We're the Wackeneers,
We like drinking beers,
Rape and pillage, rape and pillage
Kill all the fucking queers!

Of course, as the pilsener flowed more this was inverted to "We like fucking queers" and "drink all the fucking beers" and this then segued into that rugby-club favourite, "For we're all queers together!" There was also a local brand of beer, Wacken Beer, which came in bottles with the festival bull's head logo on it and the tag, "Skoal Metalheadz!" which I didn't taste but was probably repackaged Holsten sold at twice the price. A small stand near the beer garden sold soft drinks as well as sealed bags of crushed ice which, in the sort of insanely hot weather we had during the latter half of the festival, were a necessity.

I did, however, find some of the wares on offer at the Metal Market a little bit ironic, though. One stall specialised in black metal from Poland, the Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, a not inconsiderable portion of which was apparently produced by people of a, well, rather fascistic political bent and some even on record labels associated with white supremacist movements. Now although I'm perfectly capable of separating peoples' works from their political views - and many so-called "NSBM" acts have lyrical themes about pre-Christian traditions in their home countries and other forms of National Romanticism rather than going on about why Jews and blacks need death, I found it a wee bit creepy that not a few yards away from a banner bearing a crossed-out swastika and the legend "Metalheadz Against Racism" you could, in effect, pay off the pension funds of openly racist organisations. Then again, a lot of people will buy stuff by Graveland, Temnozor, Nokturnal Mortum, et al, just for the music. Which is, of course, why people come to WOA and the stall owners probably realised that.

There's a spot of fratboy humour about but it should be taken in the spirit in which it's intended. Don't go expecting a Spring Break style syphilis-swapping party, or voluminous amounts of shagging at all really for that matter (the couple who were thusly engaged up against the side of their camper van while Cradle of Filth's song "Coffin Fodder" blared out from within are excepted.) Basically the fratboyishness is reserved to holding up the bottoms of wholesale outers of pilsener with "Titten fur Bier" scrawled on them in permanent marker - and, just before someone starts claiming that we're all a load of sexist dinosaurs, a bunch of female metalheads had a similar device in another area of the campsite saying "Bier fur Titten." They were evidently deemed quite attractive because they had several crumpled cans about the base of their deckchairs. Another individual had cut out several pairs of circles in a roll-up type mattress, and marked them "zu Keine," "Kompakt," "Handvoll," "Standart," "Grosse," and "Hilf mir!" and nobody batted an eyelid really to this blatant objectification of the female form. Though to be fair, there was probably a female counterpart with a "Dick-o-Meter" made similarly. It's all in good humour anyhow; besides, true dyed-in-the-wool Bro-Magnons aren't into proper metal and would not be seen dead with Wackeneers in any case. Not cool enough.

Something that did worry me about the campsite was that it was very tightly packed in when I was there this year. It was so tightly packed in that some Danes in an Astra accidentally backed into the corner of my tent while I was inside and bent one of the poles out of shape a bit. I was, of course, unhurt, but it did very much worry me. Early arrival is highly recommended in order to find space and to avoid incidents like this.

To avoid conflicts of sound and other such messes, acts were scheduled alternately between the True Stage and the Black and Party stages, so that when, for example, Danko Jones was playing on the True Stage, Opeth and Soilwork would be setting up on the Black and Party stages respectively. The plus side of this arrangement is that it's possible to have more bands perform in the three days of the main festivities, but on the minus side, sometimes one has to make some pretty tough choices about who to see next. The Wet Stage simply played all the time, it was small and far away enough to keep itself to itself and it didn't really interfere with other bands playing on the main stages.

Advertising on stage is limited to the equipment used by the bands, the ubiquitous Marshall amplifier brand and the film "Metal: A Headbanger's Journey." It's quite on the cards that that is the way it will remain for the foreseeable future; WOA has lasted 17 years without being bought out by some major media conglomerate (Download, for instance, at Donington Park in the UK, is run by Live Nation, a subsidiary of Clear Channel) and its organisers and adherents would most like it to stay that way. After all, with no sponsors or advertisers to tiptoe round, the organisers can ensure that the acts they book are those that the festival-goers want to see. And the acts that the festival-goers want to see are all well regarded metal bands, all very different styles, be they traditional metal, death metal, melodic death metal, female fronted death metal, black metal, symphonic black metal, black metal/humppa crossover, power metal, cheeseball Tolkien-obsessed power metal, folksy metal which results in not so much circle pits as circle dancing, Viking metal, and many, many more. They do tend to steer clear of nu-metal or things whose genres involve the word "core" though (other than grindcore, as Napalm Death have played there I believe.) Of course, not every artist who played there was metal per se, in 2006 the Canadian alt rock artist Danko Jones played on the True Stage, and the German artist Mambo Kurt, who specialises in covering all manner of songs of all types in a bossa nova or polka style on a Hammond Organ played on the Wet Stage.

Indeed, WOA has grown from being a small local event as it was in 1990 to a major international headbanging happening; practically every band of any significant stature has played there, and even some less well known performers as well. It's also comparatively cheap, as festivals go, well, in terms of ticket prices it is; in 2006, a full three-day ticket would have set you back merely €79, which is about sixty quid in real money. Compare this with certain other festivals I can name, which command ticket prices over twice that, and the money you can save can go towards getting there and back and, of course, that lovely, lovely Wacken Beer. Also some people have been there pretty much since day one; indeed, my trip there in 2006 was the first time I had ever been and I did notice there was a wee bit of a dick-waving contest to see who could produce the oldest official WOA shirt or badge or whatever (a thirty-something French bloke "won" if you must know, with a 1996 shirt.) It's little things like this that make WOA such an unmissable event, even if you're not into psychotic distortion pedals and stacks of Marshall amps.

One should be warned, though, that the weather can be rather changeable up between Hamburg and the Danish border and the combination of rainy spells during the first half of the week and oppressive sunlight during the second half of 2006's event meant that I went off home with half of Schleswig-Holstein stuck to me in the form of tiny little dust particles (via a night camped out on the floor of Bruxelles-Midi station after having been direly warned by a pair of Belgians who looked like Jay and Silent Bob that I'd be pickpocketed and arseraped by Moroccan cottaging enthusiasts within minutes, or something like that, but that's another story) which appeared literally everywhere. So when I got back home to loserville where I lived I was tired and filthy but I didn't care, it was that great. Beer, tasty music, intelligent conversation (well, conversation not about vapid zelebrities or Cristiano Ronaldo anyhow)... what more could I have wanted?

I'm definitely going again next year.