After Helloween were done it was time for another one of Germany’s finest, Blind Guardian. Wacken really went all out to live up to their name for the day; A night to remember...

But let’s go back to the beginning shall we?
Once upon a time, there was a festival in the north-west of Germany, and people from far and wide would travel to its location each and every year for a weekend of fun and games.
This year a travelling group of bards would visit the festival, and even though they had played there several times before, the people still loved to meet up and hear their tales of magic and mystery over and over again.
Still, even such an experienced group of bards such as these could not give its audience a good performance without first checking that their equipment was in order, and thus it came to be that when we awoke to the day of their performance, we woke to hear them play their ballads Fly and Nightfall; they were obviously having a soundcheck and they were gracious enough to let us hear entire songs from their back-catalogue even though it would still be several hours before we would actually see them. Such kind-hearted folk are these German bards...

As time would have it, night did finally fall and the gates to the bard’s magic kingdom would finally be opened to the audience, but first they bid us travel through sacred worlds before welcoming us to dying. All followed gladly, there were even an enormously large group of fans that at this point figured they needed to be even closer to the musicians and thus began a journey of crowd surfing up to the front. There they were swiftly turned away by the festival guards of course, but I’m sure they thought it was worth the trip nonetheless...
Others yet, myself included, chose to show their devotion by loudly singing along, keeping the stories strong with our own voices and thus keeping the adventures alive and ever fresh; Valhalla and The Bard’s Song – In The Forest were two songs were this was especially prominent.
Just as we took over the singing from time to time, so would the bard’s vocalist Hansi Kürsch take some time (quite a lot actually) to just speak to us between the songs. This he chose, much like all the artists before him, to do in the ancient, mystic tongue of the Germans, thus rendering many of us (again myself included) unable to understand what he said. Still, the wheel of time kept turning, and as the Blind Guardian’s ballads were all in the common tongue of the west I had no problem following their imaginations from the other side.

Time sadly did not stand still at this iron hill, and too soon the majesty of this night was drawing near its end. Only one song was left, a tale of a brave man who lived far from here. The tale was known as Mirror Mirror, and to truly mark the end of the night, the bard’s had arranged it so that as they played magic fires and fireworks shot out from around the stage.
Thus this saga ended, and since it had been such a wondrous journey, we could all live happily ever after...

Setlist:

Sacred Worlds
Welcome To Dying
Nightfall
Time Stands Still (At The Iron Hill)
Traveler In Time
Fly
Tanelorn (Into The Void)
Imaginations From The Other Side
Lord Of The Rings
Wheel Of Time
Valhalla
Majesty
The Bard’s Song – In The Forest
Mirror Mirror