Dave found this on the Polish language version of the site: the full list of songs available each night during Wacken Open Air for heavy metal karaoke.

Gotta say, there’s some gems in there. Dio’s Holy Diver? Slipknot’s Wait and Bleed? Pantera, Nine Inch Nails, Monster Magnet?

There’s also some WTFs. Eye of the Tiger? John Farnham’s Your The Voice - you mean that was even released outside of Australia? Any Poison song - and there’s more than one?

Should be interesting and highly entertaining. I’m not planning to participate myself, by the way. There would need to a be a LOT of alcohol consumption for that to happen.

An important part of a trip like this one is budgeting. Enter Pint Price - a web site that shows the price of a pint of beer in 140 countries. A very useful metric indeed - the site claims to be "the only travel and short-break holiday guide you really need" and I’d almost be inclined to agree.

Baseline: Australian average price according to PintPrice.com: AUD $5.04 (Perth specifically shows $4.41)

Poland: AUD $2.26 (Krakow $1.79 - woot!)

Slovenia: AUD $3.17

Italy: AUD $7.16 (Rome $8.54 - ouch!)

Germany: AUD $4.37 (no specific price listed for Hamburg)

What this means is that Poland and Slovenia could be very messy indeed. Germany will be about the same as home, and Italy… well, let’s just hope we can find some cheap pubs.

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.

The only thing more epic than tales of old battles are power metal songs about tales of old battles. We all know I have a huge skeleton in my closet in the shape of a huge dragon slain by Ronnie James Dio that represents my love for power metal. Not too long ago I compared some of the strangely named bands to my MP3 collection. I was delighted to find I had a few songs from compilation cds from

• Ensiferum
• Kamelot

Funnily enough I found Ensiferum in a folk-metal compilation and again in a viking metal list. and had a few Kamelot songs from a while back. I also decided to check out:

• Sturm Und Drang
• Sabaton

On the Wacken page, Ensiferum are described as battle metal. The two songs I have on my playlist are Token Of Time and Guardians Of Fate off the self titled album released in 2001. They play a speedy brand of power metal and the vocals jump between the clear chanting often associated with say, irish ballads and whatnot, to some really nice metal growling vocals. The guitars play a great style of folk-sounding tunes and I really enjoy it. If it sounds interesting to you, give them a look.

Kamelot are a band that have done their time in ye olde metal circuit since the early 90s and play a bit of progressive metal and use a whole array of instruments to make a huge melodic sound. Although the band had success their real breakthrough was with ‘The Black Halo‘. I actually quite like what I have heard because it’s a lot of fairly simple melodies, but done well to get such an epic sound. Speaking of epic, check out their video for March of Mephisto. Invisible sandwich at 2:10.

Sturm Und Drang aren’t really power metal as such, I just picked them from a Harry Potter-esque sounding name. I was looking for another folk sounding band, but I was pretty happy to find another band that would be more akin to Airbourne than the other folky metal I picked out. The myspace page only has a couple of samples, and the boys do look very young, and I hate to say it, a touch emo, but geez, they rock and rock hard. They only released their debut last year and they are very old school rock/metal. I can’t say too much about them because, well there isn’t much around about them. These guys could very well be finding their way into my usual listening very soon. Fucking rawk!

Sabaton was a band I pretty much chose to look at because sabatons are parts of armour and well, you can’t slay dragons withour armour, so you can see where I went from there. First thing I thought of was, holy camoley, this band is fronted by Tim Silvia. Once I realised how stupid that was, I was treated to some more awesome epic battle metal. These guys will be yet another one to add to the awesome power metal list. Although they don’t “seem” to take in as many instruments as other bands of the power genre, they still use primitive drum beats and ‘yelling’ vocals that will no doubt give the crowd a perfect opportunity for some synchronised headbanging.

Okay, okay, I know I just wrote a post, but I was looking through the band list and noticed there was one more logo than usual(last time I checked the columns were even). After working from the bottom of the list back up, I finally for to the top and saw that Airbourne have been announced. For those not familiar, these boys are the closest thing to pub rock we have left. They had toured with my liege, Lemmy Kilmister and Motorhead but went back to do US shows and didn’t make the Perth gig, which I was pretty annoyed at. Their debut album Runnin Wild was released in Oz last year and after hearing 1 song(I have no idea where) I grabbed a copy. It has gotten kickass reviews everywhere I have looked and I’m unbelievably excited not only that an Australian band will be there on a big stage, and that it’s not Powderfinger or Silverchair.

In the past year, Perth has had a pretty lucky run with international metal acts coming over for a beer and a lamington. We were visited by bands the likes of Motorhead, Heaven and Hell(Black Sabbath), Megadeth, Static X, Trivium, MachineHead, Amon Amarth(I could go on, but there is only a limited amount of merch in my line of sight).

With lots more metal coming up for the year there are a few chances for Wacken-bound Aussies to double up and see bands in our homeground for small shows and again in the massive crowd where the experience will by completely different. So far, within the last year(give or take a month) punters could have seen Hatebreed, Killswitch Engage, Iron Maiden and Obituary. We can also watch the melodic awesomeness of Soilwork and the epic riffs of Children of Bodom before ‘W Day’. Where some people might think doubling up is a bad thing, these bands all rock. Seeing them go nuts in a smaller crowd, then a full stage show with tens of thousands of metalheads from all over the world are both awesome ways to see bands you love. How do I know? Well, I don’t really, but I will let you know in August.

One of the bands I’m most looking forward to seeing is Obituary.

I got my first real introduction to the band shortly before seeing them live last year. I was tasked with writing a review for FasterLouder and figured I’d better get up to speed quick. After a bit of research and then a kick-arse live set, I was sold: old-school Florida death metal for the win!

FasterLouder Live Review: Obituary rips up Club Capitol, Perth

Luckily for me, all the Obituary albums have been re-released recently so I was able to stock up quite easily. And I was pretty excited to hear about their newest effort, Xecutioner’s Return, which is meant to be more in line with the older Obituary stuff. MetalUnderground just posted my review of that album (and here’s a hint: I really really liked it):

MetalUnderground CD Review: Obituary - Xecutioner’s Return

So I suspect that Obituary might be one of my Wacken highlights. I’m a particularly huge fan of both Donald Tardy’s drumming and John Tardy’s hair.

Their MySpace page says they’re the heaviest band in the world, and I think I actually believe that.

I haven’t really mentioned that the headline act is Iron Maiden. I’m not particularly overjoyed, or annoyed, but happy enough to be able to see them play. They did manage to come to Perth earlier this year, but I chose to ditch this gig in favour for seeing them with 60,000 other metalheads from all over the world rocking out in a massive rockin’ mosh pit. We all know where the goatlady stands with Maiden, but I will admit, even with the stupid clothes, even with the pants of Bruce Dickinson, yes, THE Bruce Dickinson, I still think they are pretty awse.

The Trooper is still one of my favourite songs of all time, and I have been trying to learn how to play it on and off for a few months, but, I’m quite lazy. In the clip you can hear the awesome tunes, you can see the funny outfits and you can… well.. make up your own mind. I don’t actually own a single Maiden cd, but I’m familiar with all the ‘hits’, so I guess, yeah, I am looking forward to seeing them. The only drawback is that Iron Maiden are such epic a band, there is a good chance there won’t be another band with the same mighty influence appearing on the list. Not that I don’t love the line up already, but hey, with a lot of other great bands in the area there might be a few surprises still to come.

Speaking of epic:

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?