Tag Archives: sabaton

At the Festival: Wacken 2013

I don’t know why I put it off so long, but I finally forced myself to properly finish this post.
For reasons unknown to me do I seemingly have a thing for posting stuff at least a year after they have happened and so far I only managed to post an in-time review for one concert

Anyway, back to 2013ths Wacken, which for me was currently the fifth and last one I attended.

Part of a Journey

Last years Wacken soon became a part of my Journey through Germany as I went there with DarkFairy again and had to pick her up at her parents place. The days before it we spent preparing the car we borrowed from her parents, that we would not just use for driving, but for sleeping as well. You can find more about this part of the journey in the post above and on DFPP Entertainment.
Short version: With little actual talent for it, we cut cardboards to fit into the windows for shading.

For Fairy’s view on this Wacken you can also look at these posts:

Wacken 2013 or a Week of Chaos with the Co-Authoress Pt.1

Wacken 2013 or a Week of Chaos with the Co-Authoress Pt.2

We noted done where the pieces needed to be placed, can you guess where this is?

We noted down where the pieces needed to be placed, can you guess where „Hi Bei“ is?

Anyway, previous to the trip we made arrangements to meet up and camp with Laupi (the student two years below me, with whom I attended a Sabaton concert some years ago) and his friends, so they kept some space for us. Which was quite necessary, because even though we arrived on Wednesday, it was already quite full.

Still, it took us a while to get there and after six hours of driving, we finally arrived in the traffic jam close to the motorway exit for the festival. We already stood for about fifteen minutes when Fairy’s satnav announced:

„The route contains traffic congestions“
Which Fairy and I commented with: „Oh, Really?!“

Two hours later we entered the camp ground and called Laupi to know where we had to head. So we asked a staff where we were and where we had to go. The Map hasn’t changed that much over the years, so we were quite confused when he told us that „P was right next to X“ – which it wasn’t.
After a bit of driving around we then found Laupi and one of his friends at the spot we had agreed to meet. Though when we arrived at the camp, there wasn’t really space for us.
So the cars that were already there had to be re-parked and one of Laupi’s friends then manoeuvred our car into the slim open space.

That day we wanted to see Harpyie’s first concert and a special concert by Faun in the church of the village, but the only thing we did, was get our bracelets and call it a day.
The 8 hours drive had been just far too exhausting.

Kitties and a Pony with Horn

As a slow start into the concerts we had a look at Mysterious Priestess, a Japanese Melodic Death Metal band that Fairy discovered in the program. The concert was in the quite new Bullhead City Circus that we had skipped the year before. It was interesting and just like Dir En Grey fascinating to see how such, well, small people are capable of creating such strong music.

Next stop was the Wackinger Village for Feuerschwanz, the medieval band that I have mentioned one or the other time before. Throughout and after their show several funny things transpired that I’d like to share with you.
Feuerschwanz usually enter their stage with two dancers, their so-called „Mietzen“ (Kitties). At the Metalfest (2012) these Mietzen supported Powerwolf during their performance of „Ressurection by Erection“ (and yes, the song is as perverted as the title suggests…) to put emphasis on the rising with the help of lances. Back then I told Fairy that they belong to Feuerschwanz.
When Feuerschwanz entered the stage in Wacken Fairy told me:

„I was just about to say: Hey the Mietzen of Feuerschwanz are also with…Feuerschwanz…“

At least she noticed that they indeed are with them. 😀
Beside that their clothings were quite a topic between us.
Their violinist wore a short dress with a cape and looked pretty much like a super heroine and whenever she lifted one of her arms I mumbled „Up, up and away…“
It is not nice to make fun of people because of their way to dress, but I couldn’t – and still can’t – refrain from saying that…
Fairy, however, got a liking to their bassists vertically striped pants, that looked like those a (medieval) fool would wear. She has a thing for fools and buskers, even having her own fool robes and giving one of her characters in our book this profession.
Anyway, the concert was fun – as all their concerts are – and we continued to sit there for the Rabenschrey concert that followed.

When they had started Fairy noticed a pair of vertically striped pants and exclaimed while pointing at them:

„Look he has the same pants as…“ before she looked up and closed with an „Ooh…“ as it was the bassist himself that was walking past us. 😀

Only to be followed by the guitarist with the not-as-funny-and-memorable-as-the-others name and the supergirl. 😀

As we only watched half of Rabenschrey’s show, as it wasn’t really our thing, I am able to digress a little into what I just wrote.
The musicians of Feuerschwanz each use an intentionally ambiguous nickname. They are for example the Hauptmann Feuerschwanz (Captain, well Firetail would be the more literal translation, but meaning wise it would be Firedick) and the Prinz Hodenherz (Prince Testicleheart) and the not-as-funny Hans der Aufrechte (Hans the Uprightly or more fittingly and the only one that sounds more funny in English than in German: the Erected). I didn’t really think that the names sounded that awful in English…therefore I’ll leave out the translations for Johanna von der Vögelweide (supergirl) and the Knappe Latte (the pants-dude).
Afterwards we went back to the camp, which – as I haven’t mentioned it yet – was placed perfectly close to the stage areas: Right beside the Wackinger Village and just five minutes to the Main Stages. We joked that this was the reason it got the letter „P“: Perfect.

Our DF.PP Shirts and the far too short front Cardboard

This way it was easy for us to hear concerts while enjoying the comforts of the mattress we had in the car. We heard a bit of Thunder, before we left again to see Deep Purple on the Main Stage.
I don’t really remember if we watched via the Video Walls or actually sat inside to see them. It was nice, but Smoke on the Water was definitely the highlight as I don’t think they played Hallelujah.

What I remember, however, is that we then sat on a patch of grass to wait for Rammstein to start, when the Pony with Horn was born and accompanied us throughout the remaining weekend.
The band itself had a great show (pyrotechnics flying shortly above the audience, etc.) and played many of their well known songs, but it was still a bit unsatisfying, because they are well known for not interacting with the audience that much.
A nice experience: Definitely. Worth, to spend nearly a hundred Euros for a solo concert: Not really.
Fairy was even surprised to hear Till (the singer) talk to the audience at all.
Though it was mostly only to announce that they had a special guest for their song Sonne (Sun): The Volksmusik singer Heino, that had covered the song on his album Mit freundlichen Grüßen (With best regards).
It was an unusual and much discussed topic, but still quite interesting.
Due to the fact that that years Wacken was sold out as soon as Rammstein were announced, many people were there to see them and it took us a while to return, but less than the others thanks to our perfectly positioned parking place. 😀

In the Heat of the concerts

Where last years Wacken was muddy and wet, this one was dry and hot. Very hot. On Thursday we had acquired headbands, to not get too much sun onto our skulls, but on Friday even that wasn’t enough. That day we drank about five litres of water and talked a lot of ridiculous stuff. For example did we had a late lunch somewhere along the day and it felt like the Spaghetti we had, swam in a sea of water and thus we created the Spaghetti Fish in it’s natural habitat the tomato sauce…

Anyway, our first stop on Friday was at a Harpyie concert with our newly acquired DF.PP Entertainment shirts around noon. It was a fun concert and we even ended up in the recording for one of their songs.
Afterwards we had quite some time until the next concert and I do believe we had lunch first, either way did we by then know that we should always cook with a pot, which I exclaimed instead of saying we should do just that with a lid the day before.

As the majority of us wanted to see them we went to Powerwolf together and some of the guys of the camp turned their bare upper bodies into bandshirts by writing the name of the band on their chests – needless to say in the evening the shirts still remained.
That concert was my third time seeing them, but it was still fun and I do believe we surprised the guys that didn’t knew us, with our knowledge of the lyrics. Though I did re-interpret their song Kreuzfeuer when I wasn’t able to sleep on Wednesday, somewhat like this:

Original: My version:
Kreuzfeuer, brenne in der Nacht Kreuzfeuer, penne in der Nacht
(Crossfire, burn in the night) (Crossfire, snooze in the night)
Kreuzfeuer, sei entfacht Kreuzfeuer, sei erwacht
(Crossfire, be ignited) (Crossfire, be awoken)
Gott hat uns den Wahn gebracht Gott hat uns den Schlaf gebracht
(God had brought us the delusion) (God had brought us the sleep)

Anyway, after enjoying the Metal Mass, we parted from the others to have a look into Pretty Maids, where I knew the singer, Ronnie Atkins, from his cooperation with Avantasia. It was quite nice, but then they played a song that sounded really familiar. At first I thought it was by Avantasia, but then I recognized it as Back to Back from Hammerfall. Until that moment I didn’t even know it was a cover.

Later we wanted to see Sabaton with the others again, but somehow they interpreted „wait a moment“ as „go ahead“ and we enjoyed it by ourselves.
Before the concert started Fairy kind of vowed she will not jump, regardless of what they say on stage. It has been a long and hot day and both of us were exhausted.
But then Joakim asked the audience if they will sing and, most importantly, jump with them for their final song: Primo Victoria.
The song started playing, Fairy started jumping and loudly yelled: „You asshole!“
Luckily(?) as of this day he does not know about this. 😀

To occupy the waiting fans they sent in giant beach balls that are soon ripped to shreds...

To occupy the waiting fans they sent in giant beach balls that were soon ripped to shreds…

With our main acts done, we had a bit time on our hand to watch Corvus Corax meets Wadokyo while sitting comfortably at the back of the Stage Area. This band has too little vocals for my taste, but their version of Amon Amarth’s  Twilight of the Thundergod was still fun.

Afterwards we departed for the camp again. As I was too tired/lazy to return for the ASP concert during the night and we had already managed to hear quite a bit of Doro from where we were, I wanted to hear them from afar as well, but my plans were destroyed by Megabosh that played in the Village at the same time. Though played is too good a word for what that guy did on that stage. It was just awful and every last one of us just wanted it to stop. Even leading to an exclamation that someone should just do him the favour and shoot him, when he was loudly repeating the words „Shoot. Shoot. Shoot“ (or „Schieß. Schieß. Schieß.“ as I’m not entirely sure whether he sung English or German).
We didn’t like him, but we would have to suffer from him a littler more over the days.
The parking place was perfect for reaching the stages fast, but this was definitely a down point.

Though it was interesting to fall asleep to Grave Diggers night concert, only to wake up during Rebellion as that one featured Van Canto again.

One last pit

Because we could, we went to the Wackinger Village on Saturday again to see Harpyie one last time. Just like the day before it was fun, even though we were still exhausted.

Though that did not keep us from attending more concerts. This time the others waited for us and together we went to see Alestorm at the Party Stage.
At some point people around us decided to sit down and create a rowing pit and the guys thought this funny so we were quite literally pushed into the pit. Grabbing the shoulders of the person before you, you were then pushed back and forth by the one behind you – at least Fairy and I were because we did not have the strength to do any rowing ourselves.

Even more exhausted than before we just went to get something to drink during their last songs, while trying not to get involved in any more pits. On the way to the bar, we even passed one of my former fellow students (the one from the MPS) and had a very long conversation that pretty much consisted of the words „Hi“ and „Water“.

Refreshed we then contemplated to either participate in the signing session of Harpyie or listen to Die Apokalyptischen Reiter. We decided for the first and had some interesting discussions with a couple of people.
At first we wanted to know which row was the right one to enter. The guy from the staff looked at us and wondered out loud how much we had drunken that day and suggested we might start doing that when we told him that we didn’t had any alcohol during the whole festival.
Our next quest was then to find pen and paper to write down a note for Harpyie singer Aello, regarding their song Blutsbrüder and the Soundtrack of Warlords. Just when we found one and had already scribbled the note we remembered that Fairy had business cards with her and we changed it to that (The whole encounter can be read in link from above with the recording).

As it looked like rain we brought our newly acquired autographs to the car, thus missing out on Sonata Arctica, but instead we did not get wet when the rain poured down shortly afterwards.

This little rain caused some of our camp-mates to leave early. It was nothing compared to what we went through the year before and they lived far closer to the Festival than we did, still they went home and our group shrunk significantly. Though through this we had some time to get to know the remaining people.

Watching Wacken in Wacken...

Watching Wacken in Wacken…

When the rain was gone we returned to the Stage Area with our camping chairs. We did not feel like entering so we sat outside watching Alice Cooper, Nightwish and Lingua Mortis feat. Rage through the Video Walls.

The concerts were great and I have to say, that I quite enjoyed the then new singer of Nightwish, as she was better at singing the songs of their original singer Tarja than the one before her. Alice of course gave us a great show again, with his many on-stage deaths and also some new costume choices for our dear Lord of Hell.

Fairy really wanted to see Rage, but by the time they started it had gotten quite cold, so after their first (fifteen minutes long) song we decided to call it a day and hear their songs from afar, which wasn’t easy thanks to Megabosh, but later on we heard Subway to Sally while drifting off to sleep.

I choose you, Right Foot!

On Sunday it was time to leave again, but not without having a few last adventures.

A fitting symbol for the filthiest festival I've been at---

A fitting symbol for the filthiest Festival I’ve been at…

From all the Festivals I’ve been at, is Wacken the filthiest one and you can see that by simply walking across the Camping Area.

And if you have hours to wait until your car is able to leave the ground you can enjoy the view even more. Though I do have to admit that we later realized that we forgot to pack in the small gas bottles for our camping cooker we had stored beneath the car. Otherwise our camp was one of the cleanest.

Much unlike the chaos in our car, as you can see in the two pictures below. Everything was neatly stacked when we first arrived and everything was in utter chaos when we had to re-organize the car towards the end.

The inside of the car on the first or second day of Wacken

The inside of the car on the first or second day of Wacken

The inside of the car on pretty much the last day of Wacken

The inside of the car on pretty much the last day of Wacken

The traffic on our way back was not really better than on our way up.
The satnav said something about traffic congestions close to Itzhö – which we then realised to mean Itzehoe, the town close to Wacken – and everyone drove quite slowly, myself included.One of those slow drivers was infuriation Fairy. He seemed to simply be unable to find his gas pedal and just when she was about to pass him, he did indeed discover it.
And as we had spent our first drive with listening to the old Pokémon Soundtrack the following fight occurred:

PP: „A wild Gas Pedal appears. It wants to fight“
DF: „I choose you, Right Foot! Kick Attack!“
PP: „The attack was very effective.
The wild Gas Pedal uses Acceleration.
The attack was very effective.“
DF: „Ra..Pöng..pöpö…pöng… *rumble jangle getting slower*
The wild Gas Pedal fainted.“

After ten hours we then finally made it to Fairy’s home and told everyone who wanted and did not want to hear it our tales of the Festival.

Last year and this years Wacken was sold out quite fast (14: 48h; 15: 18h) so I didn’t went last year and don’t think I will this year either. Thanks to that I managed to have a look at some other Festivals that were quite nice and I know, I still need to give you a review about them.
Well, I don’t know when I will attend this Festival again, but I guess some day I might.

PoiSonPaiNter

The Soundtrack of my life – excerpt

Instead of the 20th Weekend Guess, I wanted to finally cover something Fairy posted over at Darkfairy’s Senf a couple of months ago:

Which song stands for which chapter of your life and why?
(translated from the post)

As I already contemplated the different chapters of my life in a couple of posts and am able to think of a few songs, I guess I might as well do her the favour and write about it – instead of so many other things that are still unfinished, again.

Though instead of choosing a song that would best describe that part of my life in retrospective I chose the songs that have affected me at at those times, which is also why this is only an excerpt as I can’t remember all of them.

Live, PoiSonPaiNter

During my time in the Secondary School (Realschule) I was one of the most avoided people around, but as I described here, was there one song in particular that made me rethink my behaviour: Leb (Live) by Schandmaul.
In particular the lines were they describe a person barely straying away from the flock, unable to lift their head from the road before them and not seeing the nice things that life provides for them. I rarely looked up or went out on my own during that time as the few people I considered friends back then usually had to ask me out. It’s probably not a surprise that I know more about cartoons and anime from that time than about parties and celebrities.

When I changed to Grammar School (Fachgymnasium) my soundtrack changed as well. The defining songs that created my alias (see: link) became more and more important to me. Edguy’s Wash away the Poison and Painting on the Wall became synonyms for how I felt when nearly no one around even thought of interacting with me. During this time the interest for Metal that was spurred shortly before I learned about Leb was broadened to new bands, including Avantasia. This resulted into one of my favourite concerts at the Wacken 2008, my very first festival.

With Avantasia came new songs, most prominent amoungst them Memories. This song accompanied me into the beginning of my studying years, just as the instrumental song Reqiuem for a Dream and Invasion, Treachery and other songs from the Bleach soundtrack frequented my player. The epic-like scoring of the songs just made me re-listen to them over and over again. It just felt like with this „background“ music I could accomplish anything. Even though, in Invasions case, it is still misspelled in the play-list and I still mishear the lyrics …

Fear, Anger, Mighty Canines and Knight Shoes

Towards the end of studying more Metal came into my focus due to me attending a couple of more Wacken (2010, 2011, 2012) and the Metalfest. Through this I re-learned about Powerwolf and Sabaton, but also about Letzte Instanz that would provide me with a song that I can no longer listen to while thinking. For many people their studying years become the best years of their life, I can’t say the same for several reasons. One of which is the fear of losing my mum when she was diagnosed with cancer in 2011, which made Ohne Dich (Without You) such an emotional song for me.

On the opposite emotional scale did Alestorm’s Keelhauled provide me with the needed stress-/anger-relief whenever I turned up the volume while driving and sang along just as loudly.

Powerwolf and Sabaton on the other hand gave me songs that just grabbed me and took me along with so much energy that I do not grow tired of hearing them, even after seeing each band live for several times (six and four times respectively).
Prayer in the Dark and Saturday Satan also managed to get into the Soundtrack for the book project of Fairy and me: Warlords (its own Blog: dfppentertainment.wordpress.com), but the most defining one is Sabaton’s Carolus Rex. It not just perfectly portrays our Nameless King, the whole album reminded me of something I had forgotten for some time: My home town used to be Swedish during the reign of Karl XII. (aka Carolus Rex). 😀 Regardless of that do the songs of both bands, like Ruina Imperi and Amen & Attack, still hold enough power without additional (personal) meaning to them.

Currently my new soundtrack is still in progress, but To Hell and Back and Resist and Bite are some of the songs I currently can’t skip when they start playing.
In a way did my Soundtrack change from moody and relatively slow to fast power numbers with strong lyrics and rhythms. This is also portrayed in the way I am now, as I became more outgoing than I used to be a couple of years ago. I am no longer bound to a flock, I travel or attend concerts on my own and pretty much do things the way I want to do them. And I am fairly certain that music played a major role in this development.

PoiSonPaiNter

P.S. If you are interested to have a go at this again, feel free to use my translation, but don’t forget to mention Fairy as original Blogger.

In Concert: 2012

This year had been a great one regarding the concerts and festivals I’ve been at.
And I’d like to look back onto the stand-alone concerts, simply because the festivals deserve their own posts. 😉

Rising Storm – Neubrandenburg

It started with a small concert in March: Rising Storm, supported by The Outside and Godskill. One of the rare Metal concerts in my part of Germany. Seeing the advertisement I asked some of my colleagues if they’d like to give it a try. As more or less all of these bands are no names in regions other than their home bases we didn’t expect too much of them. And that was – frankly – not too far fetched…
We had a good time, but somehow one of the support acts (The Outside) was more capable of capturing the audience than the main act, but they seemed to have quite some more experience as well.
It was an acceptable start into a year of – literally – breathtaking concerts.

Powerwolf – Berlin

The next one I noticed thanks to the Metalfest’s advertisement for their acts. Though it was more of a re-notice of Powerwolf -“ the holy wolf brigade“ ( according to their song: „Wolves against the World„) as I had l already noticed – and noted – them as interesting band when I had looked through the billing of Wacken 2008, but I had kind of put them aside back then.
Little did I know how awesome they would become …
They play a combination of Powermetal and Speedmetal with a religious influence or rather toy with Christian, satanistic and mythical motives and themes, but they aren’t religious in the „normal“ sense, the only religion they believe in is Metal ( as described in their song: „Catholic in the Morning…Satanist at Night„). Quite a bunch of their songs also deal with topics like – unexpected thanks to their self-given title/name – Werwolf’s („Werwolfs of Armenia„, „Night of the Werwolfs„,…), Vampires („Vampires don’t die„), Satan or Satan-like persons („St. Satan„, „Saturday Satan„) and all kind of different stuff.

When I started to listen to their songs I simply knew, I would have to be at this concert.
But as it was in Berlin this proofed difficulty. It would either mean driving there and back again on the same day/night or finding a place to stay for the night.
Good thing I know some people throughout Germany. At first I asked „Conan“ (again nicknames), whom I’ve personally met 2009 on a Christmas market. He would have given me a place to stay, but it was the weekend of his birthday, so he had quite a bunch of people already occupying his home.
Looking for alternatives I remembered another person from the forum I know Conan from, who also lives in Berlin: Liathano (you might remember her from my travelogue: Through a bit of Germany ).
Well, and what can I tell: She had a couch for me. 🙂
Planning the weekend we decided that I would arrive on Friday, so we would be able to have some time to talk – and for me to persuade her to accompanying me to the concert. We spend the evening with some mead and and a drink called „Paar Inne Fresse“ (a vulgar and dialectal way of threatening you to hit you in the face), which both were quite tasty. It was a fun evening full of interesting conversations.
The next day was spend throughout Berlin. She showed me some of the tourists places like the Neptune Fountain, a really impressive fountain I couldn’t really stop starring at. It was more fascinating than the Fernsehturm right beside it. I’m kind of a fan of fountains …

The Neptun Fountain in Berlin

Afterwards we strolled over an art market and alongside the cathedral and we – or rather I – tried Bubble Tea 
I do not understand what people like about it. Well, I could understand it if it was for the tea itself, but not for the bubbles. They are quite disgusting in my opinion and I probably won’t try it again that soon. At least not with those bubble-bubbles …

Oh and we had a fun encounter with a saleswoman of Dussmann: She sat there with a face as long as a fiddle and a T-Shirt saying: „Smile and the world smiles back at you„, which makes you somewhat want to give her a dictionary …

Anyway during the day I finally managed to convince Liathano, that attending the concert would be a lot of fun – and I wouldn’t be able to find my way there alone. 🙂
When we got ready for departing she found out that some of her friends would attend the concert as well so we met up with them in front of the C Club (former Columbia Club). While Mystic Prophecy, Lonewolf, Stormwarrior played their sets, we had time to engage in quite interesting conversations, before the wolves finally entered the stage.

And what can say? The concert was brilliant.

They – especially their singer – have such a presence on stage, it’s unbelievable. It’s not everyday you have chubby guy in a black preachers robe running over a stage, filling the room with his voice and taking everyone with him.
Besides, singing along with one of Liathano’s friends was so much fun. It is always great if there is someone else sharing your „passion“ for a certain song. 🙂
I can’t really describe the whole atmosphere, I just can advise you to go to a Powerwolf concert yourself, you will enjoy it! Liathano didn’t regret it either. 😉

Crematory – Berlin

While planning everything for Powerwolf another colleague of mine asked me, whether I’d like to accompany her to a concert of Crematory. A great band, which mixes growls with amazing clear vocals (Melodic Black/Gothic Metal I’d say).
Of course I agreed.

The concert itself was just one week after previous one, so it’s been two weekends spend in Berlin.
Unlike the previous time I only stayed for the evening and returned back home with my colleague after the concert.
But before the concert I accompanied Liathano to a medieval market where we met up with „Seppel„, „Artok“ and „Nebelkrähe„, who are also part of the forum-community.
It was just a small market with some booths, a medieval camp and a stage for artists.
There also was a weasel show. I really pitied those poor creatures, though they looked just as bored as their „trainer“.
Right when I was about to leave for the concert Nebelkrähe – who is a member of one of those medieval groups – had a fight show which was rather funny.
But unfortunately I had to leave before they were finished. Though I found out that I could have stayed longer, because when I arrived at the K17, where the concert was to take place, my colleague called me that she would be late.

When she finally arrived the majority of people were still outside and only some were already in the building.
But it filled up quite fast when they realized the support bands had started.
This time they were: Deadend Venice and Longed for Fusion. The latter being a band I’ve seen at a cafeteria party in our local college – a no-name band again, where one of the colleagues from the first concert even knew some of the members and described them in a way I will not repeat publicly. 😉

We soon noticed that we were among the youngest people there as everyone else seemed to be 30+.
But that’s not that surprising as Crematory are quite an old band themselves.
We still had a great time, especially when they played some of my favourite songs of theirs like Left the Ground (awesome combination of growls and clear vocals) and of course the encore song Perils of the Wind. It’s such a beautiful song, and the clear vocals singer has such a great voice…
You should listen to the live version from Wacken 2008 which gives you nearly the same amount of goosebumps the „real“ one does.
Well, after this the only concerts I’ve been on were concerts that were part of festivals, which I’ll cover in independent posts (or have already covered, like the ones from the MPS).
And it was a long way until my last concert this year – or so is the plan currently.

Sabaton – Hamburg

When we had our Summers Feast at our „University“ I’ve met a guy two years below me who already had tickets for this concert. I was undecided at that time whether I should go – as I hadn’t had someone to accompany me and going to a concert on your own is still fun but not as much fun as if you have other people with you.
Well, that evening we not just decided that I would buy my ticket as well, but also that we would take a fellow student of his with us whose music experiences were as far away from Metal as…your average Pop Music can be away from F*cking Heavy Metal. XD But as it was Sabaton we thought this would be a good way to introduce her to better music. 😉

Sabaton is again a band I re-discovered from the Wacken mentioned twice already – unfortunately I didn’t see any of those three bands that year. When DarkFairy send me a message with a link to their song „Carolus Rex“ (and the words: „When I listened to the refrain I inevitably had to think: „hmm we should call our king Carolus““ – which refers to the novel we are writing and the still nameless king) I started to listen to them again. Even though I thought for a long time, that they are just a band that sings a lot about wars and military I soon realized they are so much more (Beside the creepy reminder to our king). They manage to combine historical events and persons with so much passion-filled music that it is just incredible. And (almost) every time you’re listening to a new song you look for the background of it, learning more about history. And like Attila, the singer of Powerwolf, Joacim has a great way of singing a rolled „R“ – causing me to adept this while speaking English every once in a while …

The concert was in the „Große Freiheit 36“ in Hamburg and was my second concert at that place.
Last year I’ve been there on Halloween for a concert of HammerFall. Another great Swedish band – like Sabaton – that sings more about the glories of ancient (fictional) battles and also have some really great ballads. They had three support acts Deathdestruction, Amaranthe and Vicious Rumors. If I remember correctly the latter where a rather creepy band with 50+ dudes that still wore tongue piercings, but the music wasn’t too bad, Amaranthe sounded pretty good and the last was weird too I think …

Anyway, after much persuasion the other student finally agreed and we even managed to get a ticket for her in time. When the schedule for our trains was set we met up in Eidelstedt and then went on to the Reeperbahn.
If you remember the beginning of my post I mentioned literally breathtaking concerts.
Well, this one was the one that took our breaths away.
The Große Freiheit is an indoor concert area and if there is a lot of artificial fog in the room air is like not existent, but regardless of all the fog and the grogginess after the performance if Wisdom and Eluveitie (I still think they’re weird, as their singer has dread locks, but their music isn’t too bad) when they started to play Primo Victoria as encore song the whole room started to jump … even our dear non-Metalhead 😉
It was great and brilliant and far too short as good things always tend to be.
I am so looking forward to Wacken next year, where I’ll be seeing them again. 🙂

As I said before, this was probably the last concert for this year – it is highly unlikely there will be another.
Though Sabaton (who had an additional show in Hamburg), Edguy (who are currently touring with Deep Purple and had/have some concerts not too far away) and Iced Earth (who unfortunately only play in Bochum in the middle of the week) were quite tempting …
And even though this year hasn’t even ended there are at least three concerts that sound promising and that I’d really like to attend in 2013:

  • Avantasia are returning to the stage for up to three hours of performance. I always wanted to see them alone and not „just“ at Wacken.
  • Letzte Instanz play a concert in a small club in Rostock – far too close to resist.
  • Stratovarius (and Amaranthe) play in Hamburg, they’ve been great in Wacken (and Hamburg) that seeing them alone would be great.
  • Die Ärzte also play in Rostock and one cannot resist ones roots, especially if the concert is that close …

But I’ll see what the next year brings and which of those concerts I will really attend – and who’ll accompany me.

PoiSonPaiNter