Wacken Open Air: the biggest metal festival in Europe and probably even the world. The festival takes place in the small village of Wacken all the way North in Germany, close to Denmark. It’s a village that contains twice as many cows as people, and it’s those cows we steal the Holy Wacken (grass)Lands from during the festival. Each year we flood those Lands with 80 000 metalheads and the last few years (sadly) also with a shitload of rain. But hey, it’s Wacken and we’ll be there, Rain or Shine!
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FESTIVAL AREA
The festival area is huge and even with this awesome map it’s hard not to get lost.
The infield includes the 2 Main Stages: Black Stage and True Metal Stage, and a smaller stage: Party Stage. There were a lot of bars and stalls here, and we always met in front of the American Spirit stall (Blue Bullhead), left of the Black Stage. The infield opened on Thursday afternoon.
Before that you could already visit the Wackinger Village, Wacken Center, Beer Garden, Metal Market and Wacken Plaza. Here you could find the Bullhead City Circus with the two smaller stages Headbangers Stage and W:E:T Stage. Next to the Wacken Plaza there’s the Wackinger Village. This is our favorite spot of the festival, with several acts, a great atmosphere, and the best (authentic) food of Wacken. This medieval village is very nice, and there’s even a mead-bar shaped like a Drakkar (viking boat), where you could buy Wacken Mead and Wacken Blut (mead with cherry). There were folk-bands walking around and performing next to the campfires, LARP, dancing and several activities like Axe throwing and Archery.
But even outside of the festival area there’s a lot to see in Wacken! The town’s people really live up to being a heavy metal town and build bars and food stalls all along the main street. From young to very old; they keep on raising their horns!
PAYMENTS / MONEY
There were 8 ATM/cash machines available on festival grounds. Additional ATM/ cash points could be found in the village of Wacken, Holstenniendorf, Vaale and Schenefeld. At the festival you could pay everything in cash (no festival tokens!). But it’s pretty easy to get money from the ATMs, we never waited very long when we did this. The pricing for the food and drinks is very reasonable, especially the food in the Wackinger Village when you compare it with the other festival food.
FOOD & DRINKS
On the festival grounds it is allowed to bring the foldable bottle from the Full Metal Bag and/ or the original Wacken cup. On the festival site we always got our drinks in a Wacken cup, of which there are different designs each year, making them a popular collector’s item.
Like on every other festival, you could find a lot of different food stalls on the festival grounds. The stalls were classified by different countries, resulting in stalls like, for example, “Indian Soul Food”, Holländisch Fries (?) and many others. The countries are presented by small flags.
Luckily there’s also enough choice in drinks, as we always grow kind of tired of Becks after we have had a few. The most well-known drink of Wacken has got to be the Wacken Met (=mead). There are 2 different kinds available, the basic Wacken Met (honey wine) and the Wacken Blut (honey wine with cherry). Both of them are very delicious, but also very sweet. You can get some mead at the different mead-bars on the festival grounds, that are often made of wood and are sometimes even built in the form of a Drakker (viking ship). Aside from the mead, you can also get the standard drinks like beer & soda, but also Monster Energy and Jägermeister. If you’d like, you could also go for a combination of both Monster Energy and Jägermeister, called the JägerMonster).
You also find drinking water fountains in the Infield on the left-hand and right-hand side of the stage and on the left-hand side of the Infield entry from the Wacken Center. Towards the Wacken Foundation Camp at the Wacken Center, you can find another drinking water fountain.
CAMPING AREA
The camping area is free of charge and is right next to the festival area. It’s a huge campsite so we advise you to arrive early, otherwise you will have to walk (or crawl?) for a very long time. Since the campsite is so big, there is usually a lot more space between the tents, compared to for example Graspop. Fun fact: every road on the campsite has its on special metalminded street name. There’s also a possibility to rent a tent that’s already completely set up for you, via ‘Mein-Zelt-Steht-Schon’.
There is free drinking water available at the campsite (and in certain places on the festival grounds), but you can expect long queues! There are many food stalls, so you won’t have to starve at the Holy Wacken Land. In terms of sanitary facilities there are mainly Dixi’s on the campsite, and the showers are pretty expensive (and like with the drinking water: expect enormous queues for this). You can pay separately every time you take a shower or purchase a pass. Luckily, there are also a couple of clean and water-flushed toilets located in the six shower camps. In the six shower camps the charge is € 0.50, on festival ground all toilets are free of charge.
The supermarket at the camping area provides you with everything your heavy metal heart craves for. Whether meat or cocoa, canned ravioli or coffee, you find it at the supermarket. Unfortunately, advance orders are not possible. You can find breakfast tents in various places on the campsite and next to supermarkets.
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[FREDERIK INTRO?] Nachtrit en arrival – iets later en lange rij tegenover vorig jaar
Toch na veel zagen (en de opmerking dat er nog een groep bij moest komen) een goede plaats op de camping geclaimed.
Opzet camping
Rondlopen op terrein
Wackinger Village
Bliksem
Trots op sterke gig van deze belgische groep. [BERND]
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Carrion
Even though the sound in the Bullhead City Circus wasn’t good all festival, luckily that wasn’t the case for Carrion. Carrion won the Wacken Metal Battle Belgium with great scores and now made the audience go wild at the Headbangers Stage. Carrion stands for fast drums, punching riffs and heavy vocals, combined with grooving and epic touches. They are professional with a great live performance and the tent really got fuller by the minute. They built up a great audience and brought us an energetic show! Next up for Carrion is a focus on their second album, with a release in 2017. And according to their live versions of the new songs it’s going to be brutal, so stay tuned!
Saxon
[BERND]
Foreigner
Meezingen! [FREDERIK]
Vader
[BERND]
Tsjuder
[BERND]
Whitesnake
Liefde, meezingers [FREDERIK]
Marduk
[BERND]
Iron Maiden
Niet onder de indruk van deze set [FREDERIK]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHM2mwMQUDo
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Equilibrium
[BERND]
Entombed A.D.
[BERND]
Girlschool
Stevig wat deze dames nog kunnen neerzetten [FREDERIK]
Eluveitie
We dragged our asses through the mud towards the Black Stage and once again Eluveitie got us in a folk party mood in no time! We were really curious about this gig, since the line up of Eluveitie changed drastically not that long ago and this would be one of the first shows with the new set up. We didn’t know what to expect and were a little anxious it wouldn’t be as good as before, but we still really liked the show! The sun was shining and we could enjoy the happy music and dance around. There was a great energy in the rest of the audience too, and this resulted in an ecstatic moshpit. One of our volunteers even returned as a (cute) full on mud monster!
Alcest
[BERND]
1349
[BERND]
Blind Guardian
[FREDERIK]
Ihsahn
[BERND]
Testament
[FREDERIK]
Kampfar
[BERND]
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Gloryhammer
Time for a party with Angus McFife, Hootsman and their Magic Dragon! We entered the tent really early to get great frontrow spots to enjoy the party even more and it was clear we were not the only ones with that idea. Everywhere we looked, we saw unicorns and other creatures popping up and the atmosphere got funnier instantly. Long before the show started, the crazy crowd was already shouting their lungs out “Hoots, Hoots, Hoots!”. When the show finally started the audience went wild and we think we rarely had a second without having to carry a (unicorn-) crowdsurfer over our heads. It was an amazing party ánd what we believe to be the best sound on all of this Wacken edition.
Steel Panther
On to the next one! If you’re talking about a metal party, Steel Panther can’t be far away. ALL of the mainstage area (infield) was filled with an amazing crowd, wow, their fan base is definitely still growing! We couldn’t get to the front easily so we just sought ourselves a dry spot in the field, so we could at least dance. We had great fun and were shouting along the lyrics so enthusiastically that the people in front of us even turned around to look at us in stead of the band, haha! Funny things that happen during a Steel Panther concert. Speaking of funny things,… this was one of the funniest, but also most shocking Steel Panther gigs we have seen so far. They called a girl on stage, but when she did she happened to be only 16 years old, and we think she was even younger than that. The band improvised a song for her and then started Girl From Oklahoma, where it got even better when they sang about the retainer, since the girl actually had braces. Even Michael Starr didn’t know what to do anymore, and we hadn’t seen that before! See for yourself:
Elvenking
Tof feestje [BERND]
Twisted Sister
Cv wel, niet indrukwekkend, show op Alcatraz beter. [FREDERIK]
Aura Noir
[BERND]
Dio Disciples feat. Special Guest
Special guest was gewoon een hologram van Dio. In het begin indrukwekkend, maar na een tijdje verveelt het wel. [BERND]
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Wacken 2017 takes place from the 3rd until the 5th of August.
This year the tickets are still available so if you’ve always wanted to go to Wacken but couldn’t because it was already sold out: this is your chance! Grab your tickets at metaltix.com.
