2018 was the warmest summer in Denmark since, oh, I guess since the world was still made up only of molten rocks and lava.
So what did Metalmoments decide to do? Go south for the holidays of course! More specifically, south to warm Slovenia and the metal holiday resort of Metaldays.
Because, why wouldn’t we go to an even warmer place, when we already had more than enough at home?

Well, because of the festival, for one thing. And a lot more, of course, like the country surrounding the festival. But more on that later. Or no, you know what, let’s just get into that straight away, and then we’ll have the big festival talk further down. So, if that’s all you’re here for, you could probably start scrolling now. But you’re not, you know it and we know it - you want the entire stream of misinformation. Right? Right?!

Ok. So, yeah. The truth of the matter is, we spend less time at the actual festival with each passing year. Don’t get me wrong, being at the festival is a party - there’s lot’s to do, there’re many different activities you can partake in, and if you don’t, you can just spend your time at the campground or at the river, and still have a great time. With the way the weather was this year, I’d say the river was the preferable place, so you could take a nice, cooling dip once in a while - I did, and it was wonderful!
On the other hand, this was our 12th time coming to Metaldays, including a few years in the beginning, where we came as regular guests. And it’d be a shame not to explore the surrounding country as much as the festival.

With that in mind, we’ve been staying at a boarding house of sorts (they call it a boarding house, I’d call it a hotel), where we explore some wonderful local cuisine - the trout is to die for!
In addition to this, with the aid of a fellow guest (both at the boarding house and of the festival), we explored more specific spots in the surrounding nature. In years past, we’ve been driving randomly to and fro, and while this has been fun, actually having a plan of where to go and what to see has been highly rewarding as well, and a nice change o’ pace for us. On one of our trips, we drove up the mountain west-north-west of Volče, gaining a spectacular view of the Soča valley and the festival area (you’ll find a picture of this above), and driving even further up, we encountered an old WWI trench system, and stood on a rock marking the border between Slovenia and Italy.
On another trip, straight up into the mountains north of Zatolmin, much further than I had expected, and along the most harrowing roads known to man, we came upon Javorca, Memorial Church of the Holy Spirit, a picturesque building built during WWI, and some slightly less picturesque, yet equally architecturally astounding, bunkers built for WWII (albeit, except for the spiders residing there now, the latter never came into use).
Yet another trip, this to the mountains east of Tolmin, had us walking along a visually grand (yet geographically quite narrow) nature path, leading up to a wondrous waterfall.
This was all great, and we highly recommend you check out the nature of the area on your next visit as well.

Back to the festival!
There had been some grumblings this year about Metaldays not really having many real headliner quality bands. There was of course the return of Judas Priest, whom we had seen recently in Copenhagen, but other than that, the headliners didn’t really feel like, well, headliners.
The otherwise clear scheduling trend of having a black metal band end each day on the second stage, was only broken on the first real day of the festival, where Behemoth (yeah, yeah, they’re not truly a black metal band, but suck it up buttercup, you know what I mean) headlined the main stage, and Diamond Head ended the day on the second stage. After that, we had Accept, Kataklysm, Judas Priest, and Children Of Bodom mainstage headlining, and Watain, Belphegor, Myrkur, and Primordial closing the second stage. As we can all agree, good bands to be sure, but headlining quality for this renowned festival - with few exceptions, not as sure… Primordial stood out of course, they kill each and every show they play. So there.

What Metaldays lacked in the headlining department, one could say they did their best to counterweigh with a varied and well-rounded middle and lower section.
We revisited old acquaintances in the death department, such as Cannibal Corpse and Obituary, took a swing by more modern music in the guise of Soulfly and Jinjer, while Ensiferum and Epica held up the more epic sections of the program.
What Metaldays 2018 definitely held as a strong suit though, was in making new acquaintances. Not all of these were new as bands of course, but they were all first time experiences for us. Like Black Star Riders, the rock n’ rollers, or The Lurking Fear, a Stockholm death star conglomerate which my love for Lovecraft forbade me to skip. I could go on listing names, but let’s just give a last mention to those who surprised me, either because of how good they were, or how weird I felt watching them. In the odd end of the scale, we had such names as Igorrr, whom I’ve heard quite a bit about, but never really took the time to listen to or watch before this - and equally strange to some degree, and in their own unique way, was Carpathian Forest. Not so much with their music perhaps, but if there ever was a band that embodied WTF when it comes to performing, they’d be it.
Going back a little, I mentioned Metaldays also had some uniquely positive surprises (to be honest, both Igorrr and Mantar were positive acquaintances as well), and above all else in this category was VUUR. I fell across their profile by pure coincidence, while browsing through the festival’s program, and instantly recognised two faces in the band. You, like me, may not have heard about VUUR, but it may be more likely that you’ve heard of one or both of the following - Anneke van Giersbergen (ex-The Gathering, Agua de Annique) and Ed Warby (ex-Gorefest, The 11th Hour). That show was awesome, and when they finished their set with a cover of The Gathering’s Strange Machines, pure magic!

Even though Metaldays anno 2018 didn’t seem too convincing to some of us on paper, it held quit a few surprise punches, and overall delivered a positive impression.
VUUR, as you can imagine, was certainly part of shaping this, as was Primordial, but there were many others. Mantar, whom Lunah Lauridsen had one previous encounter with, to name but one.
There were a few low-points as well, nothing surprising in that. Belphegor has previously entertained us, but the air had gone out of it this time around. Or maybe it was just me. Kataklysm surprised by delivering, if not bad, then a confoundingly indifferent show. And the old school death metal heroes Cannibal Corpse and Obituary completely bombed, I’m sad to say.
However, the good outweighed the bad, and when we had a break in the musical program, it was nice to go down to the river, or stay in the shade with a cold Laško. Apparently Laško has changed from green to black base-colour in their marketing, but for obvious reasons that fit very well with the festival, and the taste was unsurpassed as usual.

I realize I’m not describing much of the festival life this year. The main reason above can be found at the start of this article, and there are only so many ways you can describe meeting up with friends from around the globe, watching people get smashed by a giant jenga, and enjoying the unrivalled picturesque surroundings of the Metaldays festival, without feeling repetitive. So there you have it - another year in this metal paradise has come and gone. And Metalmoments fully approve of this. We're just not sure what the great idea on our side about the heat was though..?