Written by:	Baz Anderson
Published:	August 15, 2007
Event:	Wacken Open Air 2007 (Website)
Location:	Festivalgelände, Wacken, Germany
Galleries:	Wacken Open Air 2007 - Wacken, Germany, 02-04 August 2007 by Promonex (4) Wacken Open Air - Wacken, Germany, 2nd-4th August 2007 by Baz Anderson (110)

Friday

Barry: The night went well, after Saxon I thought after a hectic day I would get some sleep and wake up bright and early for the second day of the Wacken Open Air that on paper looked like it had the most bands I were going to be interested in. As I awoke in the tent I was greeted by a bright light and a lot of heat. I got out of the tent and the sun was so strong, certainly a contrast to a certain previous festival experience earlier in the year. I will describe the effect the sun and heat has on a festival goer, and also the pictures I took will also tell the story of the whole festival experience.



Suidakra

Barry: I didn't really know Suidakra at all before Wacken and to be honest I still don't now. They were the band that kicked off the second day of the mighty Wacken and of what I did know about them, I was interested to go and see them. I watched their full set from as soon as I could get into the festival ground and they just failed to grab my attention really. The music wasn't bad at all, it was rather enjoyable, they even brought out a guy playing the bagpipes with was rather enjoyable to hear indeed. So partly because I didn't know the band and, partly because the music just didnt sound original the set just didn't enthrall me. I know these guys have been around a while now but I was hoping they would have been able to reach out to me, but unfortunatley they didn't. The fans of the band enjoyed them still, that is the main thing.



Corruption

Daniel: In the early hours of each day the Metal Battle was taking place on the W.E.T. Stage, a competition for up-and-coming unsigned bands with a record deal with Armageddon Records as main prize. Having heard their stuff on Myspace before the festival I decided to give the Polish guys of Corruption a try. They played a nice, yet not really original variety of stoner metal reminding me a lot of Monster Magnet and Down. The sound in the tent didn't do the band's heavily down-tuned guitars a favour though. So even though the band's show was quite energetic it was not so much the music which got the crowd going than the two hot babes Corruption had brought with them! All in all a decent gig which wasn't entirely pleasant to listen to, but very pleasant to look at!



Communic

Daniel: Talking about bad sound - that definitely wasn't a problem for Communic. In fact, if one band on the entire festival had the perfect sound it's gotta be these three Norwegians! Their blend of progressive, power and thrash metal was bestowed with exactly the vibe it needed to make it a crushing experience for all the fans. Their setlist might have been disappointing to some as it consisted exclusively of material from their last album "Waves of Visual Decay" save for two songs, but the way they got their set across was absolutely top-notch and songs like "Communication Sublime" and "Under a Luminous Sky" were definite neck breakers! I hadn't expected them to be such a good live band, but I'm very glad to have been convinced otherwise.

Napalm Death

Barry: Napalm Death so early on the bill seemed a little strange to me, but at least it allowed a band to grab the Wacken bull's horns and really take over the festival for their set duration. I had seen Napalm Death earlier in the year and the memory of it was a mediocre, but enjoyable performance so that was what I was expecting this time. I am so glad this memory has now been cast aside and replaced by this one because Napalm Death exploded onto the stage and gave us a fantastic lengthy set of grinding death metal. Wherever you are the audience always gets right behind Napalm Death, it is so great to hear. The band really looked like they were having a great time on the stage playing to the vast audience, of course we can't go without Barney's insane flailings on the stage and intruductions to all the songs telling us what they are about. The set even included "You Suffer" to which Barney said afterwards "you have to get up early in the morning to catch that one" or words to that effect. Songs from the early years, "Scum" for example and songs from the later years and especially the new album all worked together well, all executed brilliantly. I am glad Napalm Death were on so early, else it would have taken a lot longer for a band to actually get the festival day going in such a great way.



Amorphis

Barry: Like Suidakra I didn't know this band before the festival apart from the style of music they were supposed to be playing. For the sake of staying to the two main stages I stood and watched them and unfortunately at some points I was stood there watching them wondering just why I was stood there watching them. This sort of metal is not my sort of metal so I can't give constructive comments. The band were putting effort into their show and the audience seemed to receive the set well, but for me they were just there to pass time.



Crystal Blaze

Daniel: As Therion were late with their gig I went to the W.E.T. Stage again to check out yet another contestant of the Metal Battle. This time Crystal Blaze set out to enrapture us with their blend of power metal which made it very evident that they came from Finland. The band also let it be known that this performance was their first on foreign soil which was noticeable as well. Not because the band appeared amateurish, but rather because they sounded fresh and powerful, nearly as good as their compatriots Sonata Arctica in their best days; even the frontman's hairdo resembled that of Tony Kakko in his "Ecliptica" days! Crystal Blaze surely didn't reinvent the wheel, but they made for a joyous time while I was waiting for Therion.

Therion

Barry: Therion were the first really fruity band of the festival. It was the first time I had seen them live and I can believe that all of the magic of Therion comes out in the live environment. On the albums you hear the voices but you don't see the story unfolding and being told to you in front of you. This band is great to watch live, there is something like eight members on there moving and swapping in and out telling you their part of the story and then all singing together forming a wall of voices. Two male singers and two female singers is quite unlike anything I have seen in a band before but it worked really great. This was also one of the band's first shows with Tomas Vikström replacing Mats Leven on the clean vocal duties. It was obvious that the band have performed this set and got it working perfectly many times before and like so many bands just looked thrilled to be performing their set in front of thousands and thousands of people at the biggest festival of them all. If I had known the band a little better I would have enjoyed the set that much more but even not knowing most of their material I still had a great time watching their great symphonic show.



Possessed

Barry: Now this was always going to be something worth watching, this was the first Possessed show in around fifteen years and even if all the original members aren't there, they are still playing Possessed material and running around under the Possessed name. The set opened with the opener to the "Seven Churches" album and a whole lot of smoke. For pretty much the duration of the set they seemed shrouded in smoke but we did get to see them clearly from time to time. Jeff Becerra being the only original member of the band and also a first for me seeing someone in stage in a wheelchair but I give the guy credit, what needs to be done needs to be done. He seemed absolutely thrilled to be on the stage but not without soundling like the possible third member of Beavis & Butthead speaking like some kind of dumb American. Still, he did his vocals great though and the rest of the band played their parts but that's about all. This would have been quite an experience for someone that was around when Possessed were originally around but for people like me that have only learnt of a band that used to be together, it is a little harder to get as enthusiastic. Still, the band put on a great show, it was a little static but the music was still great and that is the most important thing where the audience is concerned.



Grave Digger

Barry: Grave Digger have a lot of things to their name that make me think "I would really like this band" for example they are German, they are a heavy metal band, they have been around a while, they seem to have a lot of fans so they must be good right? Well dispite the sun being right next to the stage from my view and so suffering a burnt face and intolerable heat I decided to stay and watch them. I really wanted to like them, I wanted to leave thinking "yes! I will get some of their albums when I get home" but unfortunately this just didn't happen. Their music although indeed heavy metal did not seem to entertain me. Maybe it was the unbearable heat and blindling light from the sun that made the experience a little annoying but I just didn't get the show at all. Fans of the band of course seemed although they were enjoying the set but I just couldn't stay in the heat any longer, I had to go and get a drink and rehydrate myself. I didn't even feel as though I was missing something great when I started walking away, sad but it had to be done.



Falconer

Barry: The first time I ventured over to the Party stage at my time at the festival was to go and see Falconer, a band that I had been introduced to not such a long time ago but I had heard and really enjoyed the albums I had so I was very much looking forward to seeing this band in action, especially because apparently they do no tour so often. It was a little bit of a squash at the front but I got there in the end and even over half an hour before the show was set to start there was already a very big gathering for this band. Eventually the band took to the stage and opened with the title track and opener for the latest album; "Northwind" and proceded to play mostly songs from the Mathias Blad albums to which I was very pleased. "Spirit Of The Hawk" and apparently one of Mathias' personal favourites "Catch The Shadows" as well as a good handful from the first album "Falconer". The best track on that album was also the best song performed in the set; "Mindtraveller" just went down great. The set did have two songs from Kristoffer albums but these sounded great as well. Mathias has such a stage presence, apparently this guy is an actor as well and I could tell there was something different about him. He has short, slightly graying hair and is very well spoken, very appreiciative and seems like a very kind man indeed. Maybe he seemed a little out of place on a stage of a metal festival, he didn't move a lot or show extreme emotion but the audience loved him and showed their appreciation anyway. I don't know why Falconer were on a smaller stage because there must have been enough people crammed in the side Party stage bit as there is for a main stage show. Still, Falconer put on an amazing power metal show, the sound was great, the galloping drums were amazing stood where I was and the band seemed to really appreciate and enjoy being there as well. For me they were one of the top bands of the entire festival.



Chthonic

Daniel: Together with Dir En Grey and Electric Eel Shock ChthoniC flew the Asian flag at this year's Wacken Open Air. The Taiwanese black metal band took the weekend off from their participation in the Ozzfest Tour to fly to Germany for this one concert and fly back to the States again right afterwards. ChthoniC play a style of symphonic black metal which draws obvious influences from Cradle Of Filth and Dimmu Borgir, but which also reminds me of the symphonic craziness of Japanese extreme metal act Kadenzza. The heavy use of symphonic elements was ensured by the double keyboard assault while frontman Freddy screamed the hell out of his haggard body. In his speeches - which were even harder to understand than those of Electric Eel Shock - he talked a lot about their home country Taiwan and how the United Nations still refuse to accept it as a sovereign nation, which ChthoniC responded with the performance of their song "UNlimited Taiwan" (mind the way it's spelled). I highly doubt that the people in front of the stage cared a lot about the message - if they've understood it at all - but I can say for sure that looking at the crowd responses they enjoyed the music of the Taiwanese sextet a lot!

Enslaved

Barry: Well a slight change in music from the last band I saw. Enslaved were also on the Party stage and this would be the last time I would be visiting this stage at my time at the festival. I had seen them previously in the year and it was pretty much exactly the same set. I felt sorry for the band though, their stage was directly facing the sun and so it can't have been comfortable but they got through it. The set of course included quite a large number of tracks from the "Isa" and "Ruun" albums; "Return To Yggdrasil", "Bounded By Allegiance" and of course the two title tracks "Isa" and "Ruun". The set also included some material from their older days, from the "Frost" album and also a song from the split CD the band did with Emperor that sounded really great indeed, very much like the same style Emperor had back then as well. Enslaved put on a great show like always combining their black metal roots and their more modern sound they have these days to make it an enjoyable experience for a wide range of different metal fans.



Blind Guardian

Barry: It seemed almost as soon as Enslaved had finished Blind Guardian had started and I was still stuck in a herd of people trying to get from the Party stage to the True Metal stage. Blind Guardian were probably the band most people wanted to see out of all the bands at the entire festival, so if you had just come from seeing Enslaved like me, then you were pretty screwed if you wanted to get a place at the front. Not being the tallest person this really didn't make me happy at all, in fact I was rather annoyed when I should have been enjoying myself immensely. But then I just settled myself down in a place where I could at least see the band on the stage from a distance and of course there is the huge screen with the live footage from the cameras rolling through it, so you can always take a glance at that if you can't see for a moment. But something strange happened to me emotionally, I had the worst and the best time at the festival stood there in the vast audience watching Blind Guardian, it was awful not being able to see clearly one of the bands you wanted to see most at the festival but after I had got settled into a place I enjoyed the set in a different way to any other time I have watched a metal band play live. The last half a year I have really been off Blind Guardian but the set really made me remember why I loved them in the first place, they played quite a bit of older material but the greatest part about the Blind Guardian set wasn't Blind Guardian, but was the amazing audience. This is their home, we were in Germany at Wacken, and the audience were totally in for making it a magical show, and of course it turned out that way. "Valhalla", "Welcome To Dying", "Traveller In Time" and even a song that really hit me when started; "Lord Of The Rings" and "The Bard's Song" which of course had maximum audience participation and without sounding too much like a wet lettuce was quite an emotional experience. These along with other favourites such as "Born In A Mourning Hall", the amazing live "Nightfall", "Imaginations From The Other Side", of course "Mirror Mirror" and quite surprisingly one of my personal favourites "Punishment Divine", these made this such a remarkable show, we were lucky people to be there, Blind Guardian at home at Wacken is something every fan of the band must experience.



Dimmu Borgir

Barry: Like with Blind Guardian it would seem a lot of people wanted to see Dimmu Borgir, understandably as well. Alas, I did manage to get quite a bit closer to the stage this time but still unfortunately a bit of distance was between myself and the band, still there was a big screen again that I was stood right in front of. Unfortunately sometimes watching that seems a little pointless though as you might as well watch a DVD or something. Still, there was a lot of smoke on the stage and it was very dark as well so even if I was in a good position it might have been a challenge to actually see the band. But anyway, the band kicked off with the epic "Progenies Of The Great Apocalypse" which was alright but I think maybe a song with a bit more kick might be more suitable to kick of a band's set. The band throughout their set visited nearly all their albums but the early material. We had "The Serpentine Offering" and "The Chosen Legacy" from the new album, the aforementioned and "Cataclysm Children" from the previous album, "Kings Of The Carnival Creation" and "IndoctriNation", "The Insight And The Catharsis", "Mourning Palace" and "Spellbound (By The Devil)" from their other albums as well. Now we all know Dimmu Borgir have had problems with drummers over the years and so for example the "Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia" album is way faster than anything the band had done before or anything after, but this difference in tempos on albums is seemingly not a problem live at all as some songs from the last nineties albums are played much faster than they are on CD and so sounds much better and of course the songs that actually are from the "Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia" album sound insane live. Unfortunately there didn't seem to be much connection between audience and band and maybe the performance from the band might have seemed a little hollow, but I can't say many negative things because it was a good experience seeing Dimmu Borgir live, but I think the large festival environment is not suited for them completely.



Iced Earth

Barry: Iced Earth with Tim Owens singing live was something I was quite intrigued to hear and here was my opportunity. By some miracle from the dodgy place I was standing to see Dimmu Borgir, I managed to get myself to the front for Iced Earth to witness a show that is apparently the begining of a new era for Iced Earth as Jon Schaffer stated while on stage. The band kicked things off with "Burning Times" to get us in the mood, and then straight on into the awesome, speedy "Violate" that just made the audience go crazy, what a great song and especially live. Jon Schaffer's guitar sounds powerful on CD but that is nothing compared to how it sounds live. His guitar playing in that stabbing, violent style is like a razor coming out of the speakers, and especially when you are stood next to these humongous speakers with no earplugs, that fill the entire field with loud, pounding metal, you can really feel the awesome power of Jon's guitaring. We visited quite a few adventures from older albums, "Stormrider", "The Hunter", "Iced Earth" but was also taken on an experience with some of the newer material. "Declaration Day", "Ten Thousand Strong" and also another new ballad-like song from the unreleased album that also sounded rather good. Maybe most impressively was that they played the full "Something Wicked" trilogy. Tim Owens did not sound out of place singing these older songs at all, I don't know how he did it because he has a much different style to Matt Barlow but he did a great job even though at times he was still impersonating Rob Halford with some of his actions, but I guess given his history you can't blame him. Overall this was a great set of very very heavy metal, maybe I liked it a bit more than I was expecting to. Great great stuff.



Die Apokalyptischen Reiter

Barry: For me this band is the story of the festival. Previous to seeing Die Apokalyptischen Reiter here I knew almost nothing about them but I thought I would drag myself over there to the front and see what they would be like anyway. I wasn't expecting anything fantastic, I left like ten places on my camera because I didn't think there would be much to interest me but I may have been the most wrong I have ever been about anything metal from whence my little baby ears first heard something metal. Mr Fuchs started the show being lowered down from the roof of the stage and this was just the begining of the madness. They had everything during this set, it was probably the most circus like metal show I have ever seen, even their keyboard player was a gimp locked inside what looks like a huge bird cage. There was of course pyrotechnics gallore, fire coming out of the top of the barrels that were along the front of the stage, this was as entertaining as a metal show gets. Fuchs was barefoot for the show and didn't stop running around the stage and coming to the front leaning over towards us. A young woman came on the stage and played the violin parts for "Seeman" which sounded just enchanting live, a guy at one point came on the stage with a didgeridoo, and also at one point they brought on two large drums to the middle of the stage and the drummer along with the other members bashing these gave us a really cool sounding drum solo. Towards the end of the show a guy and a girl from the back of the stage came forward in their swimming suits and had a crowd surf on top of inflatible little boats. This show was like some kind of crazy German party just with tens and ten and tens of thousands of people. For most of the show I was just standing there right at the front amazed by what I was seeing and hearing, this band is unique with both their stage show and their music. I was stood there and I didn't know what I was listening to, I was thinking death? thrash? theres some folk in there? maybe a little progressive? But whatever it is, it sounded really great live and was delivered with such enthusiasm. The band are not that well known outside of Germany and so the chances of me seeing them again in my own country is very slim, the chances of seeing them again at all are quite slim unfortunately, so my message to everyone reading this is to go and see this band if you get the opportunity, even if you don't know them you will have an amazing time. These were quite simply the best band at the festival.