Arts & Entertainment

 

 

W:0:A 2008. The Loudest Festival on Earth
Wacken Music Festival cranks the knob to 11 with bigger bands and a

sell-out crowd By Jay Schreiber

 

Wi ict do you get when you take 65,000 Metal heads, along with some of the
biggest names in heavy metal and put them in the middle of a field in northern
Germany with no sound restrictions? The answer, of course, is the annual Wacken
Open Air Music Festival, or W:0:A, one of the most highly anticipated outdoor
events of the year.

This year’s festival proved once again to be a no-holds-barred event that hosted
an all-star line up of some of the greatest bands to ever hit the Wacken stage. The
line-up of over 75 bands featured every genre of heavy metal, with five different
stages, and there’s simply no time for a dull moment.

With so many bands to choose from, the big score this year for everyone was
the opening night’s mega-performance from Iron Maiden. It seems that at one point
in time or another every major metal band had blessed Wacken with its presence,
but in this rare occasion Maiden is labeled with the title of “First Timers.” But the
Metal legends are no rookies, having played crowds five times this size before.
They’re currently touring on their “Somewhere Back in Time” tour, and proved
their worth on the first night of the festival.

The following days included such German metal legends as Kreator and the
California thrash heavyweights Exodus, both playing to the best crowd of their
careers. Children of Bodom helped to cap off the second night with an impressive
stage show that included pyrotechnics and sing-along to a heavy metal version of
Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’. In previous years, Children of Bodom have played to smaller
crowds at Wacken, but this time around, they scored the sunset time-slot and played
to a crowd comparable to Maiden’s.

Every year, several more “mainstream” bands make an appearance on the
Wacken stages, and this year was no different with performances from Hatebreed
and Killswitch Engage. Both bands drew large crowds, but neither was given a
headlining spot and played during the day. After midnight, death metal big-shots
The Haunted rocked the party stage with growling vocals and riffs that you can’t
help but bang your head to. Looking to the blacker side of metal, Gorgoroth
finished off the second night at 2 a.m. with their usual gore fest and a stage bathed
in red and adorned with lamb’s heads on pikes.

Probably the most impressive show of the festival was Vancouver natives 3
Inches of Blood, who took to the Black Stage on Day 3. Not even half a decade
ago this band would have been playing to 75 people in a seedy pub in East Van, but
now they have risen to the ranks of rocking out in front of thousands at the biggest
metal festival in the world. Cam Pipes, lead singer for the group, raised a British
Columbia flag half way through the 3 Inches set, to join several Canadian flags in

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the crowd (one of which was proudly mine). The final day concluded with sets from
Swedish metal group Opeth, and a very operatic performance from Nightwish.
After three days of metal and thousands of gallons of beer, the final day leaves
the festival grounds looking like a bottle depot and smelling of three-day old
Jagermeister. But for some reason, the inhabitants of the village of Wacken (with
a population of only 1800) don’t seem to mind at all that their fields are used and
abused for three days each summer. Wacken is more than just a three-day concert;
it’s an experience and a pilgrimage for many. For 72 hours, you along with tens of
thousands of the world’s most dedicated metal heads get to live the music, drink
the beer and experience hearing damage at its finest, proving true the Wacken catch
phrase “Faster, Harder, Louder!” Next year will be the 20" Anniversary of Wacken
Open Air, and already I can feel my ears start to bleed.