Wacken Open Air 2024: Great adventures in the Holy Promised Land, Part 3

Yesterday I was talking precisely about how much I wanted to see Suzi Quatro but I almost forgot how long I had wanted to see Sweet, originally conceived as The Sweet. I know for a fact that the only original member left in the band is Andy Scott after the passing of bassist Steve Priest in June 2020, the death of drummer Mick Tucker in February 2002 and that of vocalist Brian Connolly in February 1997.

With Scott as the only original member of the line-up and accompanied by vocalist Paul Manzi, bassist Lee Small and drummer Bruce Bisland since 2019, the British classic rock project has been dancing around the scene performing the band’s classics such as Love Is Like Oxygen, Set Me Free, The Ballroom Blitz, Hell Raiser or the intense Action as we were able to enjoy at this last edition of Wacken Open Air.

A concert that surprised me enormously, both because of the physical condition of its members, especially Andy Scott, as well as the clear and balanced sound of the festival itself. Enjoying Sweet was an event that you have to experience at least once in your life. The same thing happened to me with In Extremo, another of the festival’s proposals that never disappoint live and that are a sensation in their homeland despite the fact that many like those inept people from Encyclopaedia Metallum do not want to classify them as metal.

I have not the slightest idea of ​​the number of fans that the septet managed to gather on the Faster stage but the public was in their element. Its members gave a great concert where some of the band’s classics such as Pikse Palve, Spielmannsfluch or Vollmond were not missing, all of it seasoned by a perfectly conceived staging where fire was another of the total protagonists of the evening. Little is said about what a great frontman vocalist Michael Robert Rhein is, better known as Das Letzte Einhorn, a true master of ceremonies who never stops moving on stage for a single moment.

Unfortunately, and due to the tight schedules of the bands, I had to miss bands like Crisix or Equilibrium, but this allowed me to enjoy two bands that I was also looking forward to seeing, such as Asenblut or Nachtblut, both bands taking over the Wackinger stage and offering their respective shows with a very high level and a staging as authentic as it is unique. In the case of Asenblut, I needed to see the performance of their vocalist Tetzel, who has also captivated me recently with his new project All For Metal. He is a beast on stage, as a vocalist and as an artist himself, just as his own song Wie Ein Berserker says, like a true berserker.

Nachtblut enjoyed a somewhat more decent time slot for their proposal halfway between melodic black metal and gothic metal, making us enjoy songs like Frauenausbeiner or Lied Für Die Götter, although they opened with an absolute hit like Multikulturell and that is already a true declaration of intentions from the first minute. I was also really looking forward to seeing Armored Saint since it had been several years since I last saw them and I hadn’t had the chance to enjoy the songs from Punching The Sky live, their most recent album from 2020. As always, it was an impeccable show where the band made a good review of their extensive discography, putting special emphasis on their glorious debut album March Of The Saint (1984, Chrysalis Records) and the aforementioned Punching The Sky (2020, Metal Blade Records). It was a real pleasure to be able to enjoy John Bush‘s voice on the titanic song Reign Of Fire and Jeff Duncan and Phil Sandoval‘s guitars on the eponymous March Of The Saint or Chemical Euphoria.

Some of the surprises of the festival were precisely The 69 Eyes and Uada, two bands I knew but had not yet seen live. I admit that both blew my mind, especially the Americans Uada who have four excellent studio albums to date. Uada‘s sinister and dark show led by guitarist and vocalist Jake Superchi (Ceremonial Castings, ex-Serpent Lord) focused their repertoire on the band’s first three albums, opening fire with the ethereal and somber Snakes & Vultures that you can’t get out of your head once the show is over. It was a total success to play Cult of a Dying Sun and Black Autumn, White Spring to close their performance.

Finnish rockers The 69 Eyes brought us their gothic rock with glam/hard rock overtones with a rather limited repertoire due to the little time they had available but delighting us with songs like The Chair, Betty Blue or Lost Boys, focusing on their albums Blessed Be (2000, Gaga Goodies/Poko Rekords) and Devils (2004, EMI Music Finland), with the presence of Wasting The Dawn (1999, Gaga Goodies), Paris Kills (2002, Woimasointu) and Angels (2007, Virgin), leaving out of the song listing any single released after 2007.

The heavy metal note with a German stamp would come from the hand of Accept who also released their new album at the festival with the launch of their seventeenth album Humanoid (2024, Napalm Records) just a few months before the festival. The homonymous song, Straight Up Jack and The Reckoning were played from Humanoid, while the rest of their performance was marked by the band’s classics that can never be left out such as Metal Heart, Balls To The Wall, Fast As A Shark or the already classic Teutonic Terror.

I do miss the band playing something from Russian Roulette (1986, Portrait) or Objection Overruled (1993, RCA) but what is more serious is that Midnight Mover and Screaming For A Love Bite are not immutable songs in their setlist. I think it’s time to take the spotlight off Blood Of The Nations (2010, Nuclear Blast) in the setlist and have Starlight or Flash Rockin’ Man played in their entirety and not half-heartedly as part of a medley. Generally speaking, a very entertaining concert by the way.

So what the hell was up with the Trelldom show? Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was an absolute blast and I was equally flabbergasted. The cryptic Gaahl hadn’t released a new album on the Trelldom label for a whopping seventeen years and this was also his second show ever after having debuted the night before at Beyond The Gates, a show my brother attended but I preferred not to know his opinion of until I could see it myself. I was expecting him to go through his first three albums which are strictly black metal, but the Norwegian musician preferred to play his fourth album .​.​.​by the Shadows​.​.​. (2024, Prophecy Productions) in its entirety with more than a month to go before it was released.

It was a particularly psychedelic show that was the exact opposite of what I would have imagined Trelldom to do live, even more so knowing that it gave up everything the band had released before 2024 and that what we experienced was also something unique that not even the people who saw them at Beyond The Gates could enjoy. I can’t say if I loved it or hated it, what I know for sure is that it won’t leave my head for a long time. Gaahl on vocals, Kenneth Kapstad on drums, Sir on guitar and… a saxophone?! That’s right, great work by Kjetil Møster on the saxophone, I didn’t see that coming.

The main event, or one of them, was undoubtedly the highly anticipated Behemoth show. The band is celebrating 33 years since its formation, and Wacken is also celebrating thirty-three years since it was held, so it was a double celebration, to which we should add that Jesus Christ also lived 33 years, so, in Nergal‘s words, they would be outliving Jesus. Controversy is something that has surrounded Nergal since time began and it is something that gives a certain morbidity to the band itself. I will not deny that I have always liked this type of controversy and I think that it gives an added value to the product per se. It does not matter who you believe in, what you pray to and who you sleep with, Nergal is a very smart guy and he made it very clear in the talk he gave that same day at the entrance of the festival, a very interesting talk that made me love the figure of Nergal within Behemoth even more.

Controversies aside, the Faster stage was too small for the energy with which Nergal, Inferno and Orion came out with the first chords of Once Upon A Pale Horse. A great choice to start a show, one of those that I would easily classify as my favorite of the entire festival. Nergal and Orion were on top of the wave at all times accompanied by the live musician Seth who has been accompanying the band in their live performances as a guitarist since 2004. The repertoire was impeccable, they didn’t leave much out and sounded amazing with songs like Bartzabel, Conquer All or Demigod. The icing on the cake was O Father O Satan O Sun! which closed an amazing concert, one of those that you could watch again and again without getting tired of.

Wacken 2025: First bands announced

The next edition of the German festival will take place again in the city of Wacken on July 30 and August 2, 2025. The bands confirmed so far are the following: