It’s around 10pm on Saturday night, and up on the huge stage in front of me, a worried-looking keyboardist in priestly garb and corpse paint is getting burned at the stake. Behind him is a giant image of a grinning, hooded werewolf, looming over crumbling ruins that resemble an old, decaying church. In front of him are about 70,000 screaming, fist-pumping, circle-pitting and crowdsurfing metalheads. Some on the front row are so overcome with emotion that they’re bawling their eyes out. It’s unlike any spectacle I’ve seen in 25 years of metal shows.
This is Powerwolf, the supernaturally-inclined German power metallers that have become one of Europe’s most surprising success stories, playing their biggest ever show at Wacken Open Air, their country’s premier metal event. It’s a powerful moment for Wacken itself, which over 35 years has grown from a small, local gig nestled in some farmland in North Germany into the biggest metal festival on planet Earth.
In a climate where large-scale rock and metal fests are more commonplace than ever – Germany alone also has Rock Am Ring, Rock Im Park, Summer Breeze and Rockharz taking place every summer – Wacken positions itself as a true Mecca of metal, informally referring to its main arena as the ‘Holy Land’ and welcoming a black-clad army of 85,000 each year.
It’s certainly an event of some scale – upon walking onsite for the first time on Thursday afternoon and around areas that include two big outdoor stages (plus a couple of smaller ones), a large array of food stalls, stores and merchandise stands, a tattoo shop, some bars and even a full farmer’s market, imagine my surprise upon realising that I haven’t actually arrived at the main arena space yet.
In there are the festival’s two biggest stages – Faster and Harder, built side by side and timetabled so bands never overlap – with the festival’s third biggest stage, Louder, a few hundred metres around the corner. There are also the Wackinger and Wasteland stages, plus the W:E:T and Headbanger stages I strolled past earlier, making it seven decent-sized, outdoor stages in total.
It’s a little overwhelming at first – from some vantage points you can spot three or four big screens showing different bands playing at once – but despite the sheer amount of people here and all the stuff going on, it never feels too busy. The atmosphere is relaxed, there are no signs of any crowd surging or bottlenecking and the stages are all spread widely enough not to interfere with each other, but are never a slog to get to (at least, not in the lovely weather we’re blessed with – a repeat of last year’s mud may have been a different story).
(Image credit: Wacken Open Air)
This year, Wacken is marking its 35th anniversary and the celebratory vibes last all weekend, not least from the stacked lineup. Old school heavy metal legends Def Leppard and Judas Priest roll out the bangers on Thursday and Friday night respectively, garnering the kind of full-hearted singalongs that’ll guarantee some croaky throats in the morning. Swedish melodeath veterans In Flames and Arch Enemy – the latter fronted by fire-throated new singer Lauren Hart – slay it on the main stages in front of tens of thousands.
The future of metal looks in safe hands thanks to a clinical but bruising hour from rising Swedes Orbit Culture, who bounce back from some initial technical issues, while modern British metal gets a fine showing courtesy of Employed To Serve and Bleed From Within’s pulverising sets. Both bands look like they’re having an absolute blast in front of pleasingly large crowds on Wacken’s third and fourth stages.
Elsewhere on the site, just about every corner of heavy music is represented, whether it’s Hatebreed‘s battering metallic hardcore, Emperor’s flaying black metal majesty or Municipal Waste’s chaotic crossover thrash. Lamb Of God, meanwhile, put on what might just be the set of the weekend, making the most of their sixty minutes with an absolute scorched earth performance, the likes of Walk With Me In Hell and Set To Fail landing so hard it’s a surprise the dusty ground beneath us isn’t cracking open.
All of this makes for a great metal weekender, but its the thought put into Wacken’s organisation that makes it feel like a step above. There’s an abundance of shaded areas to sit in – much needed in the thirty-plus degree heat that hits on Thursday – plus a decent scattering of water points and proper, flushing toilets and accompanying sinks. It means you’re never more than a ten minute walk or so from a quick rinse or a water top-up (again, weather-permitting). There are also booths dispensing free sun cream and walking vendors selling drinks and snacks (and, er, cigarettes).
Queues for some food stands and facilities are inevitable at certain times but they never seem to get out of control, especially compared to many big festivals; I’m pretty sure I never had to wait more than five minutes or so to get served. It paints the picture of a festival that has a) grown organically and b) continued to prioritise the enjoyment and comfort of the people buying tickets.
It also means you can see a band like Saturday night headliners Sabaton draw a metal crowd the size of which would have once been exclusively reserved for Iron Maiden or Metallica. The war-obsessed Swedes tag in from fellow power metal heavyweights Powerwolf to bring Wacken 2026 to a pyro-powered peak, setting off enough fireworks to fuel a decade of bonfire nights – not to mention their massive tank drum kit that ends up being suspended from the ceiling at one point.
It’s bombastic. It’s epic. It’s completely ludicrous. It’s heavy metal in its final form, and it’s the kind of thing this festival was built for. There’s no doubt about it: Wacken Open Air is the home of metal, and this was a special weekend.
