Godzilla Goes WACKEN OPEN AIR 2022 – A Trip Report
What seems like one of the biggest fortuities in our band history – is one! We can’t exactly tell how things came together to ultimaltely provide us with no less than six shows at one of the biggest Rock and Metal Festivals in the world, but it truly happened. And we’re still kinda speechless about how this journey went for us. A journey of great impact not only because we were about to participate in a festival of that extent for the first time as artists, it was also the first time at W.O.A. in general for all of us. It turned out to be one of the best experiences we’ve ever had! We got to know a lot of awesome people that supported us all the way through and learned to stick together as a band despite some organizational chaos and quite a few stress-inducing confusion. To sum it all up: We had the time of our lives at the WACKEN OPEN AIR 2022. But let’s go through all of this step by step.
Wednesday, Aug 3rd - Day Of Arrival
In preparation for an estimated 6-8 hours trip, we first had to mod the car to optimize the beloved gear tetris game. We were told to bring every piece of gear we could and so we did. The result was a car fully packed up to the ultimate limit with really no room left, not even a rice grain would’ve fit.
The trip itself went more or less without any complications, we had a short stop in Lüneburg and had some incredibly good kebab before we picked up our only crew member Nils, who, it bears repeating, did a magnificent job providing us with whatever we needed. Let it be some breakfast Crêpes, cool beers or some delicious Haribo Super Gurken, whenever we thought of something, he already got it. But most importantly he managed to take some great photos and videos of us while playing and between the shows. Without him, we would’ve faced a lot more complications. At this point we wanna give another BIG BIG THANK YOU to Nils! What a great guy (literally, you could see him jutting out the crowd nearly every time, which was also kinda helpful sometimes)!
After surviving the last driving section, including Hamburg and the famous A7, we found ourselves at the end of a big line of traffic. WACKEN must be nearby! Luckily, we found a small bypass and got to the Check In gate pretty fast. It was quite a thing for us to use the Artist Check In, seeing all the visitors in a lane besides us, waiting to get their festival bracelets. We felt so lofty at this moment, but who wouldn’t? Equipped with our bracelets we moved on to the VIP camping area, set up our tents and headed on to the festival area via VIP shuttle – oh yeah! We first entered the VIP Press area and headed straight to the bar to get our eagerly awaited first beer and took the first amazing band shots - yeah baby :D
We continued our explorative journey to our working space for the next three days. With our eyes wide open and our jaws dropped, we arrived in the Wacken Wasteland. What a sight! We felt like being instantly beamed into another, fully post-apocalyptic dimension. We did a bit of research about the Wasteland Warriors but we didn’t expect what we got to see there. The costumes were designed amazingly detailed, the vehicles looked insanely authentic, modded with oildrums and machine guns, fire everywhere, they even had a goddamn flamethrower, it was pure Mad Max feeling!
Our contact person among the Wasteland Warriors, a guy named Oli, then gave us a backstage area tour. With his clear instructions. He told us where to go, where not to go, introduced us to the other Warriors and showed us our personal backstage tent…which currently was blocked by two people getting kinky in there. Welcome to WOA! It was so exciting for us to have access to all the backstage areas and the chance to really come in contact with all the people working there.
Refuelling with beers, we went on to the Out Of The Cage stage. Of course, there was a stationary flame thrower on top of one of the containers. Shortly after we arrived, the band that played the stage from Monday to Wednesday, BELOW ZERO, started with their very last set, introduced by a small 5-meter flame that unexpectedly shot up right above our heads. While they played, some of the Warriors were dancing and making a fire show on the container roofs, it was crazy! We watched the show, drank beers and then headed back to our tents to let all the impressions, information and exertions of this day sink in and get a little bit of sleep.
Thursday, Aug 4th – Setting up in the Cage
Now it went down to business. The first act of the day was to transport all the backline we brought. We were escorted to the backstage area and started setting up in the cages. And very soon we realized, these gigs were going to be a real challenge for us because playing in containers is something completely different. Fortunately, we spent a lot of time during the past year to optimize our sound with only our instruments and amps. Worth it! Although we – especially Felix in his separate cage – had issues hearing everything properly, the sound in front of the stage was great, we were told. And when the clock turned 11.30 am, it was time for us to play our first set at WOA. Luckily, morning shows were very smooth, playing in the daylight gave a nice rehearsal-with-audience feeling to the whole thing. It was a good start for us since we were all still a bit nervous. We were happy to see our good friend, the bartender from the VIP area, among the audience really enjoying our music. After we finished, he and a few others stayed to have a talk with us. The feedback they gave us was just awesome, they all really liked our music, which for us was a big motivational boost for the upcoming shows. Overall, we estimated 50 to 100 people listening.
MORNING SETLIST:
PROPAGATION OF VIOLENCE
BROKEN DANCE
DR. MOTH
ELIS SPEECH
THE UNIVERSE IS YOURS
UP THE RIVER
FORCED BY
Now that the first hurdle was cleared, we got ourselves some nice pulled pork and – of course – a reward beer. We had about 10 hours left until our next set. We took a little rest in the backstage tent, walked around the wasteland area, had some nice conversations with some of the Warriors, watched their Car Drive, Cage Fights (hell yeah!!) and had some more beers and pulled pork. When we searched for a good coffee, we came in contact with two very friendly ladies at a booth who would also show up later to see and hear one of our sets. More fans, yeah! At some point, Oli approached Simon to point out that his new costume looks exactly like the guy on our new album cover. He offered us to dress up for one of our evening shows and cosplay the cover guy, standing right next to the banner. That’s what we would call a lucky coincidence. The Warriors also asked us if they should do a little bit of fire action and dancing while we play. What more could you ask for as a band first time playing a stage in the Wacken Wasteland? And suddenly, it was time for our first evening set. It’s crazy how different it felt for us sitting/standing in the dark, partly blinded by “stage lights” and not really being able to see how many people were standing there watching us and listening to our music. It was a whole other story. We decided to give a trial run for our new album and played it front to back to see how it would go down with the WOA audience. It was a great feeling to play it in front of (we were told after the gig) around 200 people, we all had these moments where you look up, facing the crowd in front of you and instantly hearing your inner voice shouting “LOOK DOWN AGAIN, YOU CAN’T HANDLE THAT!”. Nervousness was still a thing, but we went through the set and from the people’s reaction we could tell – they loved it. Receiving such big rounds of applause from a crowd was a new thing for us, at least to that extent. It was very uplifting! After the last song, Simon invited the Wackeners to stay and talk with us and asked the crowd if there wasn’t someone who could get us three cold beers. We then got nine and a bunch of people who stayed to have conversation with us, giving us very nice feedback and compliments and telling us how glad they are that there’s some good progressive music among all the metal bands. It was a great evening! We covered our gear and went to sleep to rest from this eventful day.
EVENING SETLIST:
IS
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND
FORCED BY
THE KING OF MONSTERS
BECAUSE
EVERYTHING THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN
WILL BE TAKEN AWAY
THE TURN
THE FRIDGE
Friday, Aug 5th – Photo Day
The next morning was way more chill than the day before. Since we didn’t have to set up again, we had enough time to prepare for our first set of the day. Our breakfast this morning was sponsored by the coffee ladies we met, being nice and chatty seemed to pay off for both sides. Because from then on, whenever we needed a cup of coffee, we went back to them. It was good to know that mutual support still works in such environments. When it was time to play, we found ourselves remarkably more relaxed and confident with the setting. Although it was quite early in the morning for the average festival visitor, we had a good crowd of again 50-100 people, some of them came to see us for the second or even the third time. This time, we though of a setlist containing more of the lengthy and/or atmospheric songs. Some psychedelic ear candy for the recently awakened. We also agreed on not to play encores at the morning show (to avoid interruptions in the overall line-up), starting gently worked out very well. We played a solid set, had our usual conversations with some of our listeners and then went on with our plans for the day.
MORNING SETLIST:
ELIS SPEECH
STICK TO YOUR DAILY ROUTINE
THE TURN
THE UNIVERSE IS YOURS
Dr. MOTH
THE KING OF MONSTERS
One main topic of the day was to finally watch some concerts and we found that KADAVAR and CLUTCH were playing in our off-time, so we went to see them. They were both doing great, the KADAVAR front man made one of the best announcements we’ve ever heard. Standing on a WOA stage in front of a few thousand people he said: “So, we don’t have anything to promote, no new songs or albums… we’re just here to play some Rock’n’Roll for you!” Classy! And then it was time for CLUTCH. What cool guys they were, goddamn experienced and casual, delivering their music to the crowd at a level of professionalism, it was unbelievable. Life goal was set here being that chill and seasoned one day. After this short digression it was time to get back to business. We had a female photographer, Faye (www.acalltothedreamers.com), who contacted us beforehand and we booked her for our evening set. We introduced her to the Warriors and searched for good spots for her to take some nice photos. In the course of having a professional photographer, we approached Oli to ask him if he would do the album cover cosplay today, which he agreed upon. We then still had a bit of time left for a short power nap, beers and Super Gurken to satisfy our basic human needs before it was time to get back on stage… or rather in cage. Due to having Faye taking photos, we decided to rearrange our stage positions a bit. What we didn’t know at that point, this meant sacrificing even more of the already not too comfortable situation sound-wise. Anyway, right before we started, two of the Warriors started their Harleys in front of us and let the engines roar to attract people and simultaneously fogging the whole stage. What an introduction! We played our set, which was a good mixture of older and newer songs. Even though we couldn’t hear so well, and therefore felt more insecure, Nils told us that it, in his opinion, it was the best of our sets so far.. There were many people left after the show who told us how well we play together, how much they like that we’re playing very different but nonetheless interesting music, some said that we made their days with our music, we even had a sound engineer stating that we – among all the stages at WOA – are one of the best sounding bands for him. What a compliment! And then we all had a moment of awareness. All the people that showed up and stayed to hear our sets did it fully on purpose. They came to see us and as we were told there were between 200 and 250 people in number. This is by far one of the best feelings you can get as a band when you realize that there’s a lot of people truly appreciating your music. Motivation restored, time to get some sleep!
EVENING SETLIST:
UP THE RIVER
BROKEN DANCE
STICK TO YOUR DAILY ROUTINE
FORCED BY
EVERYTHING THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN
WILL BE TAKEN AWAY
PROPAGATION OF VIOLENCE
Saturday, Aug 6th – Bow out with a bang!
The last day had come. We couldn’t believe how fast these two last days went by. But everything has to find an end. Needless to say that a quite remarkable lack of sleep hit us that day, paired with all the physical and mental effort these past days carried but we were nothing but excited about our last two shows at WOA 2022. By that time, we were very experienced with playing our new album, so we decided to give it another shot at our last morning show. We played a smooth set and really had a feeling of great confidence spurred by all the great feedback we got from the last four shows. We again estimated around 50-100 people in the crowd. We loved those morning shows, they all had a nice familial atmosphere.
MORNING SETLIST:
IS
THE FUTURE OF MANKIND
FORCED BY
THE KING OF MONSTERS
BECAUSE
EVERYTHING THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN
WILL BE TAKEN AWAY
THE FRIDGE
This day, nothing was planned for the hiatus. We used the time to explore the festival, took power naps, drank beers, ate pulled pork, had conversations with the Warriors and fans we made. Altogether it was a chill day. Of course, exhaustion and fatigue started to spread, but we knew how to deal with that: a good mixture of the exact right number of beers and a bit of insanity (and a coffee when tiredness gained the upper hand). The hours went by and then it was time for our last show. And what a show that was! Somehow, we got rid of all the nervousness, all the tension, and what was left was pure excitement! As it was our last show, we created a setlist full of all the tracks that go straight from the instruments and amps right into the audience’s face. And the crowd this evening was wicked! Wiggling barriers, people shouting our band name in unison, rhythmic clapping (as far as it was possible with all the rhythmic distraction we put in our songs), people headbanging like crazy, we’ve never ever experienced something like this before. Thinking of the strained feeling from our first evening show when we faced the crowd and were like “no”, this time we all could really enjoy the view that was given this evening. It was awesome to see all these people going crazy to our music and we managed to embrace this situation to get to whole new level of joy of playing. As we could tell, this was the best set we played and this feeling was directly confirmed after the set was done and so many people asked for Shirts, CD’s, Vinyl’s with autographs, one guy even asked for a signed drumsticks and signed picks. Not to forget all the compliments and positive feedback we were given. For us, it was a textbook example of a farewell gig!
EVENING SETLIST:
PROPAGATION OF VIOLENCE
THE TURN
FORCED BY
BROKEN DANCE
ELIS SPEECH
THE KING OF MONSTERS
PROVOKING AS TEENAGE SEX
STICK TO YOUR DAILY ROUTINE
WILL BE TAKEN AWAY
THE FRIDGE
What’s left to say? Thank you and Goodbye WACKEN OPEN AIR, it was a huge experience for us! Hope to see you next year! And not to forget - a big big thank you to the man who made it all possible - we will never forget you, see you for our tour!
THE KITCHEN CREW!
