a sug­ges­tion: we should all go to Wacken Open Air, the largest metal fes­ti­val in Europe. The idea is met with rowdy cheers, fuck-yeahs and most prob­a­bly toasts (my exact mem­o­ries of the occa­sion are under­stand­ably fuzzy).

Fast for­ward to New Year’s Eve, to a very sim­i­lar kind of scene. Dave remem­bers his bril­liant idea, so we hop onto the WOA web site and buy tick­ets. Now there’s no turn­ing back: Dave, Kay and Al are going to Wacken.

And this is where we’re going to talk about it.