The connoisseurs of festivals know: often the small festivals are the best ones. This applies especially to the Eisenwahn Festival in Central Germany, located about 80 km east of Frankfurt in the town of Obersinn. This particular fest excels with a beautiful location, a wonderful and familial atmosphere, awesome catering and a more than decent lineup.

This year's lineup consists mostly of extreme metal. The Eisenwahn Festival hence might be considered as successor of the internationally acclaimed extreme metal festival Up From The Ground which used to take place in Gemünden just 20 km away from Obersinn. The Eisenwahn lineup has always consisted of a handful of headliners and a huge plethora of talented yet unknown bands - new discoveries are guaranteed. The headliners of this year are Teutonic thrashers Sodom and the Swedish death metal battalion Unleashed, co-headliners are the Danish death/thrash machine Hatesphere and German black metal masters Endstille. The rest of the lineup is filled up by a fine selection of rather unknown bands, which are definitely worthy of one's attention nonetheless, such as the French brutal death metal band Kronos, Dutch Gothenburg metallers Detonation, German sludge/death stalwarts Disbelief and the Hungarian thrashers of Casketgarden. And to take away from all the sobriety the colorfully clothed superheroes of Grailknights and the preferably not clothed at all "nothingcore" band A.O.K. will add some humour to the weekend.

Many people coming to the festival don't really care about the bands though as it's the atmosphere and the location which make this festival so special. The festival ground consists of a slightly sloped hill with the stage standing at the bottom of this hill, so that you have perfect sight from every spot of the area, all this in the middle of the beautiful scenery of the Spessart mountain range.
Scattered around the festival area are stands for merch, food and beverages. The catering in particular is far above average compared with other festivals, so that you can find people exclaiming throughout the net that it's the food they are looking forward to the most. Overall the atmosphere is very friendly and familial, so one shouldn't be too surprised by the sight of bands ending up playing Frisbee with the fans.

So how do you get there? The Spessart area is surrounded by a triangle of Autobahns between Frankfurt, Würzburg and Fulda, so it is relatively easy to get there by car. Exact directions can be found here.
You can also get there quite easily by train. Check out the page of the Deutsche Bahn and enter Obersinn as destination to find a schedule that suits you best.
If you arrive from further away you might want to consider to fly. The nearest airports are Frankfurt Airport and Nuremberg Airport. Check the Wikipedia links to find out whether an airport in your area flies to either of these two airports. If you happen to arrive at Frankfurt airport, get in touch with me (Promonex), I might be able to pick you up.

Tickets for this event are obtainable at the festival's shop and cost 25 euros for two days incl. camping.