Report: Wacken Open Air 2004 Part II.

text and photos by Azchael

Forty degrees at noon time, streets crammed with cars, trains overloaded with metalhead freaks, dried mud and dust polluting the air, hundreds of cars filling the background noise with their horns, a twisted view of the world due to the cheap alcohol, an overall sound wall of metal and after all this... just happy, hell yeah, that's WACKEN 2004!

The Three PK-Amigos: Andi, Julian and Flori:

Nevertheless that you were allowed to come to Europe's biggest festival already two or three days in advance, it was an amazing sight Thursday morning: Whether you approach the tiny town of WACKEN via car, train or bus, everywhere, starting from a distance of 50 km, you could see the metalheads heading towards a common goal: 3 days of crazyness, 3 days of metal, 3 days of just pure and plain fun.

Nearly 80000 people were inofficially counted at the festival on Thursday, crawling down the streets into the supermarket to get something to drink, heading to one of the 12 camping areas - each as big as a football stadium - and rushing towards the festival area to chill out in the beergarden, to give it a try at the METAL KARAOKE, to strawl through the METALMARKET - nearly as big as the MIDI festival area in Beijing -, to enjoy one of the special event shows (MIKE TERRANA with his drum show, drinking with ONKEL TOM ANGELRIPPER of SODOM, striptease), to wash yourself at the luxurious PRINCE full-automatic human washing machine, to eat a little at one of those damn expensive food stores or to enter the final stage of metaldreams, the stage area containing 4 big stages for main and minor bands.

Thursday, being the warming up day, started up with a rather unknown band called ZODIAC MINDWARP, who played an unidentificial glam rock / blues rock mixture. After their set was done, the mighty and all-and-forever Lemmy entered the stage, giving everybody a dirty welcome and fired down their MOTORHEAD songs including those evergreens hits "Ace of Spades" or "We are Motorhead". Whoever has the chance to get into one of Lemmy's shows be prepared for the dirty songs, their dirty attitude and their way to rush down their songs into your brain! Main event of this evening was a German legend, not only in the German history of rock, but also in the German history of media control and subjective media reporting: The famous BOEHSE ONKELZ entered the stage and present a two and a half hour program which they expanded to three hours. No other band was so often discriminated and written bad about as them, no other band stayed more than 20 years in the spot of public discussion and no o ther band has such fuckin' great rock songs sung in German language. One of the amazing facts of this band is the audience. Every single metalhead could sing their song. 80000 fans standing next to each other and shouting out every single word of every single song. That's woah!

PK Amigos by night: Julian, Azchael and Andi

Being totally destroyed, wasted and teared into pieces by the metallic storm, everybody went home to his or her tent enjoying the night in their way: Making love, drinking even more beer, hearing damn too loud Scandinavian black metal or just plain sleeping. Friday, day of hard and heavy, day of true metal started up with a hot sun, that never left the chance to blaze upon the heads of us. Even the most fierceful banging couldn't prevent the thirst we gained by standing up for our idols. So we needed more beer.

The second day of WACKEN gave us the chance to watch MNEMIC, a new electro-metal-trash band starting up two years ago. They rocked the stage and the audience was boiling to hits such as "Ghost". Even though they played on the smaller PARTY STAGE, MNEMIC definitely will come back to rock the big ones.

Before moving on to watch the big players in metal music on the TRUE METAL or BLACK METAL stage, a few underground bands were visited at their gig on the W.E.T. STAGE being located in the HEADBANGERS BALLROOM beergarden tent having space for at least two thousand people. ENGINE OF PAIN and GUTBUCKET were only two of more than twenty underground bands from whole Europe being invited to show what they can do.

But Friday has more than underground: Friday was the day of bands such as ORPHANAGE, CATHEDRAL, ARCH ENEMY, MAYHEM, GRAVE DIGGER, DIO, DESTRUCTION and AMON AMARTH.

Whereas Mayhem declared and showed us his black philosophy, including a bloodthirsty show involving goat heads and Scandinavian brutality, he still couldn't convince everybody, as black metal needs the darkness and he played at 4 in the afternoon.

Metal Queen: Doro

WORLOCK with Julian and Flori

But therefore DIO got a time to use: 9 to 10 o'clock in the evening was enough to lighten the stage, throwing the fire and to give a show that not only attracted his older generation fans but also the younger generation ones. "Rock'n'Roll Children", "We rock" and "Rainbow in the Dark" fascinated and amazed throughout the evening. The main act of Friday was DORO including her old band WARLOCK, giving a impressive gig together with an orchestra and in original line up of 1986.

Saturday, last day of WACKEN, was the final stage of metaldreams: ANTHRAX, DEATH ANGEL, CANNIBAL CORPSE, NEVERMORE, HYPOCRISY, CHILDREN OF BODOM, HELLOWEEN and SATYRICON are just a few to name.

Wacken Impressionist: Azchael

Wereas DEATH ANGEL's brutality reigned the stage area in noon time, ANTHRAX taught us what it means to be of the same generation as METALLICA. "Caught in a mosh pit" and "Anti-social", properly their most famous songs not only kicked the ass of all of us, but gave us a lesson in heavy metal history!

NEVERMORE, explaining why there was no video of them on MTV channel ("They told us that there is to much blood in our video. We should cut it out. You know what we told them? Fuck you, MTV") and giving us a best-of gig of their 5 CD history, including "I, Voyager" and "Dreaming Neon Black".

CHILDREN OF BODOM, being the first time to watch the reinventers of speed metal, gave us a hell of a time, ramming down and up their guitars, playing solos of light speed and showing us that keyboards are part of heavy metal if there is someone knowing how to play them correctly, which means: fuckin' fast!!!

Magic of Metal ...

HELLOWEEN and its surprise guest KAI HANSEN of GAMMA RAY, actually one of the founders of HELLOWEEN, taught us another lesson, this time in GERMAN METAL HISTORY as they gave us "The Keeper of the Seven Keys", one of HELLOWEEN most remembered songs. Furthermore they presented us some songs of their CD "The Dark Ride".

SATYRICON had the chance to play in the dark and gave us the dark. Loud and gloomy, full of evilistic messages and devotion to the dark side inside of us did they rock the stage and lighted a flame inside a black metallers heart. Their main surprise was DARK THRONE's NOCTURNO CULTO's last official appearence on stage for the rest of his life.

After SATYRICON only J.B.O. left to wish as a good farewell and threw us into their German fun-metal mixture.

Summarizing WACKEN, summarizing Europe's biggest metal festival, summarizing 3 days of no rest, 3 days of fun, 3 days of hard'n'heavy life, 3 days of bad sleep, 3 days of banging the head, 3 days of living a metalheads life, I have to say: Anytime again! That was a hell of a time for everybody from around the world, including such coutries as France, Denmark, USA, Brazil, Poland, Japan, Taiwan, Canada, Spain and many more!!!

Wacken at Night...

... or the morning after

Next year or any time again ... Wacken, a place on fire ...