WACKEN: The path to the promised land
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For those of you that don’t know me well enough, I’m a metalhead. Basically, I listen to a lot of heavy metal music. These day’s my music taste has expanded well beyond just metal, but for over a decade various sub-genres of metal have always been my go to style of music. That being said, in 2018, I had the chance to attend Wacken Open Air, the world biggest heavy metal festival, and this post is all about my journey there, to the promised land.
Where it all began
My journey into the world of heavy guitar riffs, blast-beats and various forms of intense vocalizations begins during my teens. Funnily enough it wasn’t during the eight years I attended music school, but just after, when I got into high school.
I remember the first metal song that really caught my ear and made me headbang was Feuer Frei by Rammstein. That, because it was played in the intro for the first Triple X movie—an action packed, over the top spy movie with Vin Diesel and a badass soundtrack.
Around the same time, I gained access to a friend’s hard drive that had a bunch of Rammstein songs, as well as some other metal bands like Nightwish. These two bands kicked off my love and interest for this genre of music, and ever since, I never stopped listening and exploring for new bands.
A couple of years into my metalhead journey I stumbled upon a YouTube recap video about Wacken 2005—a metal festival in Germany with a badass lineup. I absolutely fell in love with the songs and presentation. I kept replaying it multiple times and showing it to my likeminded friends. For me, it became the pinnacle of “metalhood” to one day be able to attend such a glorious event.
Autumn 2017
Fast forward more than a decade, I had just graduated from my Masters program at the University of Copenhagen. While chatting with one of my friends and colleagues, Christian, the subject of Wacken came up. Christian was also a big metalhead and he had attended the festival before. More importantly, he was planning to go the next year.
This was my chance! I’d finally have the funds to do it, a friend to go with and I’d be closer than ever if I were to stay in Denmark in 2018. Now normally the tickets for this festival sell out within the first days, or weeks of announcement. We were already past one month, but somehow, through some miracle there were still tickets available.
I immediately locked in my ticket. Soon enough I received my complementary Wacken 2018 T-shirt and was ready to start the count down to the big date!
Summer 2018
It was now 2018 and there were only a few months left until the start of Wacken Open Air in August. Around the beginning of summer I had a crazy idea to further enhance my holiday plans for the summer. I don’t know if it was nostalgia or what that lead me to it, but I looked up the location and website for EUGEN, which was going to be held in Austria. So I thought, why not turn this into a double whammy and attend both Wacken and Eugen in the same holiday.
Around the same time Christian told me that he couldn’t go to Wacken after all because of a wedding he had to attend. This was a big bummer as now I had nobody to go with. He did however put me in contact through a Facebook group with a bunch of his friends attending the festival. These guys and gals were regular Wacken veterans that would go each year. Most of them Danish, but also some from the UK. Fast forward through the summer and it was time to depart for Germany.
Without a car, getting to the festival was not exactly straightforward. The cheapest option I had was to take a series of trains across Denmark and northwestern Germany. Thus I traveled across the Nordic country, from Copenhagen to Kolding and then south to the German town of Itzehoe.
Arrival
Each time I swapped trains, inching ever closer to my destination, I saw more and more black-shirted long-haired men and women with big backpacks. That was one way to tell I was on the right path. On one of the trains, I made friends with a Brazilian couple that were also heading to the festival. We were soon making plans to meet up and hang out in the following days.
The last leg of the journey was a bus ride from Itzehoe train station to the festival grounds, located on a farmland next to the village of Wacken, 12 km from Itzehoe.
On arrival, the hilly landscape hides the true extent of the festival. I followed the line of attendees to registry booths excitedly taking in my new surroundings. The lines were huge, but the organizers were pretty efficient, so the waiting wasn’t too bad. They handed me my ticket, goodie bag and map of the festival grounds.
When I was finished, I climbed the last hill and finally laid my eyes on the holy grounds. It was massive!
There was a sea of thousands of tents and motorhomes stretching as far as the eyes could see. Somewhere far away I could see the stage area. I was shocked and awed at the sheer size of it. It was exhilarating! However, it dawned on me that finding my group in this maze would prove very challenging. To make matters worse, my phone’s battery had just died.
My only option was to navigate to the commercial stalls in the center of the labyrinth, where the map said I would find power outlets.
Navigating the maze
While walking around, trying to find my way to the center, I kept thinking of how on earth I would find a group that I’ve never even met in that sea of people. Amid the vast crowds, there would usually be a country’s flag, flying above a group of tents. That was one thing I could look out for… One of many Danish flags. Worst case scenario I thought, if I couldn’t find my guys by nightfall I would just walk up to a group I spotted with a Hungarian flag and try to befriend them.
After around 20 minutes of walking, I got to the central part, filled with bars, food stalls, merch-shops and more. I franticly searched and asked around for power outlets and WiFi connection. They were much harder to find than I thought. In my frustration, I ended up chatting to a guy, Lukas, who was using a storage locker. Turns out the lockers had power outlets in them. However, the line for renting one was huge!
Friendly metalheads
Lukas was kind enough to let me use his outlet to charge my phone and invited me to have a beer with him and his dad in the meantime. Turned out he was a German game developer living in Finland and working on Cities: Skylines a famous video game I had played. Such a small world… We hung out for half an hour exchanging stories and contact information so we could meet up again.
As the sun began to set, I bid farewell to Lukas and his dad and reached out to my Danish group. I got one of them on the phone and explained where I was. With a raspy drunken voice he gave me a bunch of directions to follow to reach them.
Darkness was setting in and finding my way became very difficult. After another 30 minutes of stumbling around, I see this long haired blonde guy on the phone waving franticly at me. I wave back and rush to him and we hug like we’ve been friends for life. I had found my group!
Wacken Open Air
Stretching across 240 hectares, with around 85,000 attendees and 200 bands and another 5,000 staff members, Wacken Open Air felt more like a city then a festival. There was the central area I mentioned with all the stores, stalls and entertainment venues and next to it were the stage areas. A total of ten stages, with two humongous ones and several medium to smaller ones. All of this surrounded by vast camping grounds.
Beyond the music, Wacken Open Air offers themed areas such as the Wackinger Village, featuring medieval markets and performances, and the Wasteland, inspired by post-apocalyptic themes. The festival also emphasizes sustainability through initiatives like the Green Wacken program, which includes the use of electric vehicles and encourages eco-friendly practices among attendees.
There was so much to do and see on the festival grounds that I was literally overwhelmed. I remember I had one particular day with a lot of must see bands lined up. I spent most of that day out in the stage areas, only taking half an hour break to go eat or drink something. After a whole day of walking, standing, jumping, singing and drinking in the sun, I was absolutely shot. Come midnight and my last concert, I was so exhausted I could have easily collapsed and fell asleep at the concert.
Speaking of drinking, a fun little fact is that the festival has a dedicated beer pipeline capable of delivering 10,000 liters per hour directly to the main bar areas in the Infield. Total beer consumption during the entire festival is estimated to exceed 400,000 liters over the 3-4 days of the event.
Weather and organization
The weather at Wacken can range from a stormy, wet, muddy mess to a scorching hot dessert climate. During the rainy years, the holy ground turns into a literal mud pit with mud fights and a lot of headaches for attendees with vehicles. Yet, this doesn’t stop anyone from thoroughly enjoying the festival and having a blast, in big part thanks to the preparedness and quick reactions from the organizers.
In 2018 we got the complete opposite. A whole week of hot sunny summer weather. The nights and mornings were nice and cool, but the days could become unbearably hot with temperatures exceeding 30° C. With the high temperatures came the risk of heatstroke, yet once more the organizers were well prepared with plenty of public showers, drinkable water fountains and shaded areas. They would even have groups of staff hosing down walkers during the scorching afternoon hours.
Another issue with a hot and dry festival ground was the dust. While the campgrounds were covered in grass, the central part where crowds gathered was just dirt. So with the swarm of people walking around all day, it created a constant dust cloud encompassing the core of the festival grounds. Glasses were a must and a lot of people wore bandanas and hats too. In any case, by the end of each day I had dust flowing out of every orifice. It felt like metalheads invading the wild wild west.
The mood and the people
To put it simply, the mood at Wacken was nothing short of EPIC. The friendliness and camaraderie were incredible. As with my example meeting Lukas, it was so easy to just start a conversation with anyone and end up befriending them. Speaking of Lukas, I met up with him later during the festival to check out the Wackinger Village and drink some mead.
I also met and hung out a lot with a Norwegian guy, Knut, that we adopted into our camping group. Him and I had a lot of similar tastes in music so we attended quite a few concerts together. Then there was the day that Knut disappeared. Apparently wandering off into the magical plains of northwestern Germany after smoking some strong stuff. He teleported back into his tent somehow the next day.
Then there was my group of crazy Danish guys. I’ve never seen human beings drink as much as they had in such a short time span. They had pretty much brought with them an entire liquor store’s worth of booze. They also had this weird bong-like plastic pipe thingamajig called “Shafty”, that the hardcore ones would drink from and get totaled.
One of the guys, Mark, was quite the Wacken celebrity too. He had a recurring act of dressing up in a Santa Claus outfit during certain concerts and he even got shout outs from bands like Alestorm. It was a wild, wild bunch. Crazy fun guys!
Drinking, Eating and Chilling
Whenever not at the stages, we’d either be chilling with a drink in our hand, or on our snack-break. The options for both were plentiful on the festival grounds. There was a great variety of food stalls to go around and while not cheap, the prices were not terribly high. There were also other options outside of the festival grounds. The nearby village of Wacken had plenty of restaurants and diners for a much needed hardy breakfast after a night of heavy drinking.
For those extra hot days, there was also a public swimming pool not far from the festival grounds. One of the unbearably hot afternoons we drove over there to cool off. The place was packed to the brim. I just blindly followed my group all the way atop the main pool’s trampoline. However, once I got up there I remembered I’m really not a fan of heights.
I had to wait for the person below to clear the area while my brain was kicking into panic mode. Not wanting to give it a second more, I rushed to the edge and jumped like an awkward gimp and landed like a sack of potatoes. It must’ve looked ridiculous, but boy did it feel good.
Final thoughts
Wacken Open Air was an unforgettable experience. It was everything I hoped for and more. Aside from the impressive lineup of bands and the various activities to keep myself constantly entertained, it was the feeling of brotherhood that really stuck with me. The feeling that even though we are nearly a hundred thousand strangers from all over the world gathering in this one spot, united by our love for music, we were all part of this one huge family of metalheads.
Honestly, my only regret about Wacken was that due to my plan to travel to Austria for the yearly EUGEN event, I had to shorten my stay and missed out on the last epic night of the festival. Unfortunate as it was, I was convinced that this was not my last Wacken. I would surely come back again.
In fact, as I am writing this, the nostalgia is so strong that I can’t help but start planning a return to the holy grounds of metal the next year!