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Event information
Wacken Open Air 2009 was a huge disappointment for many metal fans. In 2008 the world's biggest heavy metal festival has booked Iron Maiden as headliners and has raised the bar a bit too high for its own good. In 2009, the 20th anniversary of this legendary festival, a lot of bands appeared which have played in the years before already, but no uber headliner a la Iron Maiden to justify the high ticket price. Many people blamed the W:O:A to rely on its name only as the 20th edition was sold out eight months prior to the festival. In 2010 however the Wacken Open Air proves all these critics wrong...
Iron Maiden are back again! And this time they aren't the uber headliners of 2008, but only primus inter pares ("first among equals"): thrash titans Slayer, glam metal monsters Mötley Crüe and the father of shock rock Alice Cooper are also confirmed as headliners for the 21st edition. And as always there are a few special performances: Grave Digger celebrate their 30th anniversary by performing the entire "Tunes of War" album, a show which will also feature some special guests, while Swedish gothic metal pioneers Tiamat will be performing their legendary "Wildhoney" album, 20 years after the band Treblinka mutated into the Tiamat we know today. But even if you don't care for either of these bands, Wacken once again offers a wide array of metal styles for almost everyone: black metal with Immortal and 1349, death metal with Cannibal Corpse and grindcore supergroup Lock Up, power metal with Kamelot and Stratovarius, heavy metal with U.D.O. and W.A.S.P., modern metal with Fear Factory and Soulfly, etc. etc. etc.. All in all a whopping 122 acts will perform on five stages over a period of four days.
Wacken Open Air takes plays in - surprise! - Wacken in Northern Germany, a small village with merely 2,000 inhabitants on 361 days of the year. The town is located 10 km north of Itzehoe and 50 km northwest of Hamburg. There will be shuttle buses from the festival site to the train station in Itzehoe as well as to the airports in Berlin, Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck. For more info on getting there and away check the festival page here.
Certainly not the cheapest, but probably the most fun way to get to and from Wacken has to be the Metal Train. The "railway to hell" equals one huge party of 850 metalheads in one train with 16 wagons, which includes two dedicated disco wagons. Check the website for the schedule and prices.
The festival is officially sold out since April. Most tour operators (e.g. Metal Train for Germany, Bock Tours for the Netherlands, Germany, Austria or Switzerland, Argon Events for the UK) still have tickets in stock though.
Another way to acquire your ticket would be the ticket exchange in the official forum which aims for eliminating the black marketing going on eBay and reducing the risk of acquiring fake tickets. In this exchange the Wacken staff supervises the ticket prices and acts as trust which means that the seller sends the ticket(s) to the staff who verifies the authenticity of the ticket(s) and reports it to the buyer. After the buyer has transferred the money to the seller, the Wacken staff will pass on the ticket(s) to the buyer. More information on this model can be found here (in German).
Further readings:
Wacken 2009 review
Wacken 2008 review
Wacken 2007 review |
Who was there?
DAY 1 (04.08)
| W.E.T. Stage |
| 12:00 - 12:30 |
Victims Of Madness
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| 12:50 - 13:15 |
Void Creation (Metal Battle Austria)
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| 13:35 - 14:00 |
No Dawn (Metal Battle Norway)
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| 14:20 - 14:45 |
Snakebite (Metal Battle UK)
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| 15:05 - 15:30 |
Raging Mob (Metal Battle China)
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| 15:50 - 16:15 |
Dymytry (Metal Battle Czech Republic)
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| 16:35 - 17:00 |
By The Patient (Metal Battle Denmark)
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| 17:20 - 17:45 |
Forever Storm (Metal Battle Ex-Yugoslavia)
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| 18:05 - 18:30 |
Metal Battle Finland
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| 18:50 - 19:15 |
Frontal (Metal Battle France)
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| 19:35 - 20:00 |
Vice (Metal Battle Germany)
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| 20:20 - 20:45 |
Total Riot (Metal Battle Greece)
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| 21:05 - 21:30 |
Wistaria (Metal Battle Iceland)
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| 21:50 - 22:15 |
Missing In Action (Metal Battle Israel)
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| 22:35 - 23:00 |
Penthagon (Metal Battle Italy)
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| 23:20 - 23:45 |
Soul Stealer (Metal Battle Lithuania)
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| 00:00 - 01:00 |
Mambo Kurt
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| Wackinger Stage |
| 18:00 - 19:00 |
Lord Of The Lost
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| 20:00 - 21:00 |
Fiddler's Green
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| 22:00 - 23:00 |
Red Hot Chili Pipers
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| Beergarden Stage |
| 20:00 - 21:00 |
W:O:A Firefighters
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| 22:00 - 23:00 |
Mambo Kurt
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| Red Bull Bus |
| 13:30 - 14:15 |
Rock Rotten's 9mm Assi Rock'n'Roll
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DAY 2 (05.08)
| True Metal Stage |
| 17:30 - 19:00 |
Alice Cooper
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| 21:30 - 23:30 |
Iron Maiden
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| Black Stage |
| 16:00 - 16:45 |
Skyline
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| 16:50 - 17:25 |
Metal Hammer Awards
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| 19:30 - 21:00 |
Mötley Crüe
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| W.E.T. Stage |
| 12:00 - 12:25 |
Orcus O Dis (Metal Battle Mexico)
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| 12:45 - 13:10 |
Seven Ends (Metal Battle Netherlands)
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| 13:30 - 13:55 |
Demolished (Metal Battle Belgium)
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| 14:15 - 14:40 |
The Sixpounder (Metal Battle Poland)
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| 15:00 - 15:25 |
Prayers Of Sanity (Metal Battle Portugal)
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| 15:45 - 16:10 |
Altar (Metal Battle Romania)
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| 16:30 - 16:55 |
Vita Imana (Metal Battle Spain)
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| 17:15 - 17:40 |
Katana (Metal Battle Sweden)
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| 18:00 - 18:25 |
Hathors (Metal Battle Switzerland)
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| 18:45 - 19:10 |
Cangaço (Metal Battle Brazil)
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| 19:30 - 19:55 |
Black Out Beauty (Metal Battle Luxembourg)
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| 20:15 - 21:00 |
Ghost Brigade
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| 21:20 - 21:50 |
Macbeth [GER] (Metal Masters Winner)
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| 22:10 - 22:40 |
Crysys
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| 23:00 - 23:45 |
Gojira
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| Wackinger Stage |
| 17:00 - 18:00 |
Svartsot
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| 19:00 - 20:00 |
Torfrock
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| 21:00 - 22:00 |
Hanggai
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| Beergarden Stage |
| 18:00 - 19:00 |
Mambo Kurt
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| 20:00 - 21:00 |
W:O:A Firefighters
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| Red Bull Bus |
| 13:30 - 14:15 |
Secret Show
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DAY 3 (06.08)
DAY 4 (07.08)
News
Updated: 28.07.2010 |
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Written by buki of steel on 01.08.2010 at 19:19
Ok
if i arrive till then i will attednd this meeting!
i take it you've already started drinking?  |
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| Today's the day for me. I'm off to Holy Wacken Land. See you guys tomorrow night. |
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Whooo, it's been fun! 
Hey Vale, where the hellfest have you been all of a sudden on Saturday night? |
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Written by Promonex on 08.08.2010 at 22:28
Whooo, it's been fun!
Hey Vale, where the hellfest have you been all of a sudden on Saturday night?
you mean right after UDO? i went to take a shower haha. i thought you'd still be around but then i remembered you wanted to leave your tent there so it made sense that you left. anyway it was great fun, i'm in Prague right now so i can't stay around too much. |
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| Great festival. Definitely one of my best so far. Although I'm still pissed that they decided to check press people on the last day. I had to throw away two bottles of water because of those fuckers. |
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Btw, what's this I heard from people attending... people were denied access to the mainstages because it was too full. Nice goign wacken... so you sell more tickets than your main field can hold people? If such a thing had happened to me I would have been livid. You pay the full price for a ticket and you get denied to see the main acts?
That means one thing... overselling. |
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| Yep, just like in 2008 people were queueing at the central entrance during Maiden, but didn't seem overly fed up with the fact that they were denied access. Ironically at the side entrance people were just waved through. |
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Written by Promonex on 09.08.2010 at 15:42
Yep, just like in 2008 people were queueing at the central entrance during Maiden, but didn't seem overly fed up with the fact that they were denied access. Ironically at the side entrance people were just waved through.
Those people probably knew Maiden was gonna suck? Hahahaha. But seriously. I would be totally pissed off. Having paid good money for a ticket and then being denied access.
Well, it's clear what wacken should do for the 2011 eiditon... Sell less tickets. |
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Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 09.08.2010 at 15:44
Written by Promonex on 09.08.2010 at 15:42
Yep, just like in 2008 people were queueing at the central entrance during Maiden, but didn't seem overly fed up with the fact that they were denied access. Ironically at the side entrance people were just waved through.
Those people probably knew Maiden was gonna suck? Hahahaha. But seriously. I would be totally pissed off. Having paid good money for a ticket and then being denied access.
Well, it's clear what wacken should do for the 2011 eiditon... Sell less tickets.
And not get Maiden again |
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Written by Promonex on 09.08.2010 at 15:47
And not get Maiden again
But now you get Avantasia instead. I think I would settle for a subpar Iron Maiden over Avantasia any day hahahah |
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Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 09.08.2010 at 15:50
Written by Promonex on 09.08.2010 at 15:47
And not get Maiden again
But now you get Avantasia instead. I think I would settle for a subpar Iron Maiden over Avantasia any day hahahah
Not if it comes to crowd attendance. Thursday was just terrible. Friday and Saturday were decent, it wasn't too hard to get from A to B and it wasn't too hard to get fairly close to the stage, even during the headliners. This might have also been due to the great weather, so unlike in the previous years all the ground was dry and you could move freely in the festival area. So I wouldn't speak of overselling if it hadn't been for Thursday. |
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Written by Promonex on 09.08.2010 at 15:59
So I wouldn't speak of overselling if it hadn't been for Thursday.
Then what would you call denying people access? |
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Written by Marcel Hubregtse on 09.08.2010 at 16:14
Written by Promonex on 09.08.2010 at 15:59
So I wouldn't speak of overselling if it hadn't been for Thursday.
Then what would you call denying people access?
Too many people wanted to see Maiden. If Maiden wasn't there (or any other band of the same league like Metallica or AC/DC), there wouldn't have been a problem. So as I said, it was overselling due to Thursday, but on Friday and Saturday everything went smoothly. It's not the area that is too small for the audience, but Maiden who are too big for the area. |
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Written by Promonex on 09.08.2010 at 16:44
Too many people wanted to see Maiden. If Maiden wasn't there (or any other band of the same league like Metallica or AC/DC), there wouldn't have been a problem. So as I said, it was overselling due to Thursday, but on Friday and Saturday everything went smoothly. It's not the area that is too small for the audience, but Maiden who are too big for the area.
What I mean is that you should never sell more tickets than the number of people that can go on to the main ground. Because like with Maiden, the situation might arise that EVERYONE wants to see the headliner. And that should ALWAYS be possible. Hence they oversold. No matter how the crowd was spread during the other days. |
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