
First, I spontaneously paid a visit between Christmas and New Year to the small Dutch town Zwolle. At the local exhibition hall respectively a specially built tent next to it a small but very impressive ice sculpture festival took place. After one was able to admire the artworks at arctic temperatures one was finally quite happy to get back into the warm.

In front of a sell-out crowd first the Hungarian band Firkin opened the evening and did not have to do much to make the audience moving. The atmosphere was immediately at the boiling point and did not cool down during the break for changing the stage setup. At no concert up to now I experienced the crowd singing along the songs from tape loudly. At roughly 21:30 Saltatio Mortis finally entered the stage and displayed the fireworks for 2 hours.

The last festival day was packing a punch again. Everything was offered: classical heavy metal, medieval rock, symphonic death metal and others. The day started at more comfortable temperatures in front of the Louder Stage.

Let’s get to the third festival day, Friday. It was still hot and the water consumption huge. Inapt to this there were nearly only bands from Scandinavia on my schedule (at least 7 out of 10).

Due to sickness the Thursday of Wacken Open Air 2018 took unfortunately a little bit longer. But now all of the pictures and reviews of that day are online. It was a nice cross section through the landscape of music starting with newcomer like the Metal Battle winner Die From Sorrow or the third-place finisher Motanka, across better known bands like Oomph! or Vince Neil up to the top bands like Behemoth and Judas Priest.

From 01.08.2018 until 04.08.2018 the Wacken Open Air was opening its doors for the 29th time. After the last years being often a mudslinging, this year offered pure sun and heat. Related to that was unfortunately also the dust (which you like to put up more then the mud), as well as dinking enough (and not only alcohol). There were many great bands so that the agony of choice was extreme.

On 14.01.2015 one of my wishes from concert point of view became reality. On that evening I attended a concert of the self-appointed Kings Of Metal Manowar. It was loud, it was energetic and overall a lot of fun not only to me.

Surprisingly I won tickets for the FortaRock Festival at Nijmegen. As I did not have time on Friday I was only there on Saturday but that day had plenty to offer. The program was very rich in variety and had someting for everyone.

For today there is still something from my archive. Beginning of Januar 2015 Sabaton was guest together with Battle Beast and Delain at the Turbinenhalle at Oberhausen. It was a really entertaining evening. Especially Sabaton showed, how to interact with an audience.

Only 63 days left, then it is once again the time: Wacken Open Air 2018! Other than the previous years there are still tickets available, but I think that also this year the promoters are able to announce: “Sold Out”. What is the reason for selling tickets more gently I cannot tell, the line-up seems not to be the reason. There are many well-known names joining but also many newcomers.