Let's stay musically at the same area as directly after As I Lay Dying the Thuringian of Heaven Shall Burn entered the stage. As usual uniformly dressed in red shirts they directly from the start made you aware that they would get straight down to the nitty-gritty.
Up to now I only knew As I Lay Dying of CD. Therefore it was high time to take a closer look at them live. They seemed to have planned to keep the stage covered by a smoke screen as the smoke machines were running on high level during the whole gig. But the wind was ruling out their plans.
It seemed a little bit like the gig of the trash metal band Sodom together with Roberto Blanco dwarfed their main show on the True Metal stage, but you have to say: wrongly. Tom Angelripper, Bernd "Bernemann" Kost and Markus "Makka" Freiwald not only had lots of songs of their current album "In War And Pieces" with them (the name giving song was also the opener) but additionally a lot of old stuff.
After their concert on the WET stage two years ago and their guest performance as background choir for Grave Digger last year they may show their skills this year on the increased Party stage. That they have made a name for themselves in the metal scene although they "play" a-capella metal showed the fact that it was extremely crowded in front of the stage.
OK, right after the Finns extremely reviving you it continued at the Black Metal Stage. For me it was only a stopgap until the Van Canto concert but the Californian founders of crossover were even more than that.
Oh man, 12:00 is quite early in the morning, but anyhow. Quickly wolfing the breakfast and afterwards back to the festival area again. There the Finns of Ensiferum were on my schedule.
In front of the stage it was jam-packed and at 22:30 everything finally was ready. A voice, slight whiningly rose: "I can’t hear you!". That was the starting shot for a fulminant final of the "Night to Remember". Ozzy paddled with his small steps onto the stage and enthused the crowd for roughly 90 minutes with the classics of his solo career as well as with songs of his former band Black Sabbath.
It was slowly getting dark on the festival area and Blind Guardian entered a wonderful enlightened scenery following the pyramid on the cover of the current album "At The Edge Of Time". But they did not restrict only to that album.
Towards 19:00 the doyens of Helloween entered the stage and had lots of material of in total 27 years of band history with them. But in the beginning it looked like someone minded their gig. Already after a few seconds of the opener "Are You Metal?" the power supply of the True Metal Stage broke down.
So, enough time spent in the tent, time to go outside. After Bülent Ceylan (why was there comedy on Wacken this year; it is not needed because after all it is a metal festival and not the German comedy prize-giving) cheeky German rock was presented by the South Tyrols Frei.Wild. Inspired by the style of Böhse Onkelz the band presented songs of the last two albums "Hart Am Wind" and "Gegengift".