Review: Nikki Hallam
Saturday, at Wacken Open Air 2025 arrived and the final day greeted us with more mud, sore legs and the creeping suspicion we’d unknowingly signed up for some sort of endurance trial. The mud-Olympics! Six days in, our quads were forged in filth, sure many had packed up and bailed as the rain kept hammering down, but the true believers were still there ready to pour out what little energy they had left.
We scrubbed off the week’s sins with our now legendary camp ‘Slayer shower,’ South of Heaven echoing off the roof and the awkward charm of communal nakedness drowned our modesty down the drain. Beers and shampoo flew over the wall like sacred contraband, an unholy metal communion. The looks? Priceless. But really, nothing screams Wacken more than soap suds and the cry of “Slayerrrr!” bouncing off corrugated steel.
Dutch rockers Dool arrived on the W:E:T stage and opened our ears with their brooding gothic tones that felt like a warm hug from the shadows. Raven Van Dorst is haunting and addictive to watch, their vocals put Wacken into a welcomed trance. Dool radiated an energy that felt less like a concert and more like a ritual summoning something otherworldly. Playing through many songs from their 2024 album, The Shape of Fluidity and finishing with crowd favourite Oweynaget, their set was immersive and I would absolutely watch them over and over again.
Californian Power trio Night Demon showed up on the W:E:T stage and brought some classic heavy metal bangers for their Curse of the Damned 10th anniversary show. Playing the album in its entirety with no surprises, we went wild, especially when their opening track and fan favourite started, Screams in the Night. Frontman Jarvis Leatherby got us lubed up, “Scream like Animals, don’t let me tell you what to do, Come on!” His handlebar mustache tells us he means business. Many crowd pleasing “Woah-ooooooh” chants ensued and their synchronized headbanging continued. When it came time for Killer, a masked Morph suited maniac appeared on stage, wielding an axe, his name? Axe-weilding Eugene, original, we know. This double guitar blitz had us flying as well as a literal axe flying into the crowd. Seriously, I don’t know how but the blade of the axe flew out into the crowd while Eugene was play-thrilling the crowd. While there were no injuries and we all made it out in one piece after that raging 45 minute set! Heavy Metal is Alive and well.
W.A.S.P. stormed onto the Harder stage with all the subtlety of a leather-wrapped thunderbolt and frontman Blackie Lawless was there to prove age hasn’t dulled his bite. His wild contraption of a mic stand, part chrome skeleton, part motorcycle, looked ridiculous in the best way, and he rode it like a man possessed. Promising one final run of their self-titled debut, celebrating fan favourites, they ripped straight into I Wanna Be Somebody and Love Machine. It wouldn’t be a true W.A.S.P. show without an encore including Blind in Texas and Wild Child, Blackie knew it, we knew it and Wacken roared it back. Four decades down the line,, the band still deal in excess- it was loud, flashy and just the right amount of unhinged.
The Faster stage took a turn for the mystical as Within Temptation appeared before a backdrop of crumbling castle ruins straight out of a fantasy novel, perfect for their symphonic sorcery. The rain joined in for maximum atmosphere, while Dutch powerhouse Sharon Den Adel floated through the storm like an enchantress and proved once again she’s basically an ethereal superhero. When a Ukrainian flag made its way onto the stage to Sharon, she raised it high, turning the stage into something truly moving. Hitting impossible notes with ease, not a hair out of place, all while sprinting across a soaked stage in a corset, if that’s not witchcraft, I don’t know what is. They played through a catalogue spanning back their humble beginnings in the mid 90’s, there were many pleased faces in the crowd especially during Faster. Closing with Ice Queen and Mother Earth, the line between epic theatre and biblical weather was beautifully blurred.
As the skies opened again and party pants were replaced with pajamas, the promoter’s farewell show flipped the dark mood right around, ushering us into a brighter future with a 2026 announcement and a jaw-dropping drone display. Wacken Open Air 2026 band announcements were met with an uproar of cheers, headliners include- Def Leppard, Powerwolf, Europe, Airborne and Sabotage to name a few. The sky became a festival brochure and suddenly leaving didn’t feel so terrible.
Rumor has it King Diamond delivered the most spine-tingling show of the fest, but it was not for the faint-hearted, given the swamp the lands had turned into and the extreme weather peltering down. Full haunted house set up on stage and theatrics galore. We stayed camp-side, half-hearing A mansion in Darkness and Abigail over muddy splashes and the roar of a soaking louder stage. Regrets? Just a few, like missing that epic set but everything we owned was wet and our legs didn’t work anymore. Going to sleep in the tent one last time with Rob Flynn of Machine Head in one ear and King Diamond’s banshee wail in the other felt soothing in the most disappointing way. So we called it a night early and honestly, it felt like the right move before the final pack-up battle began.
Morning came as fast as sleep approached and everyone knew it was time to pack up until we could let the cows come home.Tent pegs were ripped out faster then we could get them in a week ago and it had all come to an end. Each car, trailer or caravan slowly awaited their time until a local tractor could tow them off the holy ground and onto the road. While our camp group had a long way ahead of us with the packing up, we did our very best to down some of the 5 cases of beer we had left and it soon became a comedy sketch. But while we were sad to head home and the fever dream had ended, it would be next year soon enough and no amount of mud or rain could keep it from us. So as my German campmates comically screamed at every car as they slowly got towed out- say, “Auf wiedersehen!!!” We will indeed see you all next year for Wacken Open Air 2026, Rain or (maybe) Shine.
:O:A 2026 „The Anniversary“ ticket link: https://www.wacken.com/
