A warm and sunny August afternoon at Wacken, and Sepultura was up on the Black Stage.
What better way to celebrate the day?

When it was Sepultura’s time to blast our ear-ways at Wacken this year, they went straight to it through a short intro and diving headlong into Arise, which not surprisingly got the crowd going straight from the beginning. What a way to open!
Moving quickly from song to song, they also blasted the old favourite Refuse/Resist before heading for their latest album with the title track Kairos, all of which was greeted with equal devotion from the many fans gathered in front of the stage.
In fact, much of the show, the first half at the very least, went down this same way; unrelentingly fast, songs played more or less back to back, and a pure thrashfest for old and new-school fans alike. Thankfully both the band-members and the audience had the energy needed for such an onslaught, and while Derrick Green and the others headbanged away up on the stage, the ground was filled with moshing people and a generous flow of crowd-surfers. Very generous in fact, and it didn’t let up for the entire show.

”I see a lot of South American flags out there, that helps making Wacken the coolest festival around!”
- Derrick Green (vocals)

Further into the set, the band needed to have a sip or two of water between songs to keep the spirit up, and in these short breathers Green finally began speaking a bit to the audience. He tried a little bit of German, but had to admit to being really bad at the language only a few words in, after which he switched back to English.
In this language he did applaud the variety of people present and living together at this festival (see above), and he also had the time to dedicate some songs away; Territory went to his South American friends at the festival, and Relentless was dedicated to all metalheads in general for keeping true to their convictions.
The big man did more than speak though; during Choke he had his own drum installed on the stage, which he happily beat away on, something he returned to much later in the set during the Ratamahatta jam session.
After these two breath-taking sessions it was no wonder that Green needed help with the vocals for the final song of the day, Roots Bloody Roots, something the fired up audience did a great job in providing for him.

A great experience together with Sepultura I must confess, with the only downside being the many newer era songs played of which I am not too familiar with (but you can hardly blame the band for that).

Setlist (incomplete):

Arise
Refuse/Resist
Kairos
Just One Fix (Ministry cover)
Choke
Relentless
Troops Of Doom
Territory
Inner Self
Ratamahatta
Roots Bloody Roots