Meandering Entertainer

Festival Dates: July 30 – August 1, 2009
Venue: Wacken Open Air, Village of Wacken, Germany
Bands Reviewed:  Airbourne, Bring Me the Horizon, Bullet for My Valentine, Endstille, GWAR, Heaven Shall Burn, In Flames, Machine Head, Motörhead, Napalm Death, UFO, Vreid, Subway to Sally

(via Youtube, via www.Wacken.com)

I won’t even pretend like this article has anything to do with music. The music is there, somewhere, far below the fraternity of sweating metalheads, the mud, the bipolar weather, the mead, the circle pits, the drunks curling up in the sun, the menfolk marking each foot of fence with a puddle of piss… I think you get the point. Wacken Open Air is united by music. Its existence is based on it’s line up, but that is not really what it is about. I learn this fact all over every year.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Wacken Open Air. It has began as a few trailers and a few campers–an intimate collection of mostly German bands and folks who could drive over from neighboring towns and villages. Today it hosts anwhere from 70,000 to possibly almost twice that number of attendees, journalists, band members, hangers on, and of course villagers hocking goods. People come from all over the world to take part, especially since “Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey” has named this festival the mecca of metal in 2005. Read more »