August 2 to 4, 2018
Each August, 85,000 metal fans from around the world descend onto the fields surrounding the village of Wacken Germany (population 1,840) for the Wacken Open Air (WOA) Metal Festival. The Featival is regarded as the world's largest and best metal music festival.
The local people seemed genuinely pleased to have the visitors for these three days a year. I got out of the car near the edge of the village and was greeted with a big smile and "Guten morgen" from women walking their dogs and by older people waving at me from their cars. Many locals even wore "Welcome Metal Heads" t-shirts.
There is a post office on site, complete with Wacken stamps. As I bought some stamps to send post cars home, the postal clerk (noting the American addresses) said "tell Mr. Trump to come next year." I responded that Angela Merkel probably wouldn't let him in the country.
The fields hosting the festival looked like they had recently been hayed leaving a short layer of grass. We noticed many festival goers wearing black-skull cloth masks over their mouths (like an old-time bank robbers). We thought this was a fashion statement, but we soon discovered a more practical purpose. With 85,000 people walking on it, the grass soon became dirt, and then sand as the fans jumped up and down, made mosh pits, etc., sending clouds of dust into the air. In the rains last year, the fields turned to mud (1).
There were 8 different stages at the Festival, with bands playing from 11:00 am to 3:00 am. At the two main stages, bands alternate, with one band playing the "Faster" stage while the next band set up on the "Harder" stage. As the festival progressed, we noticed that many of the smaller stages tended to host a partucular type of music, such as screamo/growling, or viking/ pirate metal (2). One band even played what I could best describe as oom-pah metal (3). It was all quite fun.
Near the "Faster" stage, a woman said she had to take a picture. She put her arm around me and took a selfie with me. She initially thought I was Otto Waalker, who apparently is a well-known German comedian (and about 20 years older than I).
The second day of the festival my daughter had a full menu of bands to see from 11:00 a.m. (Amaranthe) to Ghost (ending at 3:00 a.m.). My favorite band, Nightwish, was the headliner today. They rocked out to a crowd of between 40,000 & 50,000 screaming fans. My daughter even crowd surfed (4).
My wife and I went back to the car to get off our feet between 11:00 and 1:00. The car shook from the percussive shocks of the gas flame jet going off 1/2 mile away. We returned to the venue for the last band of the night, which played until 3:00. The members of the band (Ghost) include "Unnamed ghouls," and "pope emeritus," who was wailing on the saxophone. On the ride back to our place, we saw the light in the northeast sky, heralding the dawn.
The final day of the festival, I dropped my daughter off at 1:00, then spent the afternoon at the beach. My wife and I took the ferry across the Nord See Canal back to the Festival. Everywhere we went, there were Festival attendees, including oodles of bicyclists with Wacken shirts on the ferry. The last band we saw on the main stage was screamo, but had a very clear melody and harmony.
Driving back to the airport the next day, we saw the exodus of vehicles with W:O:A on the back. About 20 miles south in the highway, I waved at some people looking down on the cars from an overpass. They responded enthusiastically with the metal horns (5).
(1) One of the ice cream flavors available on site was " Wacken," which was the color of black mud.
(2) No, I'm not making up these categories. The area hosting the viking/pirate metal even had bars shaped like pirate ships.
(3) Well, we were in Germany! BTW: I probably made up the oom-pah metal category, but it describes the musical style.
(4) She hit the trifecta of crowd surfing: Venue: Wacken; Band: Nightwish; Song: Ghost Love Score.
(5) I presume they noted the dust in the car, which is a sure sign of a festival goer.
No comments:
Post a Comment