I have memories, clouded by sorrow

Not much more to say, thankfully.

Saturday morning came, and the weather was pretty good, blazing sun and a nice way to see the last full day of the festival off. Everybody else was slow to rouse so I wandered into the village by myself in search of food. I completely failed to find said food because everything I liked I couldn't pronounce. In the end I tried the food stand that Allan had recommended to me the day before, and found it to be infuriatingly slow. Three people stood around cooking food in there and someone getting served only once every two minutes or so. Don't they know I have somewhere to be? That somewhere was the rescheduled SuidAkrA show, and I managed to get me and my reluctantly-served bratwurst over there just in time for the start. Their brand of slightly-folkified melodic death metal worked well on the Party Stage and they finished with The IXth Legion which was predictable yet satisfying.

From there it was back to the campsite for some more protracted time-wasting as there was nobody I wanted to see until almost 5pm. However I was rudely disturbed by some of my companions who required that I go and watch Testament. All I can say about that is, why on earth do people still like thrash? With a few exceptions it's all the same, slightly syncopated simple guitar riffs over the same drum pattern and repetitve bassline. Lisa and I gave up on that after a few songs (or one long song with gaps, hard to tell), but then she went off somewhere with someone (...memory failure...) and I was wandering aimlessly until Borknagar came on. They were... ok. I was more impressed with all the pretty black metal ladies in the crowd than the weird sounds coming from on-stage. I think live they come across as more progressive than they do on record, and I'm not a progressive music fan really. I also prefer Vortex's vocals to those of current singer Vintersorg so this was never going to be amazing for me. I knew about half the songs, mostly older ones I think, and I think most of the others there were a lot more familiar with the new material so I felt like a real outsider. :)

It was during Borknagar that the return of the mysterious mini helicopter appeared. It hovered to the side of the crowd and flew around a bit before disappearing. I remember this blighter from last year, at the same stage too - what is it, and why is it there?

On my way back to the campsite I came across some unfortunate who'd passed out at the side of the path, and also saw another random person take up a large stick (which was probably a bit of broken gazebo) and start poking the poor guy with it to try and wake him. Eventually one of the drunkard's friends came to scare off the attacker with a glare and some stern words.

Most of this afternoon was pretty boring. Eventually I had to head off on my own again to see Pain because nobody else was interested. They were quite interesting, significantly heavier than I expected with some harsh vocals in places which I hadn't heard on the 2 or 3 songs I was familiar with. I think they had one of the two kick drums triggered up to give the vintage electronic kick sound and the other one acoustic for the more traditional metal sections, and the contrast worked well. Their songs are all cut from the same formula, with a fairly tame verse, a loud strummed chorus with several layers of vocals, and a staccato motif riff afterwards. Despite this, I did enjoy the set and the ludicrous number of fireworks. I left thinking that they would probably sound even better on record, but since then have tested the theory and decided it's completely wrong - they were far better live than the recorded sound does justice to.

Then, more random lone wandering, taking in the various sights while there was time. I came across another area of the campsite which featured Danish and English people like ours, except they'd done a better job of decorating the zone. The day before, we'd 'liberated' a small and colourful tent from... somewhere... and placed it in our camp to block a through route and thus deter people from walking through the middle. I got back to our area after Pain to find that Erika was taking it upon herself to climb a tree and put the tent up in said tree. Strange girl. I also found time to go and buy some leather trousers for 75€, which seems good value even if they may well be pretty average. No doubt some leather connoisseur could point out how bad they are, not being made of sheep scrotal tissue or whatever, but this is one of those cases where I like living in ignorance. I almost managed to forget my Visa card when leaving the shop too - score.

Next up: Machine Head. They clashed with Enslaved, but I wasn't interested in the latter because (a) they were a bit nondescript the last time I saw them, and (b) they're playing at Bloodstock this weekend anyway. So Machine Head it was. It seems like a lot of my peers don't like Machine Head, and got particularly angry at Robb Flynn recently after the Sonisphere/Limp Bizkit debacle, but assuming everything said was true (which is a big assumption), I am on their side. They played really well and I can't say I noticed any indication of the poor musicianship people have accused them of. (Poor songwriting however, sure... though they weren't playing those songs that night.) Robb's clean vocals have come on in leaps and bounds too, which is handy because there was at least one song where it was pretty much just him crooning over clean guitars for the most part. All in all, they were one of the better bands of the festival for me. (Pointless picture here.)

Afterwards, we went to grab some food, and most of the others retired back to the campsite during Saxon's set with the aim of returning for Korpiklaani's closing set on the Party Stage. I, however, was not going to do that because Korpiklaani are undebatably shit. Turisas these days (who I'd completely forgotten about and missed earlier) take the Scandinavian folk metal formula and push the bounds of cheese and comedy within it to almost breaking point, whereas Korpiklaani break completely free of such taste restraints, leaving all quality behind and trying to make up for it by appealing to the public's liking for alcohol. I hope they die in a tourbus accident with Alestorm. (Apologies to those who know members of such bands - would it be possible for just their musical personae to die in this hypothetical crash? I'm sure they're lovely people... really.) Instead of watching that drivel, I had an hour-long date with Gwar.

Yes, Gwar are a comedy metal act too, but are far more than a one-trick pony, unlike the Finns whose time-slot they shared. Where else could you find a zombie Michael Jackson, a large dinosaur called Gor-Gor, and the Intergalactic Wrestling Championship? Their set was partly following the wrestling story line with random other songs thrown in as interludes including some old classics that remind me of being back at school, when they were one of my favourite bands. They'll never win any awards for technical proficiency but their song writing covers a lot of diverse ground and the sheer spectacle of their stage show is hard to beat. So that was a fitting way for me to end the festival, and I trudged back to the tent at 2am quite satisfied. A few of the others were there, keen to enjoy the last evening with such good company and to sit around drinking and talking, but I think several days of festivalling had taken it out of us, so it was a relatively early night for most instead.

Sunday morning came around, and I poked my head out of my tent to be greeted by a great big fire engine about 10 steps away. Every 5 year old boy's dream, and I pretended to be 5 for a few minutes. Eventually though we all had to start packing our stuff away, taking down the tents, and saying goodbyes for another year. A light and welcome rain started to fall as we began the arduous journey back up the hill towards the place we parked the car, but it wasn't enough to stop us working up a bit of a sweat carrying all that stuff. Along the way, we passed an overturned vehicle, and I have no idea how on earth it ended up that way. Shortly after, we got to the car and left a little after midday, as I recall.

Getting out of the festival site was easy... getting onto the autobahn was easy... but as soon as we hit the first junction south of Wacken we were in a traffic jam. This situation then persisted for the next six hours, completely destroying our chances of getting back to Calais for our midnight ferry.  However I must admit to enjoying the rather surreal scenes during the traffic jam, where we were able to sit about on the road, and enjoy the view from the central barrier, not to mention doing a bit of decorating. I had fun, anyway. Only once we got past Hamburg at about 6pm did we get any free roads without traffic, and we enjoyed the scenic route via Hannover which was free of ridiculous bridge rebuilding works. Eventually we got to Calais at about 3am on Monday, which was still pretty good going considering the roughly 5 hours of extra time wasted sat around in the middle of the road. We managed to convince the nice man at the dock to let us on a later ferry for free, which was the same one we'd arrived on. There was also a very beautiful girl on the ferry who smiled at me a couple of times, but fear not ladies, I'll never see her again.

After getting off the ferry I pretty much dozed the rest of the way back, opening my eyes once in Kent, once in Essex, and then finding myself back at Pink's house. We got some sleep and then Allan, Fiona and I drove back up to Nottingham that afternoon without incident.

Next year I am mulling over the prospect of going from Wacken to the Brutal Assault festival in the Czech Republic and then back to England for Bloodstock, if the dates are the same as this year. It sounds like fun and I can spend the 2 or 3 spare days each week on somerthing resembling a conventional holiday. Something to think about.

Apologies for the length of all this. It's Bloodstock from tomorrow evening onwards, and I promise to make that less verbose.