Although the Nordhorn team had to play their home game with a heavily restricted number of players against the guests from Celle they did not offer them faintly a chance from beginning to end of the game. In front of 999 visitors they fastened the lead in their division and won the game undoubtfull with 9:1.
Another five bands are now online. Among them are also the two headliner of Saturday evening: Leaves' Eyes and Doro. Furthermore the first three bands of Sunday: Diary About My Nightmares, Operatika and VelvetSeal.
On Wednesday it finally was the day that the concert originally planned for March with Within Temptation was caught up on. At the sold-out E-Werk Anneke van Giersbergen with her band was to heat up the audience before at round about 21:00 Sharon den Adel with her guys entered the stage. A great evening also compensating for the disappointing First Challenge.
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?