As I am currently work-related heavily bound I am not able to make progress as expected but nevertheless I at least was able to finish the first part of Saturday.
Because of the not very promising line-up I first travelled to Belgium with mixed feelings just to be disabused. The situation on the camping ground had improved compared to the previous years as sanitary installations were much better and also a container where you could take a shower was available. Unfortunately the cow pasture (this year it was again a different one due to the swamp desaster of last year) still was a big mess.
On Saturday all hit the home stretch of the festival and there was still a lot to come. It started in the morning for me very quite at the WET Stage tent as well as the Bullhead City tent. After The Murder Of My Sweet and Triosphere I went over to the trash metal guys of Onslaught to take a closer look at them. After they really blew up my mind it was getting more calm again with the Northern Irish NWOBHM band Stormzone. Hämatom wanted to stay in mind especially because of their stage outfits as musically it was not that much they showed.
During last week I continued processing the tons of pictures and today is the day where the second festival day is completed. It started around noon with Ensiferum after which I went over to Suicidal Tendencies. The first of several highlights of that day was the gig of Van Canto on the enlarged Party Stage. Afterwards as contrast program classical trash metal from the Pott was heard: Sodom showed their skills.
Across the weekend I continued leaping at the pictures and so the next pictures and reviews are online. The openers of the so called "Night to Remember" were the guys from South Tyrol Frei.Wild. Afterwards Helloween showed a cross section of their long band history right before Blind Guardian entered the Black Metal Stage as first highlight of the evening. The closure was doyen Ozzy Osbourne performing a quite great show.
Finally the first three bands found their way onto the website and further will follow the next days. As I will do this in chronological order I start with the Belgian Metal Battle winners Powerstroke having had their gig on Wednesday. It continued on Thursday with the German speaking band Stier and the Norwegian guys from Kvelertak.
Right before I start with the pictures from Wacken a small interlude of last Friday. Then at the Dutch Ulft the Huntenpop Festival took place which Within Temptation had chosen for their "First Challenge". The concert should be a special one, at least it was announced on their website beforehand and the band did not promise too much. With a fantastic show on stage not only the whole current album "The Unforgiving" was played but also further great classics. That was how round about two hours in front of a quite small crowd were filled. Great athmosphere, great show, is there anything you could want more?
The Wacken Open Air 2011 is history. Across four days the heroes of metal like Blind Guardian or Judas Priest but also smaller bands as well as newcomers from all styles of metal music were playing. In keeping with the motto: "See you at Wacken, rain or shine" you could tell this also about the weather because really everything was offered: it was changing all the time with rain in the morning, clouds around the time until noon and afterwards mostly sunny. The concerts thankfully took place only during the dry phases, only during the last two bands of the festival Children Of Bodom and Subway To Sally two short but heavy rain showers went down turning the festival area into a huge puddle of mud.
Finally I reviewed the last pictures of my collection and reworked them and so there is now the article and the pictures of the historic victory of the German icehockey national team against the Finnish national team online. In front of a sold out Nordhorn ice rink the DEB guys showed a very convincing performance and were having the Finns under control all the time so that the game ended after 60 minutes 4:2.
On 12.03.2011 many metal fans entered the holy halls of the Turbinenhalle Oberhausen to hail bands like Obscurity, Varg, Korpiklaani or Eluveitie. Also I was attending this extended version of the Paganfest tour which was increased that day by Obscurity, Heidevolk and Eluveitie who supported the already very good lineup of bands (Kivimetsän Druidi, Arafel, Varg, Moonsorrow, Unleashed and Korpiklaani).
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