Wacken Open Air 2024: Great adventures in the Holy Promised Land, Part 4

Like everything in life, everything has an end. Many years had to pass until I was finally able to go to Wacken and when everything was over I was left with a somewhat bittersweet aftertaste. The experience was wonderful but the bitterness that comes with thinking about returning to normal life until I set foot on the land of Wacken again is somewhat devastating. I have the positive memory of having seen great bands like the ones I have been describing in my previous chronicles as well as bands that I have come across by chance like Jungle Rot or Endstille, who I didn’t know very well except for their name and the genre they played but who excited me enough to be able to enjoy their energetic live performance.

On the other hand, I had the opportunity to see Opeth again on the same day they announced the release of their new album, The Last Will And Testament, and as if they had agreed to surprise me, the show that the Swedish quintet offered seemed to want to recover something of those gutturals that flooded Opeth‘s first albums but that over time were diluted in favor of a more accessible and generally less extreme music. The set, focused on the pretentious ‘by request’ movement that has always seemed to me to be a complete nonsense, seemed to have its positive result when the band focused practically on a repertoire made up of songs from albums between My Arms, Your Hearse (1998, Candlelight Records) and Heritage (2011, Roadrunner Records), playing only one song from Sorceress (2016, Moderbolaget Records).

Sebastian Bach‘s show surprised me, however, precisely because of the number of faithful who gathered on the Faster stage after the heavy rain that finally made its presence felt at the German festival with some consistency. The Canadian vocalist is not in his best vocal form but he is always a real spectacle, even more so if he does it by going over the great Skid Row classics such as Sweet Little Sister, Monkey Business, Big Guns or Slave To The Grind, although personally I missed something more from the debut album since they unfortunately left out Can’t Stand The Heartache. The vibrant moment lived with the ballads 18 And Life and I Remember You are one of those moments to frame, you only had to see the faces of the public to feel what they were feeling.

Tankard is what many of us would call “the old reliable“, a band that probably doesn’t offer anything new with each album they release but they always deliver and never disappoint live. I’ve seen them on several occasions and I’ve always had a great time so I had no excuse to get up early and see them despite the blazing sun. I also interviewed their bassist Frank Thorwarth on the occasion of the promotion of their most recent album Pavlov’s Dawgs (2022, Reaper Entertainment) and I had a great time, so I can say that they are very close people and, above all, very hard-working in their music. Obviously, there was no shortage of legendary songs such as The Morning After, Chemical Invasion, Zombie Attack or Alien from their more classic repertoire, alternating these with more recent and at the same time classic songs such as A Girl Called Cerveza or One Foot In The Grave as well as Beerbarians and Ex-Fluencer from their latest album, closing a spectacular show with the legendary vocalist Sabina Classen (Holy Moses) as a guest on (Empty) Tankard.

I want to make a special mention of the Swedish band Wolf, whose vocalist and leader Niklas Stålvind I interviewed a couple of years ago on the occasion of the release of their latest album Shadowland (2022, Century Media Records) and who was very kind during the half hour we shared. It is clear that its four members bleed for the band and that is something that their nine studio albums say about Wolf. I met them in 2011 when they released Legions Of Bastards (Century Media Records) when they already had a long career behind them but since then I have been delighting in their new releases as they have been released on the market. I had not had the opportunity to see them on stage until Wacken so I killed two birds with one stone not only by attending the festival for the first time but also by enjoying Wolf live. The Swedes offered an energetic and lively show where they got the audience up with fast and catchy songs like Shark Attack or Shoot To Kill with which they opened a very notable live show.

I was able to see Testament about a year ago during a trip to Japan and, just like the previous times I had seen them, they surprised me enormously. They played two nights with different repertoires in Tokyo and by chance I went the first one where they reviewed their entire career while the next night they played The Legacy (1987, Megaforce Records) and The New Order (1988, Megaforce Records) in their entirety. Thanks again to Mack from Ward Records for the invitation to the Tokyo show, who I also wanted to mention in this review since he was at Wacken Open Air 2024 even though we couldn’t meet in the end. I was left wanting to see that special set playing their first two albums in full so the Wacken show was twice as interesting because they played the two albums in their entirety with the exception of Burnt Offerings from The Legacy (1987, Megaforce Records) and Hypnosis from The New Order (1988, Megaforce Records), as well as the instrumental Musical Death (A Dirge), which they had to leave out due to the tight schedule they had. In any case, Tankard’s concert was one of the highlights of the day.

In the more power metal part of the festival we had Dragonforce, Sonata Arctica and Beast In Black as the protagonists of the genre. Without being a big fan of Dragonforce I must say that the band always delivers live and their concerts, despite being a bit long and tedious, I don’t really dislike them. In the case of Sonata Arctica I must say that despite it being the first time I saw them, and that I had a period when I practically listened to them all the time when I was fourteen or fifteen, they didn’t convince me live. I wanted to be interested in the show that the Finns offered me but as much as I tried I ended up disconnecting quickly since the setlist didn’t interest me either. If you’re reading this Tony Kakko, I would like you to add 8th Commandment, Weballergy, My Land and Blank File to your repertoires in the future. I’m joking, I didn’t think it was a bad concert but the song selection didn’t help and it was difficult for me to follow the thread of the concert.

The case of Beast In Black is slightly different since it is a band with which I have connected much more in recent years unlike Sonata Arctica and Dragonforce. Their latest album Dark Connection (2021, Nuclear Blast) seemed to me to be a step below their debut album Berserker (Nuclear Blast) from 2017 and a little below the outstanding From Hell With Love (Nuclear Blast) from 2019. It was a resounding success to focus the setlist on their debut and that the only songs they played from their second album were the catchiest ones: Cry Out For A Hero, Die By The Blade and Sweet True Lies, although I would have liked to leave out some other song and have them play No Surrender instead. Yannis Papadopoulos‘ voice and attitude on stage is a real spectacle that no one should miss.

I left the extreme fireworks for last because I wanted to close the adventures in Wacken with three very different bands that gave three of the best concerts of the festival: The Black Dahlia Murder, Amon Amarth and Insomnium. In the case of the former, it was my first time seeing them and I had not realized that guitarist Brian Eschbach had taken over the vocals after the tragic death of their vocalist Trevor Strnad in 2022. In Eschbach’s place as guitarist, Ryan Knight has also returned, who had already been part of the band during 2008 and 2016, now sharing the duties as guitarist with Brandon Ellis. The American quintet offered a heart-stopping melodic death metal recital not only drawing on classic repertoire such as Everything Went Black or Statutory Ape but also leaving room for more recent songs such as Aftermath from their upcoming album Servitude (2024, Metal Blade Records) or Verminous from the eponymous album released in 2020.

I had a particularly good time with Amon Amarth because, despite having seen them from afar at some festivals before, I had never paid enough attention to them, even though they usually convince me in the studio. In this case, I paid the necessary attention and ended up enjoying their powerful live performance, where they also performed the intense Death In Fire from Versus The World (2022, Metal Blade Records) for the first time on this tour. The same thing happened with The Last With Pagan Blood, which they hadn’t played since 2017. The Swedish quintet is a safe bet on stage thanks to all the paraphernalia that adorns their shows and their vocalist Johan Hegg knows how to take advantage of that advantage. However, I miss them introducing songs from albums like Once Sent From The Golden Hall (1998, Metal Blade Records) or performing some other songs from The Avenger (1999, Metal Blade Records) beyond the aforementioned The Last With Pagan Blood.

I was able to see Insomnium a few months ago during the tour to present the outstanding Anno 1696 (2023, Century Media Records) and the notable Songs Of The Dusk (2023, Century Media Records) and it was one of the best concerts I could enjoy last year. The band is aware that Anno 1696 is an album that has marked a before and after in their career so they focus their efforts on delivering songs like The Witch Hunter, 1696, White Crist or the superb Lilian, in addition to resorting to emblematic songs like Valediction or While We Sleep. The last time I saw them they came with Jani Liimatainen still as guitarist and this time they did it with Tomy Laisto from Arc Spectra and Pain Confessor in his place, a more than resounding success as a replacement at least in the commitments that the band had already closed some time ago. I’ve seen people complain about poor Tomy‘s live voice judging a single video on Youtube, but I can assure you that his live work is remarkable and you can’t judge anyone’s work with a fucking video.

As you may have already deduced from all of you who have been reading my chronicles about Wacken, the experience at the festival could not have been more positive. The treatment received by the press department, the Wacken United area where we could walk around with all kinds of artists such as Mikkey Dee or Uli Jon Roth to name a few, the press area itself, everything has been wonderful. The camping part has been quite an adventure as well, we have enjoyed our stay very much and despite the amount of people circulating around the festival I am greatly surprised by the cleanliness of the facilities as well as the organization in the shower area and the convenience of being able to eat and drink anywhere, with a gastronomic offer that, as should be mandatory, gives a certain importance to establishments dedicated entirely to vegans or vegetarians. I’m not sure when I’ll be back, but I’m sure it will be sooner rather than later. Wacken, look forward to my return!

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: