So, this is Metalfest then, is it?

Just to put things straight from the beginning, as you might have read at the festivals info page here at Metalmoments, Metalfest is a rather unique event as it comes to festivals. For one thing, the whole event takes place in three different countries on the very same weekend! Which brings us to the line-up, which is identical at all three locations. This is achieved by the festival shipping the bands (and hopefully their equipment) between the festival sites, so that the running order is the only thing you need to worry about.
Anyway, now I’m sidetracking already before I even got started, the point was that at this, our very first visit to this special event, it was the German edition we took part in.

We arrived just shortly into the afternoon, after beating around the German country-roads for far longer than planned (if speed is what you’re after, better stick to the autobahn), and a few bands had already played their gig. Luckily for us, there were no lines at all, and the organization was helpful and quick with the service, so it wasn’t long until we had put our tent up and had the first beer. The sun was high in the sky, the drinks were still relatively cold as opposed to the very warm weather, and metal lay just around the corner. Life was good…
A quick look around quickly taught us the layout of the area with the main stage with all the food and drink vendors just opposite, the second stage which was a large open-walled tent stage for the not yet enormous bands (where we would later in the evening see Entombed) and the short walk-way between the two stages where the mandatory metal-market lay. All in all, no more than a few minutes time would take you from one end of the festival area to the other, but the genius of layout made noise from the one stage almost inaudible at the other one, which proved a good thing, as they were often enough, if not always, overlapping in time.
This may sound very small, but it quickly turned out that more space would have been almost a waste as there was plenty of space for the somewhere around 10K of metalheads visiting this place. Only at the largest bands on the main stage did we ever see a really tight crowd, and even at these times it wasn’t worse than what could be expected or seen at other festivals.
Even the camping area was easily navigated, with lots of space for everyone, and large roads to go wherever you wanted to be. Which incidentally wasn’t far away either, there were a couple of food and drink vendors outside the fence to the festival area which saved some time if you were hungry, but not ready to face the music, as it were, and I never saw any big hold-ups in the security gates either. Perfect for all of us who never seem to be able to go in time…

Well then, what about the music you may ask yourself? If the festival isn’t all that big, maybe it doesn’t have enough pull to get any big or interesting names, huh?
Wrong, the reason our eyes were opened to Metalfest (probably through Facebook or some such place) in the first place was that it kept on adding names we really wanted to see to the billing, and they weren’t so small either! The three headliners were Amon Amarth, Arch Enemy and Sabaton, and the attentive reader should already know that at least two of these names were enough to make us lift our asses from the computer-screen (why they were there in the first place we don’t even know) and get the hell out of town and onto the German roads to metal bliss.
Still, if these bands weren’t enough to tickle your taste buds, then what about the aforementioned Entombed, Wintersun (this was an exclusive show at the time of announcement I think, but my memory has been known to fail me…), Amorphis, Kataklysm, Equilibrium, and I could keep this up for a long time yet, but let us just leave it at that for now. In short, this was possibly the best line-up for a festival so far this year, at least going on the ones we were considering!

So, what are we up to now? Great weather, perfect layout, good service, amazing line-up, our most preferred crowd-size… What could possibly go wrong? Prices?
Uh oh, there we go, we’ve found the sore spot, the snake in the Garden of Eden… Or so you would think, but again I must disappoint you!
Ticket prices were in the very considerable size of 90 Euro (3 days incl. camping and parking), you could get a decent meal for around 5 Euro and beers were 3 Euro each (with an extra 1 Euro deposit for the cup)…
So, it was just about this time that I felt I was quickly running out of options for things to complain about, and we can’t have that now can we? A festival without complaints, why that is completely unheard of!
And yes, there was a thing which I found a little bit annoying at times, and that was the lack of garbage cans. As the decent, upstanding citizen I would of course never think of throwing my waste on the ground, which at several points led me to carry around old tissues and similar things for far longer than I cared for. Still, in stark contrast to this, I would still write Metalfest down as one of the cleanest festivals I’ve visited. Sure there were things lying about, but not very much, not like you’d expect after visiting other festivals, same size or larger…

At this point in the review, I feel it’s time to return to the music for a bit, and I feel like mentioning my personal high-lights of the festival.
My fears for having the bands I wanted to see double-booked after noticing that the main and the second stage were active at the time were luckily turned to shame, and the only things I missed were a couple of (for me) less important bands which I really only was thinking about since they were there. In addition to this, I was happy to find that Metalfest’s running-order was built so that I had at least one favourite concert each day, instead of banging them all together at once. This way, there was never a dull day, and that was great!
But anyway, the favourites then.
The first day Amon Amarth was the main stage headliner, and anyone who’s visited this site before should know that this is a band which close to always blows all competition out of the water, and this day was no exception. We had actually seen them in concert only the week before, and yet they had obviously had time to renew and expand upon the show. Great stuff! Entombed did a nice follow-up as they headlined the second stage.
The second round went to Finland. Thaurorod opened the day up for us in a very pleasant way, and Wintersun killed it (in a positive way of course) later in the evening. So now we were evenly scored, 2-2, and on the last day of the festival the battle would be decided as both nations pulled out the big guns; in the white and blue corner we had Amorphis, finely tuned and armed with a brand new album in the baggage. On the other hand, in the blue and yellow corner, we had the seasoned fighters of Sabaton, with no new material, but fresh experience from battlefields around the world…
Well? What do you think?
I say, Finland can keep their measly ice-hockey trophy for all I care, because where it counts, in metal that is, Sweden kicked their asses!
Most unexpectedly, Amorphis completely dropped the ball on this one and turned out to be the biggest disappointment of the entire festival, and Sabaton were quick to pick it up and make a final home run!
Alright, I’m killing myself in sports references here, and I’m not even interested in that sort of stuff, but the point was that Sabaton played an excellent gig, Amorphis did not.
The biggest surprise however came from another strong hockey nation, Canada, in the form of Kataklysm. I wasn’t expecting much from this band, but they actually kicked ass in the extremely warm sunshine.

Alright, enough with the sports already! Now it’s time to round this thing off and think of something clever to write as a conclusion…
Honestly, there’s just not much more to be said, except Metalfest 2011 was one of the best investments we’ve made in a long time and it really raised the bar for the rest of the festivals this summer…