No, there are not yet pictures from Wacken available (But I will start today with them, I promise!) because the last two weeks I spent beautiful days in the south of Norway. Starting at Oslo my trip went by Stavanger and Bergen up to the Geiranger-Fjord. From this evening on you can take a look at some impressions from that tour at the landscapes category.
Wacken Open Air 2012 is history and will remain in mind not only because of the music but also because of the weather. It was alternating between sunburn and floaties. On Wednesday and Thursday it was warm and sunny but on Friday during the Kamelot concert it started raining cats and dogs for the first time so that the festival area looked like the mud flat. This was even getting worse by further rain showers during the festival.
Soon will be there. Only 50 days left and anticipation is rising day by day. Already for the 7th time in a row the promoters announced a sold out and the 75000 tickets were out of stock faster than ever before. Already in November the sold out reached. The line-up is huge (nearly 150 bands) and all kinds of rock and metal are there so that there are possibilities for newcomers and already established bands.
On 01.06.2012 the two Dutch rock bands Nemesea and Delain were guests at the Atak at Enschede. Nemesea was the starter with their current album "The Quiet Resistance" sounding much more grown up now. This they proved also with their live performance which enthused the audience.
On Saturday evening BRDigung and Frei.Wild visited the Essen Gruga-Halle for their final concert of the "Alleine Nach Vorne" tour. Directly from the start they were pushing quite hard and nobody was thinking of the originally planned club concert taking place at a hall in front of 4500 guests. Two bands completely having fun on stage and an audience following them blindly made the concert a really great one!
Last Friday Epica stood on stage at the sold-out 013 at Tilburg to present their new album "Requiem For The Indifferent". As support act the Dutch-Mexican band Stream Of Passion joined them presenting a great set across their three released albums. So the crowd was already well temperatured when Epica finally entered the stage at 21:15 and played all songs of their new album. The set was filled up with old ones making it really a great one. But unfortunately the new songs are not all suitable for live-performance so that I have to admit that I already saw better shows of them. Nevertheless also despite of that it was a good concert where I was having quite a lot of fun.
Last Friday on 09.03.2012 the current Dutch champion of the second icehockey league visited Nordhorn. What sounds that big finally ended up in not being a suitable opponent for the Ritter who sent them home with a 12:4. Unnecessarily it was again a penalty festival on both sides having its culmination in the last third where a mass brawl took place. So it still remains that the Ritter are waiting for an adequate opponent on their homeground and are now able to fully concentrate on winning the championship.
On this years "Made In Germany" tour the followers stopped on 04.03.2012 at the Ahoy Rotterdam. The renewed and modernized arena was a great place for the Swedish industrial and gothic metal men of Deathstars to show their skills. Their entertaining show prepared the audience for the main act of the evening: Rammstein. Two hours they were moving the crowd in front of the stage. Lots of pyros and great show ideas were surrounding the best-of compilation with a cross section of all their albums. A really great show, fantastic moods on and in front of the stage letting one go home with a big smile on the face.
With roughly 500 Krefeld supporters the away block at the Munich ice rink was quite crowded and the long way down was more than worth it. Because the visitors not only saw an exciting game where the Krefeld team finally was the lucky one winning with 3:1 but also the vibes from the stand was very enthusiastic. This means that not only the positions inside the league were swapped with the Munich team and Krefeld is now situated on a pre-playoff rank but additionally they are in control of their own destiny to remain there.
On 10.02.2012 it came to the top match of the Regionalliga Nord between GEC Ritter Nordhorn and the CRE Salzgitter Icefighters. Because of the large number of visitors the game started 20 minutes late. But with 1642 visitors a new season record was reached. The game had everything that a top match is promising. Gripping game scenes on both sides, exciting course of the game but unfortunately (seen with the eyes of a Ritter) at the end Salzgitter Icefighters won the game deservedly. Not nice was the huge bunch of penalties that were given during the game and also temporarily disturbed the game.