Wacken Open Air

Wacken Open Air (W:O:A) is a summer open air heavy metal music festival. It takes place annually in the small town of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany. With 80,000 festival visitors, and including personnel a total of roughly 86,000 attendees in 2011, it attracts all kinds of metal music fans, such as fans of black metal, death metal, power metal, thrash metal, gothic metal, folk metal, and even metalcore, nu metal and hard rock from around the world.

The festival was first held in 1990 as a small event for local German bands. By 1998 the event had become the major festival on the European metal calendar and has included over 70 bands from all over Europe, North America and Australia. W:O:A is usually held at the beginning of August and lasts three days, during which the festival-goers camp on several large camping grounds surrounding the actual festival area. The 70 or more bands perform across four separate stages over the course of the event.

Since 2002, the Wacken Firefighters, the local volunteer fire department band, opens the festival.

The 2009 edition set a sales record; it sold out on 30 December 2008, twice a year. All 70,000 tickets were sold over 200 days before the opening of the festival. However, the 2012 edition broke this record; sold out on 29th November, a good 8 months before the opening of the festival all 75.000 tickets were sold. The W:O:A 2012 took place with 137 bands, performing on seven stages.

Famous quotes containing the words open and/or air:

    They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.
    Thomas Brackett Reed (1839–1902)

    The names of those who in their lives fought for life,
    Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre.
    Born of the sun they traveled a short while towards the sun,
    And left the vivid air signed with their honour.
    Stephen Spender (1909–1995)