The Holy Land Where The Metal Gods Descend
By: Muralidharan Pc
Tags: Festivals, Heavy Metal, Germany, Rock, Música

The Holy Land Where The Metal Gods Descend

Pic Courtesy: From the Writer’s Collection. Epica playing their set.

“Wacken is not about the bands, isn’t it? It is about the people who come to Wacken. That’s what it is about.” — Bill Byford, Saxon.

Every year, the village of Wacken in Germany, which has about 1800 genteel citizens, is awash with over 100,000 metal-heads, for four days in the summer. These fans take an annual pilgrimage from various countries in the world (official count in 2017 was 80 nations), to pay homage to their favourite metal bands.

A friend and I decided to backpack it to Wacken in 2018, and the experience was nothing short of mind-blowing. Wacken lies towards the northernmost tip of Germany, about 80 km from Hamburg. The weather is known to be cold and rainy, with the skies brooding over the village, in a darker shade of ashen. That, however, was not meant to be that year. The 2018 edition was hot across all the days — sunshine and sunscreen keeping us company as raging metal blasted through every nook and cranny.

True to its reputation, Wacken Open Air is a huge, beautiful festival. The grazing lands turn into a smorgasbord of ‘all things metal’ — stores selling metal merchandise and memorabilia, music hubs, beer gardens playing various genres of heavy music, food stalls from various countries, and huge swathes of camping tents running for many kilometers.

The Music

Finally, it all boils down to the music. From any point around the festival premises, what showed up was a swarming sea of black tees displaying their favourite bands, with accessories that subscribe to metal counterculture like band patches, spikes, kilts, leathers and chains, while some had incredible tattoos and nothing else on their bodies. And there were bands that catered to everyone’s taste — Thrash, Death, Black, Metal-core, Viking, Symphonic, Doom, Folk, Extreme, Glam, Gothic, Speed, Power and many other myriad genres of metal one could think of.

The ones that managed to pull in larger crowds in 2018 were the older, bigger bands — Judas Priest and Udo Dirkschneider. Other bands we managed to catch — Dokken, Tremonti, Behemoth, Epica, Children of Bodom, Nightwish, In Flames, Ghost, Doro, Gojira, Steel Panther, Arch Enemy, Ensiferum, Helloween and Alien Weaponry — had their niche collective of fans rooting for them. Horns up, moshing, surfing and head-banging.

Pic Courtesy: From the Writer’s Collection.Rob and his mates setting the stage on fire.

Pic Courtesy: From the Writer’s Collection. Bodom at their best.

Merchandise And More

The stalls around Wacken selling band merchandise ranged from expensive metal band art to those selling disc bootlegs. Incredibly rare collector’s items filled the stalls. The Viking metal stalls drew in huge crowds as they had some of the finest memorabilia. As for me, I did manage to lay my hands on an Amon Amarth ‘Deceiver Of The Gods’ box set.

Pic Courtesy: From the Writer’s Collection. Viking metal stalls.

Pic Courtesy: From the Writer’s Collection. More stalls.

Pic Courtesy: From the Writer’s Collection. Rob Halford art piece.

Final Thoughts

As the dust settled down after four days of metal mayhem, one thing rang true for sure. In a world that’s increasingly becoming divisive, music is perhaps the only sanctuary of hope where people can come together and celebrate—irrespective of colour, creed, orientation, beliefs, gender or race.

Small wonder, Wacken is known as the last vestige of the Holy Land.