First day of W.O.A and, of course, all kinds of excitement feelings. After a little peregrination from Elmshorn to Itzehoe (city where you can take buses to the Festival), and then to Wacken, I found out that the place to get out of the bus was exactly on the other side of the town where I had to pick up my access badge. Thank God we're talking about a very small town... result: a 30-minute walk.
The long journey to pick up the badge was impressive because I could see that the city gets completely different with the Festival. You can't see people not connected to the event. Even the local inhabitants are involved selling food, renting bathrooms or even offering a little space in their backyards for little chats. We can also see that they are really proud about the event. They dress their children with the festival's T-shirts and lift black flags in front of their houses.
After all the hard work I had to pick up my badge, I finally got to the place. Even though I left the hotel very early, I lost a couple of concerts. I couldn't see the Brazilian band THREAT, which was the first to play at the Metal Battle stage and besides this, I lost a big part of the legendary band GIRLSCHOOL, which was a pity.
I decided to take a walk around and see the place though, and there is nothing missing: drinks, food, bands, merchandise, events... it's impossible not to find something to do unless you are too tired.
After eating, seeing the options the festival offers and relaxing a bit at the press area (where I could see a special Girlschool's pocket show and talk to Vitinho and Castor from TORTURE SQUAD, two great people), I went back to watch a few concerts: AIRBOURNE, LEAVES EYES, AVENGED SEVENFOLD and... IRON MAIDEN
I'll make some comments here about things I could realize in each one of these concerts, but I will not worry about writing exactly a review, since I'm late for today's party. .
AIRBOURNE is highly influenced by AC/DC but you can multiply it by 10. I don't know if it is because of their energy alive, if it was because of the festival's energy or the crowd watching their concert. But they sounded really heavy and I enjoyed it a lot (the audience seemed to have the same opinion).
LEAVES EYES brought a great production to the Party Stage with a huge viking boat as stage, besides explosions and medieval customs. Their music is extremely competent and we could see people were really enjoying their performance.
AVENGED SEVENFOLD... it is difficult to talk about a band which, by their own merit, wouldn't have had good chances in participating on the WOA.
Airbourne
They were IRON MAIDEN's guest and did their job well playing with energy, not doing anything ridiculous as they did in Italy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBm3mS57Rng), and they pleased some people. It was clear,though, that they didnｴt belong in there. With some kind of “fake hard core look “and songs that were more backed to the emocore, they were too weak to warm up for one of the most important bands of the metal history.
IRON MAIDEN: what should I say about them that I hadn't said before? The only two things I can say are: watching their complete concert (in terms of stage production) is a unique experience and the 37 thousand people who were at the concert in S縊 Paulo just ran over the 70 thousand who were in Wacken.
It was quite disappointing to watch the first IRON MAIDEN concert at the WOA and not to hear the classic screams: “ol ol ol ol Maideeen, Maideeen" or frantic screams to the sound of the first chords of Fear of the Dark, and even not to scream as a madman whenever Bruce Dickinson says: “Scream for me Wacken”.
We could see that the band itself, specially Bruce, were trying, in vain, to make the crowd scream.
But when they realized that it wouldnｴt happen with more than a few fans (mainly those in front of the stage), they decided to relax and just kept playing.
Anyway it was a great experience, a historical concert and there is more tonight!
