After a long and wet, in more ways than one if you catch my drift, day it was time for D-A-D to close down the Wacken festival. After the not so interesting time spent with the other Nordic countries’ highlights, Dimmu Borgir and In Flames, all hope was put on Denmark’s shoulders.

“Liebe plus talent equals concert. Wacken do you have liebe?!”
- Jesper Binzer (vocals/guitar)

Even though it was late at night buy now, D-A-D had still managed to pull a large crowd in front of the Party Stage, a true testament to how popular they have become with their southern neighbours over the years, Of course, no one was to leave disappointed either, so when D-A-D kicked off with A New Age Moving In from their latest album, DIC.NII.LAN.DAFT.ERD. ARK, it was with an explosion of festivities and it didn’t take long for Stig Pedersen to climb on top of the bass-drum, and as soon as Jihad, the second song of the night began, so did the pyro-show!
A lot of the tricks used this night were of course classic staples of the D-A-D liveshow, some straight up and others slightly modified. In this way we were now introduced to the Wacken bird which signalled the beginning of Reconstrucdead, or the nice little touch in the same song where the two brothers were getting into a guitar duel as they stood each on their own amplifier. We of course also got Pedersen’s fireworks helmet, and Laust Sonne’s elevated drumkit for his solo in I Want What She’s Got, but one thing annoyed me a little bit; 90 percent of the time when Binzer addressed the crowd between songs, he chose to do so in German. Now, this certainly went down fine with the local crowd, but for the international fans there wasn’t much hope of following his witty tongue...

When the band was playing, there were no objections however, and people were pretty good at getting a good atmosphere going even though most were getting tired and were drunk out of their minds at this time. It wasn’t necessarily the most physically active crowd at Wacken this year, even though there was some headbanging and some rowdiness at times, but when the band asked for a sing-along, no one dragged their feet in fulfilling their wish; heck, some didn’t even have to wait for an invite! In this manner, the entire first verse of the obvious encore, Sleeping My Day Away, was sung by the crowd, a true and beautiful moment indeed.
After this it was time to sleep away though, and when the band left the stage for the second time, now in a bigger hurry, people understood that the party was over and that Disneyland now truly had closed the gates for this time, and everyone began walking back to whatever dark corner of the festival they came from...

I won’t say that this was the best D-A-D concert I have ever seen, but they once again proved to be tried and professional entertainers who knew how to work a crowd, even if this specific crowd was probably used to something more aggressive than what the four Danes were providing.
We felt and had the liebe (trans. Love in German) however, there was no doubt in this reviewers mind that out of the Nordic bands this day, Denmark had clearly walked off with the gold medal!

Setlist:

A New Age Moving In
Jihad
Isn’t That Wild
Everything Glows
Reconstrucdead
Monster Philosophy
Grow Or Pay
I Want What She’s Got
Bad Craziness
Sleeping My Day Away