hell bent for metal

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?