After the “Night To Remember“ the festival continued quite lively on Friday. First ones on my schedule were the guys of Amorphis. Although you had to get up quite early ;-) because the gig began at 11:45 on the True Metal Stage.
The absolute highlight of the whole festival was without doubt Iron Maiden. With their “The Final Frontier” tour the guys around frontman Bruce Dickinson guest at Wacken and presented for two hours one classic after the other, also their new song “The Final Frontier”.
The first main act of the so called “Night to Remember” entered the stage already at 17:30 in the afternoon. Alice Cooper performed his „Theatre of Death“ show.
For roughly 80 minutes the „old man“ presented great songs like „Schools out for Summer“. A really terrific show with lots of magic tricks on stage fascinated the audience, nevertheless the spark was never really ignited.
Also this year the king of home-organ may not be missing on this festival. I heard of him for the first time round about 10 years ago (to that time at the king of German late night Harald Schmidt) and so I wanted to have this cool trashy home-organ sound for the closure of this day.
More or less by accident I stranded on at the Soul Stealer concert on the WET stage. After the Red Hot Chili Pipers had finished, I was looking around if somewhere was still live music and the Lithuanian Metal Battle winner had just entered the stage.
After a short walk across the medieval market following to the Fiddler’s Green concert I stayed there to watch a somehow uncommon band. The Red Hot Chili Pipers are a Scottish band converting popular rock songs into the world of pipes and drums.
On Wednesday evening this years‘ Wacken Open Air started for me with the first concert. The band Fiddler’s Green was up to now only known to me from CD’s and finally I wanted to see them live. Many others had the same idea because of the quite small area in front of the stage was jam-packed. (maybe the larger Party-Stage would have been a better place for their gig).
On 24.04.2010 I set out for Steenwijk to first wait there in a relaxed atmosphere at the theatre lobby. By and by people from various countries met there. Due to the fact that the concert should be at De Meenthe, I expected it to be an ordinary one. But already when entering the hall completely provided with seats these thoughts had been upset. And so it came that I was not the only one with an astonished look on the face.
At 21:00 the moment everyone had been waiting for had finally arrived at the heated Pitcher: Van Canto entered the stage and begun impressively with “Lost Forever”. Also the crowd immediately followed and so it was not only sung loudly but also head banging started. Wait a second; this shall be a metal concert and that although Bastian Emig was the only guy on stage using an instrument, his drum set? You are right, Van Canto stands for a-cappella metal.
Actually Bastian Emig is the drummer of Van Canto. But during the Tribe of Force Tour he is the opening act together with his own band In Legend which I did not know before. There he shows, that he is not only good in drumming (at In Legend this part is taken over by Dennis Otto) but also is a dab hand in playing piano and singing.