This post is an attempt to wrestle with my nostalgia for the Wacken Open Air festival and the way the pandemic and increasingly transparent corporate interests has led to a disconnect. Since this blog is about media criticism, I also talk about Wacken documentaries.
Part 1: Quasi Religious Pilgrimage and Public Access Television
Growing up as a Metalhead in Germany, there wasn´t really any way around the Wacken Open Air. At some Point, Wacken (as I will call it from now on) was the biggest Metal Festival in the world, it usually attracts 85.000 attendees with 75.000 of them being paying visitors. If you ask any non metalhead German to name a Metal festival, they are likely to name Wacken and likely do not know another Metal festival - unless it randomly happens close to them, of course.
Like many metalheads, I was a weird kid that didn´t really fit in with the people I was randomly assigned to spend time with by society. My classmates always found me weird, and frankly, I didn´t quite understand them either. Like many kids in that situation, I turned to a subculture. It is easier to interact in musical subcultures because you can seek out the subcultural standards. The shared interest in metal made it easier to seek friends and being able to discuss it at length - with sometimes excruciating minutia - was helpful in overcoming the usual hurdles of connecting with people. Wacken seemed like almost a religious gathering in a context - a Metal Mekka, where the ground you tread on is literally holy (a naming convention adopted by the organisers themselves). There was an abstract feeling that visiting Wacken would not only legitimize me as a Metalhead, but that it would enable me to leave the society I found so troubling to navigate and be with people who understood me, if only for a week.
I have revisited many short form documentaries about Wacken this year, specifically the public access television ones. I was considering writing a separate piece for all of them, but they are generally very uniform in approach. In particular, I watched Wacken Open Air: Das legendäre Heavy Metal-Festival | Wie geht das? produced by the northern German TV channel NDR and Wacken – Ein Dorf im Ausnahmezustand – Bauernschlau und Heavy-Metal produced by german TV channel 3sat. Both of these are mainly interested in the minutia of what a festival is and what challenges it poses to the organisers. We see the stage builders, the Metal Train, police screening cars for drugs and short interviews with the organisers. The former of those two documentaries was particularly interesting to me, as I had been at the festival myself that year after a long hiatus of five years.
Watching these two documentaries I realised that the perspective of them is peculiar. These documentaries are made by people who don´t understand the scene and for a primary audience that doesn´t understand the scene either. Particularly funny are the music queues, which almost exclusively consist of non-metal tracks. In Wacken Open Air: Das legendäre Heavy Metal-Festival | Wie geht das? we hear Lynyrd Skynyrd and Nirvana. The heaviest it ever gets is ACDC. The documentaries try to stay as neutral as they can, but they show an inherent bias of the documentarians: While the documentaries do not actively look down on the participants, there is a perception that metalheads are weird, unnecessarily excessive and loud. Also, I almost always feel that there is noattempt made to understand the type of music that is being played beyond it being loud and noisy. The fact that Skindred is being chosen as the only stage footage of the 2018 documentary is likely no accident - probably by far the easiest band to understand. Even impressive feats like the Beer Pipeline constructed specifically to run under the acres are undercut by a laconic narrative of "Metalheads drink too much." I want to make clear that I do not think that the documentary is doing this willingly - rather it is unconsciously reproducing stereotypes of Metalheads for an audience that is, ironically, rather stereotypically middle class themselves. Frankly, most of the documentaries could be about any festival - it is about trucks lugging equipment around, stages being built, the infrastructure of serving large amounts of drinks. But not about heavy metal as a subculture.
I ended up going to my first Wacken at 18. My father had given me the ticket for Christmas (not quite as extraordinarily expensive as it is now, mind you) and I was allowed to use my grandparents’ old Toyota to drive to the festival myself. The car was stuffed with two of my friends and a friend of a friend, who was supposed to chip in for gas but ended up investing all the cash he had in a sword. I suppose that is fair. He did offhand mention he wanted to go into showfighting once, I suppose. 2009´s Wacken was the 20th anniversary and it felt like I managed to participate in something great. However, while the festival was great fun, I noticed that the scene wasn´t as homogenous as I thought it was. I camped with some online acquaintances who themselves brought friends and I frankly didn´t get along with everyone - unrealistic to get along with everyone in a group of 30. The festival however felt very welcoming and had great sound. As an experience, Wacken was likely a good first festival – I could check off some bucket list bands and have a good time. And sometimes, I was able to feel like I was part of something bigger. Just spending time away from civilisation in that way is freeing and spending it in a group of people, who at least share one interest with you – even if only in a vague way – is satisfying. I saw Motörhead, Napalm Death and quite a few others as far as I can remember. Heaven and Hell I missed because I was quite drunk; a huge regret as I never ended up seeing Dio live. On the drive back, I ended up holding the friend of a friends’ luggage hostage until he begged his parents for gas money. I suppose that is fair, too. Ultimately, I wouldn´t trade away the experience for anything.
Part 2: Scene Tourism, Fragmentation and "Wacken der Film"
I ended up visiting the festival from 2009 to 2012. I couldn´t have told you this back then, but ultimately, the festival was less of a big family of like minded people and more a big gathering of interconnected scenes, which don´t always share much in the way they interact, what their interpretation of metal is or how they behave other at concerts. I am not going to try to make a value statement about any of it; any way you get your enjoyment out of music is fair. But Wacken trying to please these many different demographics has always been a tightrope walk. Every year, there is a survey after the festival. This survey involves both a question about how much money the person spent at the festival and what bands they would like to see at the festival. It is easy to see how this can lead the organisers to try attracting the most spendy crowd. The question is, ultimately, what this crowd is. Having talked to people at the festival and online I noticed a trend that there are two groups of people who spend great sums at the festival.
The first one is a type of aging boomer metalhead with lots of disposable income. These people usually don´t see many concerts and care especially about just a handful of acts. These acts are almost exclusively legacy acts; the big bands of olde. This type of festival goer has always gone to Wacken and will likely not chose a different festival and since he only see´s a handful of bands anyway, Wacken can just book one or two old acts that were popular in the 70s and 80s and basically still catch that crowd. They will spend 90% of time just buying beer on the festival grounds, maybe buying surplus amounts of merchandise, even, and have money to burn. This is the reason why bands like Doro are still being courted at Wacken like they are: The general population doesn´t care about Doro, but the Spendy Boomer very much does. If he cares about Doro to the degree that he is going to see her five times at a single festival, I don´t know. Wacken certainly seems to think so. You can go catch Doro at a Church. The hoarse babble of what sounds like a 50 year old barfly is their hymns. "We are all, all we are, we are all we need", set to a church organ.
The second spendy type is what I will call the Festival Tourist. The Festival Tourist is not really a fan of music, nor is he a member of any scene. People tend to complain about Metalcore fans at the festival, but I couldn´t really care less. Festival Tourists, however, do pose a problem for me. They basically go to Wacken to experience what a festival feels like and Wacken is one with lots of mystique to it and probably the most well known German festival. This type of listener maybe goes to see a concert or two and spends most of the rest of his time living out hedonistic tendencies to the extreme. Buying the bootleg nonsense at the Metal Market? Buying oversized novelty cups? Arts and Crafts at the medieval market? They buy it all. Furthermmore, they buy lots and lots of drinks. As I have explained, I believe these people would come anyway, but when Wacken sees that these attendees spend twice or thrice the amount of money on the festival grounds than the average festival goer does, they´re going to be more inclined to listen to their wishes. That is how we get Boss Hoss (a country band covering pop songs) playing on a main stage and how bands like Parkway Drive can become a headliner. Nothing wrong with that in a vacuum, but if I pay for a festival expecting to get a certain genre, this can quickly become an issue. You cannot make everyone happy and if you try, you will fail.
Of course there is a vested interest in Wacken to downplay scene fragmentation and an aging demographic. Wacken der Film is almost more of an advertisement than a documentary. At the same time, it is almost more of a concert film, with basically all of the movie being footage from concerts at the Festival. Holger Hübner and Thomas Jensen, two of the owners and organisers of the festival, are similary present as they are in the public acces Docs. . I won´t lie - it is certainly fun. But it is also clear that there is an authorial voice to the documentary and this voice has a clear goal - to make you like the festival, to keep the mythological image of it up and running and maybe even buy a ticket if you haven´t already. On the other hand, I feel like this documentary at least understands its demographic a little more. While it focuses clearly on the more traditional and marketable bands - Alice Cooper and Anthrax are top billed on the poster - it at least makes an attempt to depict camp life as what it is, even if mostly in a positive light. The interviewed bands and artists have almost nothing but praise for the festival, same with the campers that the Doc follows. The mid section, focusing on the metal battle and the bands involved, is also a rather transparent attempt at positioning the festival as an institution that supports the scene. While it remains an enjoyable watch for the most part, I can´t help but feel that the film is basically an ad that I am paying 3,99€ on Amazon Prime for. As an aside, I want to quickly mention the entity that is Harry Metal. Every year, Wacken will upload videos where Harry Metal, northern German Nobody and enjoyer of caffeinated hot beverages, will walk the premise and show the process of the stages being constructed. I personally can´t stand Harry - the combination of surface level taste and boomerish sense of humor is like a goat repellant. But I must admit that Wacken is making an attempt to involve its audience in the festival and make a connection with them in a way that not many festivals do. A ray of hope that I want to return to later.
Part 3: Increased Corporatism versus the rustic Spirit of the Heavy Metal Village
After a long time where Wacken was financially not viable for me, 2018 felt like a triumphant return. I met people online whom I would share a camp with, among them the woman who would later become my partner – I will always feel at least a little indebted to Wacken for that. But the year after, cracks started to show. A little under two weeks after Wacken 2019, it was announced that Wacken (or the International Concert Service GmbH, which is the company behind promoting the Festival) had entered a partnership and investment agreement with UK based event organiser Superstruct entertainment, which are in turn owned by Providence Equite Partners, an US based company. The deal had been carried out by Company LMF Luxco S.à .r.l, a Luxembourg based Company. Of course the investment agreement is de facto carried out by Superstruct Germany Holding GmbH which are based in Frankfurt. As often in the world of business, the deal is confusing and involves many sub-entities in different countries. This is likely for tax reasons and just another example of the late-capitalist hellscape we are living in generating money from basically nothing. Ultimately, what is important is this: Superstruct Entertainment would own 55% of the 5 companies that are involved in making Wacken happen, this being ICS GmbH International Concert Service, ICS Festival Service GmbH, Hübner & Jensen Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Hübner & Jensen GmbH & Co. KG and SH-Promotion GmbH & Co. KG.
This had led to an outcry in the online circles that had formed around the festival. The worry was that Wacken would lose the connection to its base and, simply put, sell out. I had a muted response to the whole thing and was also understanding, to a degree. At the time, my position was basically that a festival with 80.000 attendees was a huge corporate entity to begin with and Jensen and Hübner, having done this for more than 30 years at this point, likely just want to retire at some point and give some responsibility to someone else. Even at the time, I did understand what the worry was, however: Wacken had, despite its immense growth and size, always retained a familial and rural spirit.
The village of Wacken is much friendlier towards the festival goers than any other festival I´ve been to and always makes an effort to integrate. If you go to the village itself, people will be waving, they´ll have little stands selling coffee and other goods, turning their porches or Wintergartens into small makeshift cafés. Comparing this to Summer Breeze, which I had visited in 2013, where all the villagers had looked at us with disdain as I visited the city of Dinkelsbühel, Wacken felt like it was a much smaller festival, not like it was 80000 people. The festival had transformed a village in the middle of nowhere, financially badly off and virtually unknown to anyone not living in its vicinity into a city of note for a certain type of person. It must feel special to be a village everyone in the country knows despite only having 2000 residents. The worry was that a faceless corporate investor could ruin all of that.
In 2020, the Covid-19 Pandemic happened. At first, Wacken made a good effort and built up a lot of goodwill for its audience. Tickets could either be refunded, no questions asked or rolled over into the next year. Wacken organised one of the first live streaming concert replacements, called Wacken World Wide and, in this case, it actually was live - most other online concerts ended up being just recorded videos. We made the best of it, got our camping chairs up into our apartments, dusted off the battle vests and had a festival evening indoors. Wacken was selling some ironic merch - Festival ist kein Heavy Metal on a shirt, a reference to the Herman metal scene injoke Duschen ist kein Heavy Metal. Better not google that. Thomas Jensen himself announced proudly that this couldn´t kill the Festival, as they obviously had insurance covering the case of a year having to be cancelled. Wacken did better than most during that first year of the pandemic and it felt like they did care about their fans. But then the pandemic didn´t end.
2021 saw Wacken becoming increasingly desperate. A study how festivals could happen during a pandemic was conducted, in cooperation with Wacken. I wrote a translated summary of the study and we all had some faint hope it could be done. Schleswig-Holstein, the state Wacken is in, banned all big events that summer, about an hour after I had posted my translation. Wacken conducting a study like this and doing their best would have felt like they´re doing their best, if there hadn´t been all the T-Shirts.
You see, Wacken seemed to run out of ideas very quickly during the pandemic. Online communication has never been their strong suit and I also have to assume that they had to lay off a considerable amount of staff during the pandemic. It seemed like Wacken was looking for ways to have some kind of income. Bafflingly, they didn´t just redo Wacken World Wide and asked for a fee - one I would have gladly paid - but instead looked for excuses to sell merchandise. You wouldn´t hear from Wacken for weeks only to get an announcement that a new T-Shirt had been released. A lot of those looked incredibly cheap in design and we suspected that an intern did them - or at least someone not usually in the design department. Even the April Fools joke, which I usually look forward to because its generally so unfunny that it makes me laugh, was just abused to sell a T-Shirt. Even if the though of cows being used as mobile W-Lan towers was kind of enjoyable to me.
But wait, there´s more.
Leather wristbands. Tools by German manufacturer Wera. An ugly as hell pyramid loudspeaker. All of these products of course peddled by their "Wacken Ambassadors" on social media. All people you´ve never heard of. One guy with a nicely groomed beard. Two of them apparently goth amateur porn actresses. Followed. For Wacken content, obviously. The worries of overt and transparent corporatism seemed to become true. If this was only something I was noticing now because my eyes were primed to look for it because of the acquisition and the pandemic, I cannot say. I can say that it did start to bother me. Suffice it to say, my feelings were complicated. Wacken had once been the most important event in a year for me, and now I was looking at the organisers with a certain amount of disdain. Having been to Death Feast Open Air, which was way more grassroots, certainly didn´t help either.
In an attempt to recover some of the magic, I sought out a documentary I had seen years ago called Full Metal Village which had originally been commissioned by the German/French joint Arts and Culture channel ARTE. It is noteworthy for two things: For once, there are little to no corporate interests in the film. ARTE´s target demographic is a more intellectual, often academic crowd and ARTE caters to that crowd by portraying the subjects of the film as neutral as possible and commit fully to documentary ethics. The second one is the film-makers decision to utilise a Cinema Verité approach to the filmmaking. Scenes are presented completely neutrally and there is no narration guiding the viewer to specific conclusions. Director and Editor doesn´t speak perfect German and has a noticeable accent - which aids the film, as characters seem to underestimate her and talk to her surprisingly openly even about very personal things Sung Hyung Cho is mainly interested in the townsfolk of Wacken. Jensen and Hübner are noticeably absent fromt he doc, which I believe is a good choice - not like Jensen could turn off his organiser persona anyway. Even Festival footage is used scarcely. Instead, we meet a cast of characters that seems unassuming at first, but that become increasingly fascinating as the movie goes on.
Through purposeful but subtle editing, we can understand what the film-maker wants to say about the characters and it is much more satisfying than to be outright told what to believe. In particular, she pits characters against each other without them ever appearing on screen together. My favourite example are the two farmers. Bauer Trede is deeply intertwined with Wacken organisation. He proudly announces that he cheats on his wife and that his main morning entertainment is checking how his shares developed. Contrary to that, Bauer Vernohr seems to be content just farming. Patiently he explains the minutiae of how the developmental stages for cows are named, how he deposits milk for the farm cats everywhere and how he believes that cattle is too cheap in Germany. When asked what love means for him he says that it means staying with a person for your whole life, supporting and helping each other. While Bauer Trede never stops smiling a kind of cheeky smile, we get the feeling that it is Vernohr that is living a fulfilled life. Full Metal Village is subtle and low key and, strangely, one of the best festival documentaries I´ve ever seen.
Conclusion
Full Metal Village gives me hope that the rustic spirit of the festival hasn´t gone away. After all, the village will never go away and multinational corporations cannot buy villagers in bulk. Hopefully, I can still feel welcome on the "holy ground". I will meet many friends at the festival again and we have many things planned that aren´t even on the schedule. Many of my original worries I have since learned are unimportant - while the tourists have a negative impact on the lineup, there are enough bands I can see. Ultimately, having more bands on the lineup that I then wouldn´t be able to check out because of overlaps is not a win. I have met some of them throughout the years and made friends with them. People are just people, no matter what music they like. And as I learned, in just the first year I went to Wacken metalheads can be pricks too.
There are many things I didn´t go into because this article is already too long as is. The poor organisation of this year, the annoying Facebook groups and the constant bickering, as well as the sycophantic tendencies of some other posters are seriously annoying. As of now, I cannot say if I will try to get a ticket for 2023. Ultimately, I don´t know if I can justify the ticket price for something that I have such complicated feelings for. As of now, I hope for the best and that when I arrive at the camp ground, I feel at home again. They say you never watch the same movie twice, as you grow in-between watches. Maybe - or very probably - festivals are the same.