So, after months of procrastinating – don’t worry, I’m a professional – here’s my review of the four European metal festivals I attended in 2013.

• Masters of Rock: The Smokey Festival
• Metal Days: The Pretty Festival
• Wacken: The Largest Festival
• Sabaton Open Air: The Cleanest Festival

Masters Of Rock

Where Is It?

Here it is.

The Festival

Everything is much better the second time you’re there. Sex comes to mind. So does visiting South-Eastern regions of the Czech Republic for this year’s Masters of Rock Festival in the tiny town of Vizovice, population 5,000. A town twice as old as Australia, a town given reference status in the year 1498. I really do love the history of European communities.

During the Masters of Rock celebrations the region increases in population by 20,000.  20,000 typically sweaty, smelly, mostly male metalheads who often won’t see a shower for the next four days and who will consume more alcohol than I can ever imagine and something like 80 bands and crew.

So why did I spend a second year at Masters of Rock? Because this is the festival that truly floats my boat. For this sized festival, it has a fairly narrow focus concentrating on mostly heavy metal, power metal, female fronted bands but they delve nicely into a bit of thrash metal (not too often), folk metal (not too often), and hard rock (not too often). And they consistently have all of the big bands playing they have a brilliant cast of second tier bands and to top it off, there’s a range of smaller and often local bands playing on the very small Aldous stage. Whilst they don’t get all of the bands on the main stage right, they get most right and it’s far more consistent than any other festival I’ve ever been to.

Once again, special mention of the cheapness of this festival. It’s cheap. Not only are ticket prices dirt cheap, t-shirts are around 20 euro (give or take) and the drinks and food are the cheapest I’ve found at a festival. The German’s don’t need your money, give it to these Czech monsters.

The Setup

Two stages, the Ronnie James Dio stage houses all the big bands and the quite tiny Aldous stage houses a lot of regional bands from Slovenia, Czech Republic, Croatia, etc. I spent less time at this stage this year due to the magnificence of the top tier bands at this year’s festival.

The location is flat in an industrial section of Vizovice. All the stage areas are concrete/asphalt so you won’t find yourself knee deep in mud if it rains.

The rest of the festival area is full of food and a solid cross-section of merch – t-shirts, (p)leathers, CDs, but mostly food and beer. There’s a meeting area for bands to sign things. It’s well set out with plenty of toilets (you can pay 20 cents (AUD) to hit up a clean toilet or the portaloos are there. Not forgetting the ground or wherever you’re standing.

Plenty of camping options but I still prefer a hotel and car with cheap ($20 for four days) parking with about a 15 minute walk. A torch is essential.

The Bands

Next to perfect. First up, there was a bunch of bands I hadn’t seen before. Primal Fear, Accept, Elvenking, Rage & the Lingua Mortis Orchestra, Brainstorm, Leningrad Cowboys, Amaranthe, Sanctuary, and the might of Avantasia. Then there was artists I’d seen before: Powerwolf, Dragonforce, Masterplan, Yngwie, Sanctuary, Grave Digger, Devin Townsend Project, and Leaves’ Eyes.

By the end of the festival I was tired and voiceless and felt like I’d been through heaven and hell at the same time.

The Conclusion

This festival is so good that I’ll be back in 2014. Honestly, get your arses to this festival. It’s incredible and the Czech people are both drunk and exceptionally nice (at the same time! Yay!). You’ll have a ball.

Metal Days

Where Is It?

Here it is.

The Festival

Wow. They tout this festival as the prettiest metal festival in Europe and they’re not wrong.

The setting is stunning, the festival grounds are passed by the beautiful blue Soca River and many a metalhead spends time down at the beaches (not quite Australian beaches, mind you, but an absolute glorious setting). The festival, in fact the whole region, is surrounded by the Alps featuring mountains 2km high and looking up you see mountains then blue sky. There’s trees everywhere, plenty of space to hide away and relax. Which you’ll need, too, as this festival lasts for 5 whole days.

The Setup

This festival holds two stages – a main stage (which holds about 8,000 people) and the smaller second stage (which probably holds about 1,500). It’s one of the best sized festivals I’ve been to. It is shored up against what looks like a derelict casino (Casino Paradise) which is used for media and for all the bands to prepare.

The festival seems centred around international visitors more than locals as the prices, whilst not completely outrageous, are bordering on such. Example: The Trooper (Maiden’s seminal beer) is available for 6 euros (about $10) per bottle. Pepsi 500 ml are 2.50 euro (about $4). Still expensive but not like Australian prices. Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia, is cheap as chips so it was very surprising this festival is so heartily priced.

That said, food and drinks. Probably the best system I’ve seen – it’s a swipe card and I wouldn’t be surprised if this takes off at other festivals around the world. All you do is prepay on the card and use it as you wish. You even get your money back at the end if you don’t spend it all. This is far better if you intend to crowd surf – less chance of losing one’s wallet.

The Bands

The range of bands here is quite incredible and even with the two stages spread out over 5 days, it’s phenomenally difficult to catch everybody. Not that you want to catch everybody as with such a range and with an incredibly diverse line-up, you end up not wanting to see everybody and you end up picking and choosing. There were a few interesting bands I caught though, and a few dud ones in the mix. That’s OK though.

I got a massive kick out of Attick Demons, Arkona, King Diamond (although for some reason with full stage show and the final headliner, most people clearly didn’t enjoy it), Powerwolf (again), Soilwork, Gloryhammer, Iced Earth (who were simply phenomenal to the point where they invited a little child on stage to sing with them), Ihsahn (with Leprous) put on a phenomenal show, Mesuggah, In Flames, Wintersun (with two power blackouts – clearly too powerful for the festival), Nightmare, From The Depth, and I even caught site of local boys 4Arm and Mystery (yeah, had to travel to Slovenia to see Australian bands).

The Conclusion

Would you believe I’ll be back there again in 2014. This festival is far too good to pass up. It’s like the ultimate metal festival meets relaxation therapy. When compared to other European festivals, about the only thing lacking is the number of stalls on offer. They still had a great area for picking up official band shirts, but the other stores were lacking a lot of varied product. That said, I was just happy they had a vegan food van.

Wacken Open Air

Where Is It?

Here it is.

The Festival

It’s the largest European metal festival for good reason. Many of you have been there and done that. For those that haven’t – it’s one hell of an experience.

The Setup

It’s massive. There’s no shortage of anything: bands, food, merch, and fucking people. They’re everywhere. There’s something like seven stages and if it’s your first time going then you best get there early and scope out the place because once the action begins you’ve got no hope. And I love this place and hate it at the same time.

It’s hard to describe and I reckon the only way to describe it is Organised Chaos. There’s five main stages (three in the one enclosed region, two in another). Each enclosed region has you walking through security each and every time you enter and when you have 80,000+ to work through it can be hard seeing one band on the True Metal Stage then having to exit one area and then enter another area to see a band on the WET stage. It is well organised but like driving in Melbourne during peak hour, get there early.

The Bands

I really loved 2013s line-up – from Thunder and Deep Purple and Rammstein on the opening night, Powerwolf, Doro, Pretty Maids, Grave Digger, on the second night to, Anthrax, Alice Cooper, Nightwish and Rage and the LMO on the final night – they had a great mix of new and old. The Party stage had the likes of Ugly Kid Joe, Soilwork, Amorphis (acoustic set), Meshuggah and Sonata Arctica. I personally got a buzz out of seeing bands like Alpha Tiger, Leprous (one of the bands of my trip), Secret Sphere (I have to say, aside from Primal Fear, Brainstorm and Avantasia, this was the one band I was desperate to see), Anvil and Uli John Roth.

The Conclusion

Whilst Wacken is often a pilgrimage for many people, some can find it a little intimidating. It’s not really – you just have to enjoy it for what it offers and what it doesn’t offer. You may not often get close to the bands (although the giant screens will always help), but you will feel like you are one with 80,000 other metalheads. And for that I am eternally thankful.

Sabaton Open Air

Where is it?

Here it is.

The Festival

It’s in the hometown of Sabaton, Falun Sweden, at what looks like a ski resort. So in Summer it’s a very dry, dusty ski resort that has about 6-8 thousand mostly Swedish metal heads attending. It’s weird but you look up at the main stage and it is utterly dwarfed by a giant fucking ski-ramp that I keep expecting Eddie the Eagle to fly over the top and wipe out some metalheads. If only it was Iron Maiden’s Eddie!

The Setup

It’s a lot smaller than expected. The two stages face each other but there’s an incline right in the middle which means you can get a reasonable view of the action (or at least the sound) no matter where you stand. In many ways it’s a festival with room for expansion. The three days are perfect though – especially having experienced Metal Days (5 days), Masters of Rock (4 days), and Wacken (3 days).

One thing I noticed that the Swedish metal fans are… suppressed. Not by the insane numbers of metal bands that they’ve offered up over the years but by the security. I was pre-warned that the Swedish metalheads literally stand there (true) and that security will discourage heavily anybody who attempts to crowd surf (true) but the Swedish people are fucking great. Honestly, they speak betterer English than most Aussies!

The Bands

This was a good line-up, but out of the four festivals I attended it was definitely the weakest. I think finances had hit a lot of the festivals really hard and this may have been a consequence of it. That said, the fact that I got to see Bloodbound, Tad Morose (having been a fan for so long I honestly thought it would never happen), Pagans Mind (it’d been seven years since I last saw them – I hope it’s not another seven), Delain, Elvenking (twice in one trip, YES!), Moonspell (they played only songs from their first two albums at Masters of Rock, but here they did bits of everything), Crystal Viper (the most powerful female singer I’ve seen in a long, long time), Powerwolf (no, I wasn’t bored after the third time – hilarious band), Axxis (the funniest band I’ve ever seen), and Sabaton (and, yes, they performed ALL of The Art Of War and yes, it was fucking incredible).

Did I say it was the weakest? What I meant was that the bands I wanted to see were terrific, but the second-tier bands weren’t as good as the other festivals I’d attended.

The Conclusion

I was on a plane back home the following day and after spending time with Bloodbound in the band room and having been introduced to so many people I have extremely fond memories of this festival. There’s really nothing like a drunk Swede. In fact, there’s nothing like a drunk anybody.

The Final Countdown

True, there’s a complete lack of photos for this review. I didn’t take my kit with me but there are plenty of photos on the interwebs.

Bring on 2014!

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