SATURDAY - 02.08.2008

The opener on Saturday were Machine Men. Four years after their last visit in Wacken they got to play on the Party Stage instead of the WET Stage, which was definitely necessary. They had grown immensely as a band since then. From the moment vocalist Antony came on stage and started singing "Circus Of Fools", he did a powerful show. The sound was great and his live skills are beyond question. A few years ago they were rather unknown and always called an Iron Maiden clone, but having the direct comparison with both bands playing in Wacken this time, it was clearly audible that they have their very own style. Performance-wise Antony is just as agile as Bruce Dickinson, though. Many others would do well to follow his example. Their setlist included stuff from all three albums released so far, from fast and catchy ones like "Falling" or "Against The Freaks" to slower ones like "The Shadow Gallery".

Machine Men

As a special song, Antony dedicated "Scars and Wounds" to his recently deceased cousin, and the fans showed respectful appreciation for the gesture. Furthermore the band was surprised to see a couple of Finnish fans that came from their hometown. In terms of energy and professionality at such an early time, this gig is hard to beat.

The band that followed them on the same stage were Mercenary from Denmark. They were surprised to see such a huge crowd as they are probably not used to playing in front of such large audiences. The band did a solid show, but nothing that special. Interesting to see and hear were the two singers splitting up growls and clean vocals. Especially "Soul Decision" worked well, but as their 11 Dreams album still seems to be the most popular one, the title track and the last song "Firesoul", which they hadn't played for a few years, were the strongest ones of their performance.

Mercenary

Not being too interested in bands like Carcass I had a short break until it was time to walk over to the WET Stage again to see one of the most unknown bands at the festival. In Finland the name Before the Dawn is everything but new, but concerning the time the got to play in Wacken - 30 minutes - they were rather a small insignificant band among all the huge bands. This would've been a chance for the band to get a bit more known in Germany, but the tent wasn't that well filled. The guys around mastermind Tuomas Saukkonen presented a good overview of their albums with songs like "My Darkness", "The Black" and the very catchy "Deadsong" as the last song.

Handling the clean vocals - Lars Eikind (Before The Dawn)

I'm sure that this very song convinced several people and they would've liked to hear more. But the time was unfortunately already over.

Wacken seems to be a great place for bands that want to celebrate reunions. At the Gates had disappeared from the scene for about a decade and were now back. Many of the fans had never seen them live before and accordingly many wanted to check out their gig. Needless to say the melodeath pioneers from Sweden had a large audience to play for. What else can you say but "It's been 12 years, thank you for waiting". It was worth waiting. Even if the band decided not to record a new album, they had enough old material to please the audience with.

12 years of waiting - Tomas Lindberg

One of the craziest bands that day was for sure Girugämesh. It's become a tradition in the last few years to have a Japanese band playing at Wacken. Those bands are mostly known for drawing loyal fans to the festival that are not too metal-like, but Girugämesh were everything but a lame rock band. The fans were crazy, screaming and holding up huge Japanese flags and getting louder and louder even if the band was a bit delayed.

Girugämesh from Japan

When the Japanese guys came on stage eventually they were all dressed in black and having a black bandana over the face. They grabbed their instruments, pulled off the bandanas and started their show. It was insane. Everyone who had doubts about them playing at Wacken was disabused after this show.

Afterwards it was time for Saturday's headliner, band has aroused some controversy recently for their much-publicised line-up change. Just as Iron Maiden and Avantasia earlier, Nightwish had a gigantic crowd in front of the stage as well. After playing the opener "Bye Bye Beautiful", Marco Hietala jokingly commented on this with "There's quite a lot of you here".

Saturday's headliner - Nightwish

Still it was visible that the fanbase is still splitted in two parts: one has accepted Anette as the new vocalist and the other doesn't like her. The first two songs, including "Amaranth", worked fine, but it was obvious that the old songs just don't work with Anette. When they played "Sacrament of Wilderness" the music was easy to recognize but the vocals were awful. More recent songs like "The Siren" worked slightly better, but concerning this I have to take sides with that part of the fans that don't like her singing the "Tarja"-songs. The rest of the band did a great job though.

Nightwish audience

I skipped Kreator and Axxis and headed for the last band of the night playing at 2 am. Before the Finnish monsters - Lordi - could start their show, it was time for the Wacken organizers to come on stage and thank everyone for coming this year. Additionally the two main organizers Thomas Jensen and Holger Hübner thanked their third member Sheree Hesse, who was celebrating her tenth anniversary as a member of the W:O:A team.

Finally, the last band. It had rained a bit before At the Gates played and everyone thought the rain was over now for the rest of the night, but just seconds before the winners of 2006's Eurovision Song Contest entered the stage it started pouring down again. Lordi is a name that nowadays everyone, being a metal fan or not, should know. And they're known for delivering a memorable show with lots of lights, pyros, horrific costumes and other effects. This is more than 'just' a metal show.

Visual highlight of the night - Lordi

Almost every of their songs was a catchy hit. They started off with "Bringing Back the Balls to Rock" and "Who's Your Daddy", followed by a outfit change of Mr. Lordi and "Bloodred Sandman". Other songs were "Get Heavy" or "Would You Love A Monsterman". The last song of course was "Hard Rock Hallelujah", a song that couldn't be missed anymore from their live set. The only negative part was the very short set. They only played around 55 minutes, but as one knows the time limits are very strict at Wacken. Besides, it was still raining heavily and everyone was tired. Surely it would have been nice to see more of their very special show.

Finnish monsters in Wacken

A couple of other news worth to be mentioned:
This year's "battle of the bands" winner was the Israeli band The Fading. Furthermore, for the first time ever, there will be an edition of Wacken outside Wacken. Festival founder Thomas Jensen has announced that there will be a festival in São Paulo, Brazil which will be called "Wacken Rocks Brazil" and take place on May 17th-19th 2009.

There were no bands yet announced for Wacken 2009 when writing this, yet the X-Mas Tickets (10,000) were already sold out after one day. Let's see how crazy it's going to be next year. Thanks to everyone who was there and see you 2009 - rain or shine!

Thanks to everyone who was there and see you in 2009 - rain or shine!

(picture taken by Rieke Helms)

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