Luxembourg & Ultima Ratio: The Complete Collectors' Edition
And I am back. Properly. Here, for your delectation and delight, is the official Luxembourg and Ultima Ratio tour diary.
As ever, this is long. If your name is Hannah, on the other hand, and you're bored, this should occupy a decent amount of time.
Ja katso...
DYDD MERCHER 31.10.2007: WELSH NOISE IN CAMBRIDGE
Some of you know it as Halloween. I know it as the day I would set off for an event I had been looking forward to for half the year. It was also to be The Test Drive as stated by Archangel Chris a few weeks before; the thought of a road trip both to Ultima Ratio and to Wacken the next summer, and many more afterwards, was instrumental in my decision to spend a ridiculous amount of cash on the Intergalactic Battlecruiser, further known as The S, whatever "Das Metalmobil Sechs" would be in Japanese (メタルモビール ろく is about the best I can come up with) or Mjölner, given its plate that I paid extra for. As a further bonus, my one remaining problem of finding somewhere to stay the night on the way down was relieved by the promise of an interesting night out in Cambridge, with Markachu offering crash space afterwards and the promise that Linda would wake me up at the required time (four in the morning...) as she left for work. And so, my Halloween was spent in the Man On The Moon, in Cambridge - a venue I'd not been to since Fire & Forget played there four and a half years ago with whatever drummer had not spontaneously combusted at the time. It was one of those days where I thought I had all the time in the world, soon realised I hadn't, and a mad dash down the M1-A14-A1-A428 route that I now use these days saw me turn up having just missed The Tupolev Ghost. Markachu described them as "really good for a screamo band" - which I'll never be sure is a compliment or not. Sons Of Merrick were a band I'd previously seen at Rock City a while back, most notable for playing Louisiana-esque stoner rock (which also reminds me in a way of The Atomic Bitchwax) that took The Legion Of Doom to the cleaners. Their guitarist even gave me a free copy of the four-track sampler that they were selling for £3, just because I asked him whether there was a full album out. There is, or rather there will be when they find someone to release it - amazingly, they haven't asked Rise Above yet. And finally, there was Taint, the "Welsh Mastodon" as I tagged them before, who I'd been mightily impressed with when they supported Clutch earlier in the year; it was good to hear a longer set, with full vocals this time instead of a valiant effort against a throat infection. A couple of kids trying to cuddle both me and Markachu and making the worst attempt at a two-man moshpit were rather less welcome, though. As we left, Markachu swiped the pumpkin he'd carved the Taint logo into, and a fine effort it was. Even better was that Linda had helpfully deposited the sofa cushions onto the floor, making an improvised bed... which I had to spurn for another 20 minutes or so for a quick splash and dash at the nearby Tesco's, having consulted Mappy and found out I would not have enough fuel to make it to Jabbeke...
DONNESCHDEG 01.11.2007: GROUSSHERZOGTUM LËTZEBUERG
The alarm rang at 03:55; it was dark, but had it been 06:55 it would have not been any lighter. I was up and dressed before Linda intervened; there was just enough time to eat the pork pie and down the can of Relentless I'd left in the fridge the night before, in preparation for a sharp exit, and arrival at Dover before 07:00. Off I was again, past Tesco's in the dark, and straight onto the M11, where I was battering towards London at a vast rate of knots. Many of you (at least those of you in the UK) will be well aware of my deliberate avoidance of any road covered by SPECS, which is why I continued straight on down the M11 instead of changing to the M25, where a nasty surprise would be lying in wait on the Kent section. The intention was to use the North Circular, unaffected as it would be by the traffic which would only arrive at "rush" hour. Progress was smooth until I encountered the Woolwich Ferry area, where I took wrong turn after wrong turn, having not noticed that there was as left turn that I should have made 20 minutes earlier. Arriving at the ferry I was told I should take the Blackwall Tunnel if I was in a hurry; with no A-Z to consult, there was only one option left; retrace my route, and take the A13 through Barking. This was a faster method, but all the extra time I had allowed for the diversion had evaporated. And it also meant taking the M25. And so the Dartford Bridge was followed immediately by the "Average speed check" warning signs, and... there they were, the malevolent yellow vultures, up there in the dark where only the menacing red eyes of the infra-red spotlights could be seen. My solution was to revert to a mobile roadblock with the cruise control set to an unnervingly low 35 mph in the 50 mph limit; the sight of large headlights flashing in my rear view mirror means that the lorry driver who was right up my arse was not best pleased. Fuck him; my driving licence is more important than his entire existence. The five mile stretch seemed to take for ever, and no sooner was I out the danger zone and onto a completely dark M20 than the cruise control was disengaged, and I was off like a scalded cat. In no time at all, "114" was lit up in the digital display in front of me. I decided not to take the piss too much, but when the next sign said Dover was 58 miles away, and with only 50 minutes to the recommended check-in time, some further very creative interpretation of the number "70" was called for. But, somehow, I made it to the port at 07:10, still well in time for the 08:00 crossing, and an inevitably expensive fried breakfast on board with quite possibly the nastiest black pudding I've ever had - but I still ate it all. The mist which blocked any view of France failed to clear, but there were no problems with continental driving conditions on the other side. And, of course, the legal limit in France is 81 mph. Barely a few minutes later I was over the border in Belgium, and looking for Jabbeke services to fill up with Belgian diesel, at €1.184 per litre, or 82.3p in our money, which given that it's risen to over a quid a litre here, is a good deal. Somehow I have always managed to miss the service station that's even closer to the French border; I missed it again, being in the wrong lane as I barrelled past the 500-metre board. I couldn't even remember the name, just that it sounded a bit like Människopesten. That's what listening to a lot of Finntroll will do for you. And, unbelievably, I missed Jabbeke as well, thinking I didn't have to take the turn-off onto a smaller N-road... turns out the N-road leads back onto the motorway as well, and I couldn't hold Belgium's notoriously awful signposting to blame this time. So I was near Gent by the time Mjölner was allowed to drink its fill; the tank was absolutely brimmed, and progress was smooth and uneventful all the way to the border, with no cock-ups round Ring Brussel the way there had been on the Wacken Deathtank trip of four years ago, and only the occasional stop to look at the map.
The standard way would have been to keep on bombing down the A4, but you are all aware I don't like doing things the easy way. I turned off the motorway at Arlon, and took the much smaller N4 instead, crossing the border and stopping immediately at Steinfort, so I could take a picture of myself with the Luxembourg border sign. I rejoined the motorway at the next opportunity to be greeted with a strange mish-mash of different road sign styles; Luxembourg is a tiny country so you'd think they'd be able to make them all consistent easily enough, but no... maybe they can't be bothered? There were speed limit signs in both the Dutch and German style, exit signs that had been borrowed from France, and a mixture of distance and destination boards in both the French style and one unique (well, probably) to Luxembourg. Still, it was no hindrance to finding my way into the city - and directly into the centre at that, with a couple of stops to read one of the behemoth maps I'd made from stitching together screenshots from Google Maps and Multimap when I was bored at work one day. Eventually I found my bearings, drove straight towards the rail station, parked up for another look at the map... and saw the Hotel Walsheim staring straight back at me across the road.
The Walsheim is a two-star hotel, apparently the only two-star hotel in the whole of Luxembourg, and to an extent it showed; some of the signs would be more at home in a fish and chip shop, and the place looks like it hasn't been decorated since 1975. It gave me the impression of the hotel equivalent of student houses. But what I'm looking for is a bed for the night and hopefully a decent breakfast, which in the end is what the Walsheim gave me, and for €65 for the night, the lowest price I could find in the entire city. You could even say I'm annoyed that there were no one-star hotels, because I just want the basics, although cast your minds back to last year's Norway trip, and I'll admit that the Seierstad Gjestergård was pushing the limits a bit, being only one step up from a caravan. Rather better was the discovery that, 12 years after my French GCSE, my level of French was still just about enough to communicate with the hotel owner whose English was just about non-existent, although I do not and never have had the accent, which is why the Parisians the weekend before had spotted le rosbif coming from a mile away. Having obtained my key and deposited my gear in the room, it was straight out to investigate Luxembourg's offerings to the beer world. Previously, I had found a Dutch website detailing its entire output; I had printed in the lab before leaving and, for whatever reason, left it there. So my first foray was into a backstreet dive on Rue Joseph Junck, which was full of grimy old men smoking Gauloises who looked quite suspicious of the obvious étrangeur who had dared to come in for a half of Diekirch - which in the end was no more than a standard lager, and as I found out later, is churned out by the bucketload by Interbrew, as is Mousel. I thought I might have more luck, and friendlier company, in the city centre, so I was off wasting no time except to attempt a few photos of the more interesting buildings and monuments along the way - hindered by the darkness until I discovered the "night snapshot" setting on the camera, which combined with the use of the wall as an improvised tripod, had a few successes. Luxembourg appears to be built on a crater; two huge and very tall viaducts link the north and south sides of the city centre, and all the interesting bits were on the north side.
Penetration of the larger breweries in Luxembourg is almost total; every street contained at least three or four bars, bistros or restaurants, all displaying a prominent Mousel, Diekirch or Bofferding sign, and I wondered if I was going to get any variety at all. Still, I tried a café-bar on Avenue de Monterey, called Banana's, which was offering Bofferding; inside, rather than the standard single tap, there were five, one offering Battin Gambrinus, which was formerly independent but now under the Bofferding umbrella. Still, it was more interesting than Diekirch, reminding me of one of the more powerful German lagers such as Löwenbräu. Drinking my Battin Gambrinus, I took a look at the menu and saw Wäissen Ourdaller and Wëllen Ourdaller on offer; they looked interesting, and I thought I'd give the Wëllen a go. To my surprise and delight, I recognised the bottle from seeing the beer's website which was listed on the Dutchman's review as being the same place responsible for the Cornelyshaff rye beer, the one I really wanted to track down. It listed the address of the brewery, which I had planned to visit, only I had left the address in the lab... a good hour was spent enjoying both the Ourdaller beers, reading the English newspaper on offer (the Daily Sieg-Heil... ugh), filling in the Codeword, and explaining to the barman in shattered French what I was doing in Luxembourg in the first place.
7 pm arrived; and due to my continuing hearing problems I was unsure whether the hotel owner had mentioned "le petit déjeuner à sept heures" or just "le déjeuner". What he said was confirmed when I returned to the hotel to find the dining room empty. It was a good time to pick up my coat, though, as it was bastard cold outside. There was some random wandering, and some attempts to find the Palais Grand-Ducal (which I think I found the rear entrance of), and a brief conversation with an Irishman who was pissed off his face (who says stereotypes are all false?) Further random wandering in an attempt to find food that wasn't curry or kebabs led me to a small Italian restaurant, which seemed a decent enough option. I was not intending to be there long, especially as the service was rapid (my tortellini carbonara arrived within ten minutes of entering the restaurant), but was soon engaged in conversation with an old man called Nigel and his Belgian friend who run a recruitment business; Nigel offered me some of his wine and it would have been sheer idiocy to refuse. Soon I found out his connection with Luxembourg; he'd met and married a Luxembourger 20 years previously, had set up a business there, and moved to the south of France as soon as he realised what the people were like. It seems his main problem was that everyone has too much money, none of them know what to do with it, and very few have any motivation to get any qualifications in anything at all on the grounds that they don't need to. He was also quite dismissive of Luxembourg's beers but I did at least try to point him in the direction of the Ourdaller beers at Banana's... Further, and less welcome, information was that it was a public holiday (All Saints' Day, apparently) which explained why just about everywhere was closed and why there were so few people on the streets. This translated into utter frustration when I tried to find more beer; I figured I'd go back to Banana's, but it had already closed at not long after ten, as had everywhere else... all I could do was go back to the hotel rather earlier than I thought I would. But still, I had already made an important discovery that meant the next day would be interesting...
FREITAG 02.11.2007: BEER OR NO BEER?
Friday morning came with the problem that my alarm failed to fire. My phone has been on the blink for a week or so now, and with the messages such as "Insert SIM" when the SIM is very definitely installed comes the lack of any useful sound, such as an alarm going off. So I woke up at 9:34 with only 26 minutes of breakfast left... but there were still some rolls, and a fair amount of ham and cheese left, by the time I arrived. The lack of a shower, though, was annoying; there was a shower in existence, but hot water was not forthcoming. Neither was there a plug in the basin... so I was forced into la douche mexicaine, which was not ideal. Still, I thought about obtaining coffee - more than I'd had in the hotel, and after a brief foray through the city centre to take more photos of the scenes I'd tried to get in the dark (including finding the main gate of the Palais Grand-Ducal this time), I ended up back in Banana's. Further conversation in stuttering French informed me I would not be able to take away a few bottles of the Ourdaller beers (but still, if you don't ask, you don't get...) - so I looked round a couple of supermarkets, only to find the beers from the standard breweries. There was slight conversational trouble with the girl at the checkout - I think she was trying to ID me, but after attempting German instead of French and being greeted with "acht und zwanzig", she relented rapidly and I left with Diekirch Grand Cru, Bofferding Hausbéier, and three brews from Brasserie Simon - which, it seems, is tied in with Ourdaller in some way, so I'm expecting those to be good.
But the time came to leave the capital, and getting out was a lot easier than getting in... until I left the ring road. I should, according to the map, have transferred straight from the A1 to the A7, heading north towards Ettelbruck and Diekirch... but the map lied. And I had failed to memorise all the exact details of where I was supposed to be heading for... all I knew is that I wanted to go north to Heinerscheid, which wasn't even shown. Buggering about ensued, involving turning onto what I thought was the N7, turning round and going the other way, heading back towards Luxembourg city, reading the map again, properly memorising the details, and finding that when I'd turned round the first time, then I was going in the right direction - to Ettelbruck, not Echternach. Finally on the right road, driving through Luxembourg was something of an odd experience. Everything in Luxembourg city was written in French. Having found the way towards Ettelbruck (a German-sounding name if ever there was one), when I stopped at a petrol station, everything was still written in French. Barely a couple of miles up the road, stopping at McDonald's for lunch (which is no better than it is here, unfortunately), the menu and all the signs were in German. Then, in the next village, we were back to French again. And let's not forget that Luxembourg has its own language which can be seen in random places such as advertising boards and on shopping bags, confusing the issue even further...
Eventually, though, the roads widened - generally to three lanes, two uphill and one downhill, and progress was reasonably quick, although there was one hindrance; being stuck in a right-hand-drive car behind a tractor that could do 24 mph flat out with no way of seeing where the traffic was on the other side was far from enjoyable, and it took the creative use of a left-turn filter lane to pass the mobile roadblock, in a move that I would usually consider truly imbecilic at home... but needs must when the devil vomits in your kettle. Heinerscheid was finally reached at about 15:00; Cornelys Haff, with its adjoining Ourdaller brewery, was open for business and they had plenty out of me. Six bottles each of Wäissen and Wëllen, plus two each of Okult No.1 Blanche and Millevertus Spelzbéier, and still change from 20 euros. Score. Further score was obtained in Wemperhardt, a tiny village right on the Belgian border; on one side of a roundabout is the border itself (really, right slap bang on the exit) and on the other side is a Total garage selling diesel at the standard Luxembourgish price of €1.007 per litre (or 70.1p in our money). I had intended to leave filling up in Luxembourg for as long as possible so the tank was at its emptiest when the filling came... and this was about as close as it will ever get, probably anywhere.
Over the border, into the Ardennes forest, and straight onto a windy-twisty road which supposedly led to the motorway into Germany. A clump of fog descended faster than a lift with the cables cut, with the consistency of wallpaper paste - much like what London was notorious for in the fifties. Visibility was severely restricted, and there was no view at all over the viaducts into the deep valleys, but this was unlikely to stop the average clart in a BMW from battering into the gloom at 90-odd. I decided to stay well out of their way, and negotiate my way into Germany, where I could join them in the fast lane - legally. Unfortunately, the fog failed to clear on reaching Aachen, and was only replaced by darkness and rain for the rest of the journey - although I could clearly see the roadsign advertising the turn-off towards the amusingly-named Titz. Furthermore, I ended up misreading the map and turned into Essen instead of Oberhausen... though with the efficiency of the German road network it wasn't exactly hard to retreat and take the correct route. My instinctive sense of direction returned on entering Oberhausen, as a couple of times when I thought I'd taken a wrong turn, I hadn't - and the Hotel Tryp Centro Oberhausen was revealed before me. It's a three-star job, but felt like a massive step up from the Walsheim; I'd have been happy staying at their level providing there was a working shower available - which, here, there was - along with several other frills round the edges that I can't say I needed. Still, it was all of ten minutes' walk from the Turbinenhalle, which was far less than many others would have to come.
The evening was to be spent meeting up with Paul and - originally - others, but they went missing in action due to turning up on the day of the festival, shacking up with the performers, or other such excuses. Paul's hotel was hard enough to find on my map - which didn't state where the Hauptbahnhof was - that we had to meet up outside a hospital, which would hopefully not be a reminder of things to come. But meet we did, and out first stop was a tiny bar just near the corner of Falkensteinstraße which served Diebels Alt (as featured in one of Onkel Tom's drinking songs) - to anyone except foreigners, so it seemed, as I stood there watching Paul drink his half-pint (no large measures here), rattling coins in my hand in an "I want to be served" way, and receiving no attention at all from the woman at the bar who was more interested in playing some kind of drinking game with another of the punters. After what seemed like forever I finally managed to order two beers at a time - so we left once those two were downed with no desire to wait a further ice age for any more. And the people inside spoke a strange language - whatever it was, it certainly wasn't German. I could pick up the odd German word here and there, but otherwise it was a strangely mangled dialect, and we were nowhere near Switzerland or Bavaria. Odd.
The rest of the evening was the kind of crushing disappointment that I could never have expected. Here's a tip for you all: Oberhausen, it seems, is the town for Germans who don't want to be German. In a country so inextricably linked to beer as Germany is, the difficulty of finding somewhere to drink in Oberhausen is as staggering as its ease in Luxembourg. Most of the evening - five hours of it - was spent wandering not-quite-aimlessly round both back streets and main roads, in an attempt to find somewhere to drink, and the few places that we did find were usually empty. The first backstreet bar-plus-small-restaurant we entered had absolutely nobody serving, and we left after five minute of standing around like lemons wondering if anyone was going to appear; the next, fortunately, had some barstaff and served Thier Pilsener, which wasn't too bad; the next place we stopped was, of all places, a kebab shop. I'd been trying to avoid the usual Turkish takeaway specialities but we were both properly hungry by this time, and had a doner kebab pizza (yes, seriously) with a bottle of Diebels. Only in Germany does the late-night kebab not signal that the beer has stopped flowing. The final two destinations were a crowded bar tacked on the side of a theatre, which was far too trendy and arty for my liking, but at least offered us Franziskaner Hefe-Weißbier, and finally, a larger bar of the kind I'd seen on every street in Luxembourg. Definitely the best beer I had all night was in there, the dark Uerige Alt. Had I known about the place earlier I'd have happily spent all night in there, but it was not to be. It was probably a good thing I'd not drunk too much, though, as the next day was to be an early start...
SAMSTAG 03.11.2007: KRIEG
08:30 was greeted with the sound of my alarm failing to sound the way it should; I was only woken up by the sound the phone vibrating on the bedside table. Breakfast consisted of cereals, three cups of coffee, four slices of heavy rye bread with raspberry jam, four sausages, a pile of scrambled eggs, and about twelve rashers of bacon - what may have been "America's favorite [sic]", Oscar Meyer, given the sheer amount of lard dripping off it. This served two purposes: not only did I have to get my money's worth (a whacking €12.50), but I knew this would be my last meal until at least three in the morning. Having crammed until I could cram no more, I headed for the Turbinenhalle where a large crowd had already gathered by 10:30. Fortunately, as it was something of a disjointed mob, I strolled straight to the front where the action was; this action being a few dedicated Viking Metal fans who had brought a massive supply of mead, and not being allowed to take the glass bottles inside, were determined to drink it all on the way in. So that was my first free mead for the day...
We stood and watched under a cartoon of Hitler wearing stockings and a short skirt demanding arschficken from a couple of Nazi officers (I'm not making this up...) as the entry time of 11:00 came and went, more mead was drunk and one of the Germans took a lot of photos of us all standing in the queue.
Finally, about 11:30 we were allowed in, and after gaining another fine piece of wrist furniture, I made a mad dash for the front rail. I needn't have hurried; I was one of the first ten people in, and all the others, being Germans, had made a beeline for the bar. There was time to relieve myself of a further 17 euros for an Ultima Ratio t-shirt and a mug of mead provided by Metmann for future reference. Then, having clamped myself to the front rail like an Opeth fanboy, I sat and watched for a good half hour as the rail filled up... very slowly. Finally, 12:15 arrived, a quarter of an hour after the first band were due on, but on they came...
WOLFCHANT gave the festival a decent enough start, especially given their obvious response to shouts of "Lauter!" from the Germans after one track. They are in very much the same vein as Ensiferum, although like those other copycats in Equilibrium, it's unlikely they'll scale those heights. So I settled for some tunefully folky metallic entertainment and was impressed enough with Guardians Of The Forest to have the brilliant idea to use the video facility on my camera to record what I thought of each band after their set, lest I forget what impression they may have made - and it is for this reason I can bring you several completed setlists. So, a fine way to kick off; onwards and upwards. MINAS MORGUL were next up, and brought with them the only pyrotechnics of the day... or rather, pyro-non-technics given that it was a bowl of burning paraffin and a couple of torches each side of the stage. Musically they're black metal with the odd few Falkenbachian wails thrown in for good measure. Blut Und Eisen confirmed Norway certainly doesn't have the monopoly on black metal these days, neither do Korpiklaani have it all their own way on the drinking songs; witness Wie's Uns Gefällt with its loud chants of "Bier! Bier! Bier!" in the middle... One final point to note is that though the Turbinenhalle is very much the same size as Brixton Academy, it doesn't suffer the same problems such as the sloping floor or the non-existent sound right at the front, and Minas Morgul profited well from that; their sound was pin-sharp. Maybe they were aided and abetted by seemingly half of the crew who were wearing their Todesschwadron Ost t-shirts. It was round about this time that Gemma turned up and had missed Wolfchant at least; still, there was plenty to come.
WAYLANDER, I reckon, have always been better live than on record, at least that's the impression that comparing their Bloodstock performance a few years ago to The Light, The Dark And The Endless Knot gave me. And so it was repeated this time, with a set combining a fair slug of new material from their yet-to-be-released album, Honour Amongst Chaos, meshing seamlessly with the old favourites from Reawakening Pride Once Lost; The Light... was completely ignored. Woad-covered faces, tin whistles and Grandpa's guitars of some description were evident throughout, A Hero's Lament (about Cú Chulainn, for the uninitiated) was dedicated to "anyone who had come from Scotland, England, Ireland... Wales as well, why not?" Nice to see they weren't excluding the not-Celtic feckin' bastards - are you listening, Cruachan? They did more than enough to convince me the next album will be worth picking up.
Earlier on, Minas Morgul's bassist had limped on stage on crutches, and had spent the entire set playing his bass with his right knee resting on a stool; he still pulled off a great performance despite being obviously kaputt. Which made it all the more irritating that Equilibrium had cried off only a few days before, apparently "they're all sick". Well, if Minas Morgul could make it... in their place, "Do you want to hear some Dutch Battle Metal?" from THRONAR. They're not a like-for-like replacement; Thronar are more in the Thyrfing mould, in that much the same type of grandiose, parpy-horn keyboards that ran through Valdr Galga blared over the top of what Manowar would undoubtedly have sounded like had they actually grown up in Scandinavia (or grown up at all, for that matter). While their start was about as weak as it could get, with barely any sound reaching my already-subdued ears (a problem which afflicted most of the bands, actually), once they had turned the volume up and were into their stride, the loss of Equilibrium no longer mattered one bit. A couple of their tunes stood out above the others; The Hunt For Vengeance, and one I misheard as Thronar (other bands, after all, have named tracks after themselves) but which was most likely Screams Of Thunder.
The Dutch invasion continued with the dual-bevocalisted (have I just made that word up?) HEIDEVOLK, who greeted us by hoisting the flag of Gelderland at the back of the stage (which I suppose would explain Het Gelders Volkslied...), and clattering swords on their matching blue and yellow shields. They were also the first band of the day, though not the last, to be dressed in some kind of medieval costume - Thronar's red robes are just a bit too modern. Most of their set was taken from their only album, De Strijdlust Is Geboren, and given how incredibly bouncy it is, I'm surprised there wasn't more of a crowd reaction (especially given the mayhem that was to follow). Maybe, given that there was still nine hours to go, most people were saving their energy? Their loss. If there's any criticism that there could be of this band, they should use their violin player more - she spent most of the set sitting on the sidelines, only making occasional expeditions onto the stage - seems a bit of a waste, really, but otherwise I'll not be able to fault them. The only let-up in pace was the aforementioned Het Gelders Volkslied, and there was time for a bit more sword-clanking at the end. Maybe the two frontmen should have had a proper sword fight... No such fripperies as weapons and period costumes for HELRUNAR, though. They play straight ahead, no-frills black metal - think Emperor with all the keyboards and extra effects removed - which would certainly win them the Grim Und Krieg prize for the night. Unfortunately, my enjoyment of Helrunar was compromised by a fat and ugly emo-looking girl who had used her immense bulk to barge into the front row, only to spend the entire set variously draped over the rail or leaning on my shoulder, and jerking backwards spastically every few seconds, which I found immensely irritating to the point where I couldn't tell you whether the crowd's constant calls for Frostnacht were answered or not...
The front row cleared slightly, though, allowing a bit of breathing space as SUIDAKRA took the stage. Ugly Emo Girl had returned - fortunately she was now on the other side of me, further away from the centre of the stage, and had learned to behave herself. This was A Good Thing as Suidakra were one of the bands I'd really come to see; their performance at Wacken was another blinder as I've come to expect. Unfortunately, they suffered from the curse of the First Track Blues as both guitars were damn near inaudible for most of Pendragon's Fall. As ever, though, any problems were soon sorted out and Arkadius used the speakers at the front as an extra piece of stage to go into full rock star mode. The setlist was much the same as at Wacken, not that I'll have any problems with that; Axel was also back playing the bagpipes on Forth-Clyde, The IXth Legion and Dead Man's Reel; Arkadius vanished during the latter only to reappear right in front of us, where all the people with photo passes were, battering his guitar right in my face. And, of course, they didn't dare to leave without a rapid run-through of Wartunes. A fine effort.
There was a brief interlude of fucking around as some competition results were announced; I had no idea how anyone had entered or what it was for, but the drawing of every number (say, 69) was greeted by loud chants of "SECHS UND NEUNZIG! *clapping* SECHS UND NEUNZIG! *clapping*"... etc. Those Germans, they have a strange sense of humour... eventually, all the prizes were handed out, numbers such as 6 and 1 having failed to stop the chanting, and there was further delay as ELUVEITIE (somehow) could not set up until the competition had finished. And there's a lot of them. In addition to the standard line-up, there's a violin, some kind of Grandpa's guitar similar to what Waylander had used before, a hurdy-gurdy (a great-Grandpa's guitar if ever there was one), and an array of tin whistles and bagpipes that appear to be made from a dead goat. The band themselves are utterly fucking crackers - or, given that they're from Switzerland, should I say cuckoo? Along with the maelstrom you'd expect from such a diverse array of instruments, the vocalist and the bloke who plays the tin whistle and the Grandpa's guitar will spend a lot of the set jumping and dancing around energetically to the point where it's a surprise they have any breath left. They're a generous bunch as well; the whistle-playing nutter brandished a 20-litre tank of mead, pointed at us, howled "this is for all of you!", and gave it to the security guards to hand out. Which they did - only I didn't get any as I wasn't holding a receptacle of some sort. Bah. The generous gesture helped to spark the crowd into even more life - anyway, it seems Eluveitie were the band the crowd most wanted to see, as the pit behind me had exploded into life within all of a millisecond of them starting up. I spent the entire set being mangled against the barriers, and even though they were solid steel and fixed down with long screws that go deep into the ground, this was the only time I was genuinely concerned that the barriers would collapse and I would end up crushed to death under a mountain of moshing Germans. But, under the circumstances, I could not possibly have come up with a better way to die. I said it at Bloodstock, and I'll say it again; charisma is something you can't buy, and Eluveitie have it by the mountainload. Coming from a country where anything remotely enjoyable is banned, it's not surprising they let loose whenever there's the chance. Fantastic, and then some.
The black gaffer tape covering the swastika in SKYFORGER's logo, which would have seen them in serious trouble, was quite obvious from the start. Far more problematic was that they had to follow Eluveitie, but they stepped up to the plate. It was billed as a "special show" - which I figured had meant they might have done a split set with, say, 20 minutes on the Grandpa's guitars. They didn't - it was a full electric job, in full medieval-pagan regalia. I spent the whole hour wondering exactly what was so special about the show, but I wouldn't dream of arguing with it musically. Maybe it was because they had brought their full range of instruments? One of the mic stands contained a pot full of tin whistles, recorders and various other tiny wind instruments, which one member of the band (called Kaspars) would run right the way through during the set, in between playing the bagpipes and strumming on a zither which looked more like a bagatelle board with strings. Sound problems struck again, though, but at least it was at the end of the set; 50 minutes of blasting Latvian metal had passed with barely a hitch, but they were reduced to one guitar for the closer, Migla, Migla, Rasa, Rasa which Peter tried to apologise for in very broken English. Oddly, he was announcing most of the tracks by both their Latvian and English titles, but when he stopped short of mentioning the native titles of Thunderforge and Death Island (which should be Pērkoņkalve and Nāves Sala respectively) I decided to correct him and was greeted by a question of "Latviešu?" from the bloke behind me who was waving a Latvian flag and shouting constantly for Esat Kā Vīri. No, I'm not Latvian, but I do make an effort with the Latvian track titles...
And so came the point that I'd been waiting for all day. Eleven hours since I had entered the venue, twelve hours plus since I had had anything to eat, and the water hadn't exactly been flowing freely throughout - though by this time the security had ditched the bottles and were shovelling water from a couple of big buckets straight into the punters' mouths - which was messy to say the least. So, enter MOONSORROW, and during the soundcheck, about as much arsing around as you could ever get from a bunch of dour Finns. At least, Mitja was on the same form as he had been at Wacken. I would say they blasted straight into Kivenkantaja, but it was more a saunter as the dreaded sound problems descended again. And then, came the most infuruating event of the day, at the worst possible time. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and some fingers trying to give me the electric-ribs-shock - you know, the one you probably used to do to the geeky kid in the playground. The first thought that went through my mind was that it was Gemma getting inappropriately amorous (after all, who can resist a line such as "let's fuck to the double bass beat of Ukkosenjumalan Poika"?) - but I turned around to see a short, fat bloke with an idiotic grin on his face. I think he was trying to steal my space at the front, as he mumbled something like "da vorne". I told him to fuck off, he continued. I told him to fuck off again, he failed to listen to my warning. By the time Kuin Ikuinen had started he was still there, still pissing me off, and a final direct threat was duly ignored. The girl next to me wondered if she should have a word with the security, as she could see I was by now incadescent with rage. Sure enough, she had a word, and the security man duly removed the twat from behind me... but not before I had clamped my hand round his throat and sent him, albeit briefly, spiralling back into the pit. It is nearly fourteen years since I have been induced to an act of violence; with a bit of luck it will be another fourteen before I have to react again. But, on with the show, and with both the utter dicksplash behind me no longer involved, and the sound turned up, Moonsorrow hit their stride and I was able to enjoy it properly. "Are you ready for some total..." howled Ville, and I knew what was coming next. "Fucking..." Yes, here it comes... "Darkness!" And that, on the evidence of Wacken, should have been the call for Pimeä (Finnish for "dark", for the uninitiated) - so what did they do? Turned the lights off and played Pakanajuhla instead, the bastards. The set was, all in all, strangely weighted towards the older material, mostly from Suden Uni - a style I thought they'd left behind. Still, we did get Pimeä next instead, and with (coincidentally) 25 minutes left in the set, and given the riff that Mitja had been playing during the soundcheck, I was half-expecting Tuleen Ajettu Maa. Not this time. Instead, there was a further romp through the back catalogue, in which I further attempted to drain every last joule of energy from my body, and a singalong with the again-abbreviated Sankaritarina to finish with. It was an excellent effort in light of the initial sound problem and the obvious absence of The Fat Man - he doesn't play Finntroll gigs at all anymore, and I wonder what it is that's keeping him away from just about everything that involves playing live. The bald bloke, who I assume was Janne Perttilä, did a decent job, though, regularly joining Mitja and Ville for a spot of rock-star-posing at the front of the stage. It was a longer set than at Wacken, but I think Wacken shaded it.
At the end of Moonsorrow's set I was flagging quite seriously. Fortunately, sustenance arrived as Victoria bounced excitedly up to me, squealing "How awesome was that?" Actually, it would have been a lot more awesome had it not been for that cunt behind me. As she is now entangled with one of Waylander, with all the access to the backstage area that entails, she was genuinely concerned about my continued existence, and fetched me a beer from backstage, no doubt leaving one or more members of Waylander thinking "where's our feckin' beer gone?" It was standard German lager (probably Krombacher or König-Pilsener or one of their ilk) but under the circumstances, was the best beer I'd ever had. Not to mention the most welcome.
By now, the security guards were throwing water at us in the last-ditch attempt to keep us all alive. It was worth their effort. Rumours continue to fly around about KORPIKLAANI's general behaviour; legend has it Jarkko Aaltonen was a right pain in the arse at Bloodstock, and their habits of pretending not to speak English unless it suits them (such as in the obtainment of beer) continue, allegedly, to annoy. On stage, though, they are capable of blowing this negative publicity into the weeds. But, yet again, the gremlins struck, with an initial attempt at Journey Man cut short with the sudden disappearance of both guitars, despite Hittavainen's attempt to keep it going. The problems were soon sorted, and what followed was an hour and ten minutes of sheer Finnish lunacy. I had planned to leave my station at the front after about half an hour and join the pit, but it was truly insane - far more than during the brief set at Bloodstock, and yet again I was crushed to within a micrometre of my life against the barrier at the front. And, having needed a piss for the entire duration of the festival, that kind of battering would most likely have let to a severely embarrassing accident. I was having none of it, and stayed rooted firmly to the spot until the very end, summoning up the very last of me energy and endurance reserves in the name of staying for the entire set. In that time we were treated to Jonne doing a yoik solo before Cottages And Saunas, a few Korpiklaani-ified bars of Black Sabbath in the lead-up to Happy Little Boozer (and they really, really should have played the whole track just so I could see how it turned out), all five of their drinking songs were intact, and to top it all off, another 20-litre tank of mead had miraculously appeared from somewhere, which may or may not have been Eluveitie's tour bus. The security guards had now turned to pouring it straight down our throats, direct from the tank, and you can imagine the mess that caused. Furthermore, Jonne was handing out free beer from the stage as well as spraying it all over the place, the way racing drivers do with champagne. By the end, I was covered in beer, covered in mead, and I couldn't be happier.
The crowd deserted in droves... but there was still one band to go. The "secret guests", it turns out, were KIVIMETSÄN DRUIDI, who have been Korpiklaani's support band on their recent tour. The mass exodus meant that, finally, I could leave to take a slash and take on a decent amount of water, and still return to the front - the crowd that remained was so thin that for the first time since Wolfchant were on, I had some room to move. Paul and Gemma were going to leave, having seen Kivimetsän Druidi's performance in London, but I persuaded them to stick it out until the bitter end. After all - why go this far through the marathon only to give up within sight of the finish line? And so there were 40 final minutes of headbanging in which Kivimetsän Druidi played a decent set - they have a warbly woman who really doesn't fit their style, but they had enough nods to Ensiferum and Finntroll to keep me interested. At times, though, what they do borders on plagiarism - the keyboard riff that I heard during the setup (and which was part of what turned out to be Kristallivuoren Maa) was cynically swiped from Moonsorrow's Soturin Tie, and now I found they've billed themselves as "Rock n' Troll". Anyone recognise that? Thought so. Still, it's not as if they could be called bad. Certainly there had been no Stratovarius or Dragonforce to piss on the fire at any time. Can't think why I was fixated on the warbly woman with her black and red ultra-gothic corset, though. Caroline has described her as "ugly and full of piercings". Have I really been deprived of female company for so long that I'll do anything to anything? Only time will tell.
And at 02:20, a shade short of fifteen hours since the doors had opened, it was all over. There was just time to take a rake through a CD stall to find Heidevolk's De Strijdlust Is Geboren and the latest Månegarm album, Nordstjärnans Tidsålder. [EDIT: Does not compute! This is their first album, from 1998!] Paul and Gemma departed, I hadn't seen Caroline at all (unfortunately), and all that was left to do was return to the hotel, crash onto the bed and hope that Odin's call would not come too soon...
SÖNDAG 04.11.2007: HEMFÄRD
...but the only call that arrived was the buzz of a vibrating phone. The shower called; it took a good ten minutes to remove all the knots from my hair, and if I'd had to put up with the cold shower that the Walsheim offered it could have put a terminal crimp on my day. Powerful showers when I'm in any hotel are generally the highlight, given the miserable excuse for one that I have to put up with at home. Breakfast, so it seemed, was on the house - it seems they forgot to charge me that morning, much to my surprise and delight. And so again I crammed as much as possible, and an even larger quantity of bacon than before, for the trip home. Unfortunately, they also saw fit to charge six euros for the parking.
Getting out of Oberhausen was blindingly easy, and led straight onto the A40 that would take me over the border into Holland. It was a clear morning, with conditions perfect for driving; no signs of the fog that plagued my entry into Germany. I had probably 25 miles to see if the claims Honda made about Mjölner were true, and once the "120" signs had disappeared after passing the turning, as if by magic the second lane cleared for a mile ahead, and the throttle was floored. Legally. I can tell you now, when Honda say the car will do 127 mph, they lie. The correct number is... 128. Can't say I stayed there for very long, though. And it's a good job I slowed down or I'd have missed another comedy sign, for Wankum.
There were plenty of service stations long the way; the first, just over the border, was a good place to pull in and wake up properly. When you're doing 128 mph, you are awake even if you've had no sleep for three days. Droning along at 70 is a different matter, and it was time for the first can of Relentless for the day. While I was parked up, two more cars with British plates pulled up... where could they have been, in Germany in November? Certainly they weren't Ultima Ratio people, and I doubt that the three Poles were either. A further stop was planned further down the line; I thought I'd stop for lunch in Eindhoven. This, as those of you who know your history will realise, was once the hub of the European metal festival, in the mid-90s before some upstart village in northern Germany took over. The remnants of the Dynamo festival live on in what appeared to be a nightclub in the city centre. As for the rest of it, though, there did not appear to be a lot of life around. All I could find was a sandwich stall serving not-particularly-appetising paninis; an immense number of shops were shut. Jeremy Clarkson was right; the Dutch are not a nation of weed-smoking pornographers, that's just Amsterdam. The rest are quite severely conservative and the thought of opening their shops on a Sunday never crosses their mind... so I left empty-handed, though fortunately not empty-stomached due to the massive breakfast earlier in the day.
By the time I'd crossed the Belgian border, though, I was hungry, and I turned off at the first junction into the small town of Arendonk. It too, was completely devoid of life, except for a shop with a "frituur" sign outside. That's Dutch for chips, you know. And if there's three things the Belgians do well, it's beer, chocolate and chips. So, now, I've crossed off number two from Keir's list of top ten foods - Belgian chips with frietsaus, which is rather better than the limp and floppy offerings from Greasy Joe's (or, probably these days, Greasy Üglü's) Fish 'n' Chip Emporium with a dollop of Hellmann's mayonnaise.
The constant stops, though, were taking their toll. Having negotiated Ring Antwerpen I took the road for Bruges, which I knew to be the next destination. Only it wasn't, and soon I was on a road I no longer recognised. As it turned out, Gent was the actual target, which would have meant staying on the motorway. As it turns out, I was on another motorway - known only as the E34 seeing as Belgium has dispensed with A-numbers unless they have no E (such as the stub of the A10 to Ostende) - but it wasn't marked as a motorway on the map, just a red dual carriageway. Still, I was heading directly for Bruges rather than going via Gent... but this was not the ideal way. The road surface was thoroughly horrid, sending all kinds of rattles and vibrations through the car's seven-week-old suspension, and wouldn't have been out of place in Albania. After a good half hour of stopping and starting at traffic lights every mile or so, the motorway having suddenly decided not to be one anymore, the sign said: 24 km to Bruges. Only I then shot clean past a sign for another motorway: to Brussels, Gent and Ostende. Marvellous. I turned round, retraced my route for a mile or two, and approached the turning slowly to find myself on the N44, towards Aalter. The surface was even worse than on the E34; it was a proper third world job. And to top it all off, after I'd successfully negotiated my way through the small villages, there was only one entrance onto the motorway, which headed towards Brussels and Gent. The wrong way. Where exactly had Ostende gone? Belgium's infamous signing had thrown me off course again, and by the time I'd headed up the motorway that I would have been on originally, the wrong way, and turned round, time was now tight. Time was made up, though, with the thromping power of the S. And there wasn't a cop car or a speed camera in sight. Furthermore I decided not to hedge my bets with missing Mannekensvere by filling up for the last time in Europe (for a while, anyway) at Jabbeke. The final problem was... the signing, which after passing the turning for Ostende showed the distance for Dunkirk with the consistency of Norwich City's defence. The first sign said 54 km; the next, 2 km down the road, said 48; then there was a huge, huge gap to the next sign, where we were down to 39; then, most bizarrely of all, 2-3 km down the road, the next sign said... 40. The dash was not quite as mad as it had been getting to Dover initially, but became quite fraught in France when sign after sign for Dunkirk's Port-Est was passed, with the car ferry signs appearing and disappearing at random. Eventually, though, it was all over at 17:10, arriving with ten minutes to go before boarding. Most of the crossing was spent eating something cunningly disguised as a roast dinner for too much cash (it was some kind of pork roulade that contained far more fat than meat - grrrr) and reading a binned copy of the Sunday Times once I'd pulled the chewing gum off it. Rather concerning was the ITV weather report that I managed to catch a quick look at - fog over southern England, it said...
...and it wasn't wrong. The fog held off in Dover, which was a relief as passing Polish truck after Polish truck on the narrow dual carriageway was anything but fun; the M20 was as clear as Diamond Sellotape, and after brief stop at Maidstone services I had my All-New Route To London planned. I would take the M26 and then proceed the wrong way round the M25, turning off at the M40, followed by the A43 towards Northampton where I could rejoin the M1. Progress was easy until the dreaded M3 junction where the variable speed limit started; progress from this point was fixed at 68 mph with the cruise control due to not knowing which of the gantries had Gatsos in them, followed by an extended period of accelerate-brake-accelerate-brake-accelerate-brake as the signs flashed up 60, 50 and 40 in turn. And the M40? That's where the fog descended. And this time, it really was London in the fifties. This fog made what I'd driven through in the Ardennes look like light mist. 60 was about the best I could manage as I had to fire up the front fog lights for the first time ever just to have any hope I could see where I was going. 60 soon became 50 as the fog became thicker, and down to 40 for a while on the A43. All this, again, didn't stop the great wave of BMW-driving fuckjobs who would insist on bombing at 90 even if they were blindfolded, and I'm just grateful I wasn't rammed up the arse by one of them. By the time I left the A43, I was revoltingly tired, and peering through the gloom to see where the road went wasn't helping my cause. For whatever reason, I sailed straight past the first service station I came across - after all, I didn't have a bed there and at home I did. I was on the verge of death by the time Leicester Forest East arrived - and passed that as well. By that stage, I was too close to home... and the fog lifted soon afterwards so I could finally see where I was going. The trip was all over at just gone midnight, and I was in a much-needed bed within no time at all.
SETLISTS
Suidakra: Pendragon's Fall; Forth-Clyde; Gates of Nevermore; The Well of Might; Darkane Times; Dead Man's Reel; The IXth Legion; Wartunes
Skyforger: (amongst others, this is all I knew) Kauja Pie Saules; Kauja Pie Plakaniem, Kauja Pie Veisiem; Pērkoņkalve; Nāves Sala; Kad Ūsiņš Jāj; Migla, Migla, Rasa, Rasa
Moonsorrow: Kivenkantaja; Kuin Ikuinen; Pakanajuhla; Pimeä; Ukkosenjumalan Poika; Tuulen Koti, Aaltojen Koti; Tulkaapa Äijät!; Unohduksen Lapsi; Sankaritarina (eight-minute edit)
Korpiklaani: Journey Man; Korpiklaani; Cottages and Saunas; Palovana; Tuli Kokko; Pellonpekko; Veriset Äpärät; Happy Little Boozer; Juokse Sinä Humma; Wooden Pints; Beer Beer; Hunting Song; Let's Drink; Ii Lea Voibmi
THE AWARDS
BAND OF THE FESTIVAL: Admit it, you know who I'm going to give it to. Actually, think again. Eluveitie swiped the top prize for a barnstorming performance.
TRIUMPH THROUGH ADVERSITY: Goes specifically to Minas Morgul's bassist, and certainly not to Equilibrium.
SURPRISE OF THE FESTIVAL: Minas Morgul, actually - I wasn't expecting them to be as good as they were.
MOST BIZARRE INSTRUMENT: A tie between Eluveitie's hurdy-gurdy and Skyforger's bagatelle board. I would have thought the hurdy-gurdy player was Eluveitie's most important and least replaceable member; research reveals they're on their third already...
MOST NOTABLE ABSENCE: One H. Sorvali, as I hadn't been warned of his non-appearance.
THE JIMMY CARR AWARD FOR THE MOST INFURIATING WASTE OF OXYGEN THIS SIDE OF... JIMMY CARR: Him. You know the twat I mean. If you've read the review it will be obvious.
ULTIMA RATIO 2008
So, you all know when it'll be happening again next year. Think of all the bands that didn't play this year who could turn up next time: Ensiferum, Amon Amarth, Finntroll, Turisas, Equilibrium (provided they're still alive), Týr, Lumsk, Elvenking, Trollfest, Wintersun, Månegarm... next year, though, I'm going to get a photo pass!
Who's for doing it all again next year?
As ever, this is long. If your name is Hannah, on the other hand, and you're bored, this should occupy a decent amount of time.
Ja katso...
DYDD MERCHER 31.10.2007: WELSH NOISE IN CAMBRIDGE
Some of you know it as Halloween. I know it as the day I would set off for an event I had been looking forward to for half the year. It was also to be The Test Drive as stated by Archangel Chris a few weeks before; the thought of a road trip both to Ultima Ratio and to Wacken the next summer, and many more afterwards, was instrumental in my decision to spend a ridiculous amount of cash on the Intergalactic Battlecruiser, further known as The S, whatever "Das Metalmobil Sechs" would be in Japanese (メタルモビール ろく is about the best I can come up with) or Mjölner, given its plate that I paid extra for. As a further bonus, my one remaining problem of finding somewhere to stay the night on the way down was relieved by the promise of an interesting night out in Cambridge, with Markachu offering crash space afterwards and the promise that Linda would wake me up at the required time (four in the morning...) as she left for work. And so, my Halloween was spent in the Man On The Moon, in Cambridge - a venue I'd not been to since Fire & Forget played there four and a half years ago with whatever drummer had not spontaneously combusted at the time. It was one of those days where I thought I had all the time in the world, soon realised I hadn't, and a mad dash down the M1-A14-A1-A428 route that I now use these days saw me turn up having just missed The Tupolev Ghost. Markachu described them as "really good for a screamo band" - which I'll never be sure is a compliment or not. Sons Of Merrick were a band I'd previously seen at Rock City a while back, most notable for playing Louisiana-esque stoner rock (which also reminds me in a way of The Atomic Bitchwax) that took The Legion Of Doom to the cleaners. Their guitarist even gave me a free copy of the four-track sampler that they were selling for £3, just because I asked him whether there was a full album out. There is, or rather there will be when they find someone to release it - amazingly, they haven't asked Rise Above yet. And finally, there was Taint, the "Welsh Mastodon" as I tagged them before, who I'd been mightily impressed with when they supported Clutch earlier in the year; it was good to hear a longer set, with full vocals this time instead of a valiant effort against a throat infection. A couple of kids trying to cuddle both me and Markachu and making the worst attempt at a two-man moshpit were rather less welcome, though. As we left, Markachu swiped the pumpkin he'd carved the Taint logo into, and a fine effort it was. Even better was that Linda had helpfully deposited the sofa cushions onto the floor, making an improvised bed... which I had to spurn for another 20 minutes or so for a quick splash and dash at the nearby Tesco's, having consulted Mappy and found out I would not have enough fuel to make it to Jabbeke...
DONNESCHDEG 01.11.2007: GROUSSHERZOGTUM LËTZEBUERG
The alarm rang at 03:55; it was dark, but had it been 06:55 it would have not been any lighter. I was up and dressed before Linda intervened; there was just enough time to eat the pork pie and down the can of Relentless I'd left in the fridge the night before, in preparation for a sharp exit, and arrival at Dover before 07:00. Off I was again, past Tesco's in the dark, and straight onto the M11, where I was battering towards London at a vast rate of knots. Many of you (at least those of you in the UK) will be well aware of my deliberate avoidance of any road covered by SPECS, which is why I continued straight on down the M11 instead of changing to the M25, where a nasty surprise would be lying in wait on the Kent section. The intention was to use the North Circular, unaffected as it would be by the traffic which would only arrive at "rush" hour. Progress was smooth until I encountered the Woolwich Ferry area, where I took wrong turn after wrong turn, having not noticed that there was as left turn that I should have made 20 minutes earlier. Arriving at the ferry I was told I should take the Blackwall Tunnel if I was in a hurry; with no A-Z to consult, there was only one option left; retrace my route, and take the A13 through Barking. This was a faster method, but all the extra time I had allowed for the diversion had evaporated. And it also meant taking the M25. And so the Dartford Bridge was followed immediately by the "Average speed check" warning signs, and... there they were, the malevolent yellow vultures, up there in the dark where only the menacing red eyes of the infra-red spotlights could be seen. My solution was to revert to a mobile roadblock with the cruise control set to an unnervingly low 35 mph in the 50 mph limit; the sight of large headlights flashing in my rear view mirror means that the lorry driver who was right up my arse was not best pleased. Fuck him; my driving licence is more important than his entire existence. The five mile stretch seemed to take for ever, and no sooner was I out the danger zone and onto a completely dark M20 than the cruise control was disengaged, and I was off like a scalded cat. In no time at all, "114" was lit up in the digital display in front of me. I decided not to take the piss too much, but when the next sign said Dover was 58 miles away, and with only 50 minutes to the recommended check-in time, some further very creative interpretation of the number "70" was called for. But, somehow, I made it to the port at 07:10, still well in time for the 08:00 crossing, and an inevitably expensive fried breakfast on board with quite possibly the nastiest black pudding I've ever had - but I still ate it all. The mist which blocked any view of France failed to clear, but there were no problems with continental driving conditions on the other side. And, of course, the legal limit in France is 81 mph. Barely a few minutes later I was over the border in Belgium, and looking for Jabbeke services to fill up with Belgian diesel, at €1.184 per litre, or 82.3p in our money, which given that it's risen to over a quid a litre here, is a good deal. Somehow I have always managed to miss the service station that's even closer to the French border; I missed it again, being in the wrong lane as I barrelled past the 500-metre board. I couldn't even remember the name, just that it sounded a bit like Människopesten. That's what listening to a lot of Finntroll will do for you. And, unbelievably, I missed Jabbeke as well, thinking I didn't have to take the turn-off onto a smaller N-road... turns out the N-road leads back onto the motorway as well, and I couldn't hold Belgium's notoriously awful signposting to blame this time. So I was near Gent by the time Mjölner was allowed to drink its fill; the tank was absolutely brimmed, and progress was smooth and uneventful all the way to the border, with no cock-ups round Ring Brussel the way there had been on the Wacken Deathtank trip of four years ago, and only the occasional stop to look at the map.
The standard way would have been to keep on bombing down the A4, but you are all aware I don't like doing things the easy way. I turned off the motorway at Arlon, and took the much smaller N4 instead, crossing the border and stopping immediately at Steinfort, so I could take a picture of myself with the Luxembourg border sign. I rejoined the motorway at the next opportunity to be greeted with a strange mish-mash of different road sign styles; Luxembourg is a tiny country so you'd think they'd be able to make them all consistent easily enough, but no... maybe they can't be bothered? There were speed limit signs in both the Dutch and German style, exit signs that had been borrowed from France, and a mixture of distance and destination boards in both the French style and one unique (well, probably) to Luxembourg. Still, it was no hindrance to finding my way into the city - and directly into the centre at that, with a couple of stops to read one of the behemoth maps I'd made from stitching together screenshots from Google Maps and Multimap when I was bored at work one day. Eventually I found my bearings, drove straight towards the rail station, parked up for another look at the map... and saw the Hotel Walsheim staring straight back at me across the road.
The Walsheim is a two-star hotel, apparently the only two-star hotel in the whole of Luxembourg, and to an extent it showed; some of the signs would be more at home in a fish and chip shop, and the place looks like it hasn't been decorated since 1975. It gave me the impression of the hotel equivalent of student houses. But what I'm looking for is a bed for the night and hopefully a decent breakfast, which in the end is what the Walsheim gave me, and for €65 for the night, the lowest price I could find in the entire city. You could even say I'm annoyed that there were no one-star hotels, because I just want the basics, although cast your minds back to last year's Norway trip, and I'll admit that the Seierstad Gjestergård was pushing the limits a bit, being only one step up from a caravan. Rather better was the discovery that, 12 years after my French GCSE, my level of French was still just about enough to communicate with the hotel owner whose English was just about non-existent, although I do not and never have had the accent, which is why the Parisians the weekend before had spotted le rosbif coming from a mile away. Having obtained my key and deposited my gear in the room, it was straight out to investigate Luxembourg's offerings to the beer world. Previously, I had found a Dutch website detailing its entire output; I had printed in the lab before leaving and, for whatever reason, left it there. So my first foray was into a backstreet dive on Rue Joseph Junck, which was full of grimy old men smoking Gauloises who looked quite suspicious of the obvious étrangeur who had dared to come in for a half of Diekirch - which in the end was no more than a standard lager, and as I found out later, is churned out by the bucketload by Interbrew, as is Mousel. I thought I might have more luck, and friendlier company, in the city centre, so I was off wasting no time except to attempt a few photos of the more interesting buildings and monuments along the way - hindered by the darkness until I discovered the "night snapshot" setting on the camera, which combined with the use of the wall as an improvised tripod, had a few successes. Luxembourg appears to be built on a crater; two huge and very tall viaducts link the north and south sides of the city centre, and all the interesting bits were on the north side.
Penetration of the larger breweries in Luxembourg is almost total; every street contained at least three or four bars, bistros or restaurants, all displaying a prominent Mousel, Diekirch or Bofferding sign, and I wondered if I was going to get any variety at all. Still, I tried a café-bar on Avenue de Monterey, called Banana's, which was offering Bofferding; inside, rather than the standard single tap, there were five, one offering Battin Gambrinus, which was formerly independent but now under the Bofferding umbrella. Still, it was more interesting than Diekirch, reminding me of one of the more powerful German lagers such as Löwenbräu. Drinking my Battin Gambrinus, I took a look at the menu and saw Wäissen Ourdaller and Wëllen Ourdaller on offer; they looked interesting, and I thought I'd give the Wëllen a go. To my surprise and delight, I recognised the bottle from seeing the beer's website which was listed on the Dutchman's review as being the same place responsible for the Cornelyshaff rye beer, the one I really wanted to track down. It listed the address of the brewery, which I had planned to visit, only I had left the address in the lab... a good hour was spent enjoying both the Ourdaller beers, reading the English newspaper on offer (the Daily Sieg-Heil... ugh), filling in the Codeword, and explaining to the barman in shattered French what I was doing in Luxembourg in the first place.
7 pm arrived; and due to my continuing hearing problems I was unsure whether the hotel owner had mentioned "le petit déjeuner à sept heures" or just "le déjeuner". What he said was confirmed when I returned to the hotel to find the dining room empty. It was a good time to pick up my coat, though, as it was bastard cold outside. There was some random wandering, and some attempts to find the Palais Grand-Ducal (which I think I found the rear entrance of), and a brief conversation with an Irishman who was pissed off his face (who says stereotypes are all false?) Further random wandering in an attempt to find food that wasn't curry or kebabs led me to a small Italian restaurant, which seemed a decent enough option. I was not intending to be there long, especially as the service was rapid (my tortellini carbonara arrived within ten minutes of entering the restaurant), but was soon engaged in conversation with an old man called Nigel and his Belgian friend who run a recruitment business; Nigel offered me some of his wine and it would have been sheer idiocy to refuse. Soon I found out his connection with Luxembourg; he'd met and married a Luxembourger 20 years previously, had set up a business there, and moved to the south of France as soon as he realised what the people were like. It seems his main problem was that everyone has too much money, none of them know what to do with it, and very few have any motivation to get any qualifications in anything at all on the grounds that they don't need to. He was also quite dismissive of Luxembourg's beers but I did at least try to point him in the direction of the Ourdaller beers at Banana's... Further, and less welcome, information was that it was a public holiday (All Saints' Day, apparently) which explained why just about everywhere was closed and why there were so few people on the streets. This translated into utter frustration when I tried to find more beer; I figured I'd go back to Banana's, but it had already closed at not long after ten, as had everywhere else... all I could do was go back to the hotel rather earlier than I thought I would. But still, I had already made an important discovery that meant the next day would be interesting...
FREITAG 02.11.2007: BEER OR NO BEER?
Friday morning came with the problem that my alarm failed to fire. My phone has been on the blink for a week or so now, and with the messages such as "Insert SIM" when the SIM is very definitely installed comes the lack of any useful sound, such as an alarm going off. So I woke up at 9:34 with only 26 minutes of breakfast left... but there were still some rolls, and a fair amount of ham and cheese left, by the time I arrived. The lack of a shower, though, was annoying; there was a shower in existence, but hot water was not forthcoming. Neither was there a plug in the basin... so I was forced into la douche mexicaine, which was not ideal. Still, I thought about obtaining coffee - more than I'd had in the hotel, and after a brief foray through the city centre to take more photos of the scenes I'd tried to get in the dark (including finding the main gate of the Palais Grand-Ducal this time), I ended up back in Banana's. Further conversation in stuttering French informed me I would not be able to take away a few bottles of the Ourdaller beers (but still, if you don't ask, you don't get...) - so I looked round a couple of supermarkets, only to find the beers from the standard breweries. There was slight conversational trouble with the girl at the checkout - I think she was trying to ID me, but after attempting German instead of French and being greeted with "acht und zwanzig", she relented rapidly and I left with Diekirch Grand Cru, Bofferding Hausbéier, and three brews from Brasserie Simon - which, it seems, is tied in with Ourdaller in some way, so I'm expecting those to be good.
But the time came to leave the capital, and getting out was a lot easier than getting in... until I left the ring road. I should, according to the map, have transferred straight from the A1 to the A7, heading north towards Ettelbruck and Diekirch... but the map lied. And I had failed to memorise all the exact details of where I was supposed to be heading for... all I knew is that I wanted to go north to Heinerscheid, which wasn't even shown. Buggering about ensued, involving turning onto what I thought was the N7, turning round and going the other way, heading back towards Luxembourg city, reading the map again, properly memorising the details, and finding that when I'd turned round the first time, then I was going in the right direction - to Ettelbruck, not Echternach. Finally on the right road, driving through Luxembourg was something of an odd experience. Everything in Luxembourg city was written in French. Having found the way towards Ettelbruck (a German-sounding name if ever there was one), when I stopped at a petrol station, everything was still written in French. Barely a couple of miles up the road, stopping at McDonald's for lunch (which is no better than it is here, unfortunately), the menu and all the signs were in German. Then, in the next village, we were back to French again. And let's not forget that Luxembourg has its own language which can be seen in random places such as advertising boards and on shopping bags, confusing the issue even further...
Eventually, though, the roads widened - generally to three lanes, two uphill and one downhill, and progress was reasonably quick, although there was one hindrance; being stuck in a right-hand-drive car behind a tractor that could do 24 mph flat out with no way of seeing where the traffic was on the other side was far from enjoyable, and it took the creative use of a left-turn filter lane to pass the mobile roadblock, in a move that I would usually consider truly imbecilic at home... but needs must when the devil vomits in your kettle. Heinerscheid was finally reached at about 15:00; Cornelys Haff, with its adjoining Ourdaller brewery, was open for business and they had plenty out of me. Six bottles each of Wäissen and Wëllen, plus two each of Okult No.1 Blanche and Millevertus Spelzbéier, and still change from 20 euros. Score. Further score was obtained in Wemperhardt, a tiny village right on the Belgian border; on one side of a roundabout is the border itself (really, right slap bang on the exit) and on the other side is a Total garage selling diesel at the standard Luxembourgish price of €1.007 per litre (or 70.1p in our money). I had intended to leave filling up in Luxembourg for as long as possible so the tank was at its emptiest when the filling came... and this was about as close as it will ever get, probably anywhere.
Over the border, into the Ardennes forest, and straight onto a windy-twisty road which supposedly led to the motorway into Germany. A clump of fog descended faster than a lift with the cables cut, with the consistency of wallpaper paste - much like what London was notorious for in the fifties. Visibility was severely restricted, and there was no view at all over the viaducts into the deep valleys, but this was unlikely to stop the average clart in a BMW from battering into the gloom at 90-odd. I decided to stay well out of their way, and negotiate my way into Germany, where I could join them in the fast lane - legally. Unfortunately, the fog failed to clear on reaching Aachen, and was only replaced by darkness and rain for the rest of the journey - although I could clearly see the roadsign advertising the turn-off towards the amusingly-named Titz. Furthermore, I ended up misreading the map and turned into Essen instead of Oberhausen... though with the efficiency of the German road network it wasn't exactly hard to retreat and take the correct route. My instinctive sense of direction returned on entering Oberhausen, as a couple of times when I thought I'd taken a wrong turn, I hadn't - and the Hotel Tryp Centro Oberhausen was revealed before me. It's a three-star job, but felt like a massive step up from the Walsheim; I'd have been happy staying at their level providing there was a working shower available - which, here, there was - along with several other frills round the edges that I can't say I needed. Still, it was all of ten minutes' walk from the Turbinenhalle, which was far less than many others would have to come.
The evening was to be spent meeting up with Paul and - originally - others, but they went missing in action due to turning up on the day of the festival, shacking up with the performers, or other such excuses. Paul's hotel was hard enough to find on my map - which didn't state where the Hauptbahnhof was - that we had to meet up outside a hospital, which would hopefully not be a reminder of things to come. But meet we did, and out first stop was a tiny bar just near the corner of Falkensteinstraße which served Diebels Alt (as featured in one of Onkel Tom's drinking songs) - to anyone except foreigners, so it seemed, as I stood there watching Paul drink his half-pint (no large measures here), rattling coins in my hand in an "I want to be served" way, and receiving no attention at all from the woman at the bar who was more interested in playing some kind of drinking game with another of the punters. After what seemed like forever I finally managed to order two beers at a time - so we left once those two were downed with no desire to wait a further ice age for any more. And the people inside spoke a strange language - whatever it was, it certainly wasn't German. I could pick up the odd German word here and there, but otherwise it was a strangely mangled dialect, and we were nowhere near Switzerland or Bavaria. Odd.
The rest of the evening was the kind of crushing disappointment that I could never have expected. Here's a tip for you all: Oberhausen, it seems, is the town for Germans who don't want to be German. In a country so inextricably linked to beer as Germany is, the difficulty of finding somewhere to drink in Oberhausen is as staggering as its ease in Luxembourg. Most of the evening - five hours of it - was spent wandering not-quite-aimlessly round both back streets and main roads, in an attempt to find somewhere to drink, and the few places that we did find were usually empty. The first backstreet bar-plus-small-restaurant we entered had absolutely nobody serving, and we left after five minute of standing around like lemons wondering if anyone was going to appear; the next, fortunately, had some barstaff and served Thier Pilsener, which wasn't too bad; the next place we stopped was, of all places, a kebab shop. I'd been trying to avoid the usual Turkish takeaway specialities but we were both properly hungry by this time, and had a doner kebab pizza (yes, seriously) with a bottle of Diebels. Only in Germany does the late-night kebab not signal that the beer has stopped flowing. The final two destinations were a crowded bar tacked on the side of a theatre, which was far too trendy and arty for my liking, but at least offered us Franziskaner Hefe-Weißbier, and finally, a larger bar of the kind I'd seen on every street in Luxembourg. Definitely the best beer I had all night was in there, the dark Uerige Alt. Had I known about the place earlier I'd have happily spent all night in there, but it was not to be. It was probably a good thing I'd not drunk too much, though, as the next day was to be an early start...
SAMSTAG 03.11.2007: KRIEG
08:30 was greeted with the sound of my alarm failing to sound the way it should; I was only woken up by the sound the phone vibrating on the bedside table. Breakfast consisted of cereals, three cups of coffee, four slices of heavy rye bread with raspberry jam, four sausages, a pile of scrambled eggs, and about twelve rashers of bacon - what may have been "America's favorite [sic]", Oscar Meyer, given the sheer amount of lard dripping off it. This served two purposes: not only did I have to get my money's worth (a whacking €12.50), but I knew this would be my last meal until at least three in the morning. Having crammed until I could cram no more, I headed for the Turbinenhalle where a large crowd had already gathered by 10:30. Fortunately, as it was something of a disjointed mob, I strolled straight to the front where the action was; this action being a few dedicated Viking Metal fans who had brought a massive supply of mead, and not being allowed to take the glass bottles inside, were determined to drink it all on the way in. So that was my first free mead for the day...
We stood and watched under a cartoon of Hitler wearing stockings and a short skirt demanding arschficken from a couple of Nazi officers (I'm not making this up...) as the entry time of 11:00 came and went, more mead was drunk and one of the Germans took a lot of photos of us all standing in the queue.
Finally, about 11:30 we were allowed in, and after gaining another fine piece of wrist furniture, I made a mad dash for the front rail. I needn't have hurried; I was one of the first ten people in, and all the others, being Germans, had made a beeline for the bar. There was time to relieve myself of a further 17 euros for an Ultima Ratio t-shirt and a mug of mead provided by Metmann for future reference. Then, having clamped myself to the front rail like an Opeth fanboy, I sat and watched for a good half hour as the rail filled up... very slowly. Finally, 12:15 arrived, a quarter of an hour after the first band were due on, but on they came...
WOLFCHANT gave the festival a decent enough start, especially given their obvious response to shouts of "Lauter!" from the Germans after one track. They are in very much the same vein as Ensiferum, although like those other copycats in Equilibrium, it's unlikely they'll scale those heights. So I settled for some tunefully folky metallic entertainment and was impressed enough with Guardians Of The Forest to have the brilliant idea to use the video facility on my camera to record what I thought of each band after their set, lest I forget what impression they may have made - and it is for this reason I can bring you several completed setlists. So, a fine way to kick off; onwards and upwards. MINAS MORGUL were next up, and brought with them the only pyrotechnics of the day... or rather, pyro-non-technics given that it was a bowl of burning paraffin and a couple of torches each side of the stage. Musically they're black metal with the odd few Falkenbachian wails thrown in for good measure. Blut Und Eisen confirmed Norway certainly doesn't have the monopoly on black metal these days, neither do Korpiklaani have it all their own way on the drinking songs; witness Wie's Uns Gefällt with its loud chants of "Bier! Bier! Bier!" in the middle... One final point to note is that though the Turbinenhalle is very much the same size as Brixton Academy, it doesn't suffer the same problems such as the sloping floor or the non-existent sound right at the front, and Minas Morgul profited well from that; their sound was pin-sharp. Maybe they were aided and abetted by seemingly half of the crew who were wearing their Todesschwadron Ost t-shirts. It was round about this time that Gemma turned up and had missed Wolfchant at least; still, there was plenty to come.
WAYLANDER, I reckon, have always been better live than on record, at least that's the impression that comparing their Bloodstock performance a few years ago to The Light, The Dark And The Endless Knot gave me. And so it was repeated this time, with a set combining a fair slug of new material from their yet-to-be-released album, Honour Amongst Chaos, meshing seamlessly with the old favourites from Reawakening Pride Once Lost; The Light... was completely ignored. Woad-covered faces, tin whistles and Grandpa's guitars of some description were evident throughout, A Hero's Lament (about Cú Chulainn, for the uninitiated) was dedicated to "anyone who had come from Scotland, England, Ireland... Wales as well, why not?" Nice to see they weren't excluding the not-Celtic feckin' bastards - are you listening, Cruachan? They did more than enough to convince me the next album will be worth picking up.
Earlier on, Minas Morgul's bassist had limped on stage on crutches, and had spent the entire set playing his bass with his right knee resting on a stool; he still pulled off a great performance despite being obviously kaputt. Which made it all the more irritating that Equilibrium had cried off only a few days before, apparently "they're all sick". Well, if Minas Morgul could make it... in their place, "Do you want to hear some Dutch Battle Metal?" from THRONAR. They're not a like-for-like replacement; Thronar are more in the Thyrfing mould, in that much the same type of grandiose, parpy-horn keyboards that ran through Valdr Galga blared over the top of what Manowar would undoubtedly have sounded like had they actually grown up in Scandinavia (or grown up at all, for that matter). While their start was about as weak as it could get, with barely any sound reaching my already-subdued ears (a problem which afflicted most of the bands, actually), once they had turned the volume up and were into their stride, the loss of Equilibrium no longer mattered one bit. A couple of their tunes stood out above the others; The Hunt For Vengeance, and one I misheard as Thronar (other bands, after all, have named tracks after themselves) but which was most likely Screams Of Thunder.
The Dutch invasion continued with the dual-bevocalisted (have I just made that word up?) HEIDEVOLK, who greeted us by hoisting the flag of Gelderland at the back of the stage (which I suppose would explain Het Gelders Volkslied...), and clattering swords on their matching blue and yellow shields. They were also the first band of the day, though not the last, to be dressed in some kind of medieval costume - Thronar's red robes are just a bit too modern. Most of their set was taken from their only album, De Strijdlust Is Geboren, and given how incredibly bouncy it is, I'm surprised there wasn't more of a crowd reaction (especially given the mayhem that was to follow). Maybe, given that there was still nine hours to go, most people were saving their energy? Their loss. If there's any criticism that there could be of this band, they should use their violin player more - she spent most of the set sitting on the sidelines, only making occasional expeditions onto the stage - seems a bit of a waste, really, but otherwise I'll not be able to fault them. The only let-up in pace was the aforementioned Het Gelders Volkslied, and there was time for a bit more sword-clanking at the end. Maybe the two frontmen should have had a proper sword fight... No such fripperies as weapons and period costumes for HELRUNAR, though. They play straight ahead, no-frills black metal - think Emperor with all the keyboards and extra effects removed - which would certainly win them the Grim Und Krieg prize for the night. Unfortunately, my enjoyment of Helrunar was compromised by a fat and ugly emo-looking girl who had used her immense bulk to barge into the front row, only to spend the entire set variously draped over the rail or leaning on my shoulder, and jerking backwards spastically every few seconds, which I found immensely irritating to the point where I couldn't tell you whether the crowd's constant calls for Frostnacht were answered or not...
The front row cleared slightly, though, allowing a bit of breathing space as SUIDAKRA took the stage. Ugly Emo Girl had returned - fortunately she was now on the other side of me, further away from the centre of the stage, and had learned to behave herself. This was A Good Thing as Suidakra were one of the bands I'd really come to see; their performance at Wacken was another blinder as I've come to expect. Unfortunately, they suffered from the curse of the First Track Blues as both guitars were damn near inaudible for most of Pendragon's Fall. As ever, though, any problems were soon sorted out and Arkadius used the speakers at the front as an extra piece of stage to go into full rock star mode. The setlist was much the same as at Wacken, not that I'll have any problems with that; Axel was also back playing the bagpipes on Forth-Clyde, The IXth Legion and Dead Man's Reel; Arkadius vanished during the latter only to reappear right in front of us, where all the people with photo passes were, battering his guitar right in my face. And, of course, they didn't dare to leave without a rapid run-through of Wartunes. A fine effort.
There was a brief interlude of fucking around as some competition results were announced; I had no idea how anyone had entered or what it was for, but the drawing of every number (say, 69) was greeted by loud chants of "SECHS UND NEUNZIG! *clapping* SECHS UND NEUNZIG! *clapping*"... etc. Those Germans, they have a strange sense of humour... eventually, all the prizes were handed out, numbers such as 6 and 1 having failed to stop the chanting, and there was further delay as ELUVEITIE (somehow) could not set up until the competition had finished. And there's a lot of them. In addition to the standard line-up, there's a violin, some kind of Grandpa's guitar similar to what Waylander had used before, a hurdy-gurdy (a great-Grandpa's guitar if ever there was one), and an array of tin whistles and bagpipes that appear to be made from a dead goat. The band themselves are utterly fucking crackers - or, given that they're from Switzerland, should I say cuckoo? Along with the maelstrom you'd expect from such a diverse array of instruments, the vocalist and the bloke who plays the tin whistle and the Grandpa's guitar will spend a lot of the set jumping and dancing around energetically to the point where it's a surprise they have any breath left. They're a generous bunch as well; the whistle-playing nutter brandished a 20-litre tank of mead, pointed at us, howled "this is for all of you!", and gave it to the security guards to hand out. Which they did - only I didn't get any as I wasn't holding a receptacle of some sort. Bah. The generous gesture helped to spark the crowd into even more life - anyway, it seems Eluveitie were the band the crowd most wanted to see, as the pit behind me had exploded into life within all of a millisecond of them starting up. I spent the entire set being mangled against the barriers, and even though they were solid steel and fixed down with long screws that go deep into the ground, this was the only time I was genuinely concerned that the barriers would collapse and I would end up crushed to death under a mountain of moshing Germans. But, under the circumstances, I could not possibly have come up with a better way to die. I said it at Bloodstock, and I'll say it again; charisma is something you can't buy, and Eluveitie have it by the mountainload. Coming from a country where anything remotely enjoyable is banned, it's not surprising they let loose whenever there's the chance. Fantastic, and then some.
The black gaffer tape covering the swastika in SKYFORGER's logo, which would have seen them in serious trouble, was quite obvious from the start. Far more problematic was that they had to follow Eluveitie, but they stepped up to the plate. It was billed as a "special show" - which I figured had meant they might have done a split set with, say, 20 minutes on the Grandpa's guitars. They didn't - it was a full electric job, in full medieval-pagan regalia. I spent the whole hour wondering exactly what was so special about the show, but I wouldn't dream of arguing with it musically. Maybe it was because they had brought their full range of instruments? One of the mic stands contained a pot full of tin whistles, recorders and various other tiny wind instruments, which one member of the band (called Kaspars) would run right the way through during the set, in between playing the bagpipes and strumming on a zither which looked more like a bagatelle board with strings. Sound problems struck again, though, but at least it was at the end of the set; 50 minutes of blasting Latvian metal had passed with barely a hitch, but they were reduced to one guitar for the closer, Migla, Migla, Rasa, Rasa which Peter tried to apologise for in very broken English. Oddly, he was announcing most of the tracks by both their Latvian and English titles, but when he stopped short of mentioning the native titles of Thunderforge and Death Island (which should be Pērkoņkalve and Nāves Sala respectively) I decided to correct him and was greeted by a question of "Latviešu?" from the bloke behind me who was waving a Latvian flag and shouting constantly for Esat Kā Vīri. No, I'm not Latvian, but I do make an effort with the Latvian track titles...
And so came the point that I'd been waiting for all day. Eleven hours since I had entered the venue, twelve hours plus since I had had anything to eat, and the water hadn't exactly been flowing freely throughout - though by this time the security had ditched the bottles and were shovelling water from a couple of big buckets straight into the punters' mouths - which was messy to say the least. So, enter MOONSORROW, and during the soundcheck, about as much arsing around as you could ever get from a bunch of dour Finns. At least, Mitja was on the same form as he had been at Wacken. I would say they blasted straight into Kivenkantaja, but it was more a saunter as the dreaded sound problems descended again. And then, came the most infuruating event of the day, at the worst possible time. I felt a hand on my shoulder, and some fingers trying to give me the electric-ribs-shock - you know, the one you probably used to do to the geeky kid in the playground. The first thought that went through my mind was that it was Gemma getting inappropriately amorous (after all, who can resist a line such as "let's fuck to the double bass beat of Ukkosenjumalan Poika"?) - but I turned around to see a short, fat bloke with an idiotic grin on his face. I think he was trying to steal my space at the front, as he mumbled something like "da vorne". I told him to fuck off, he continued. I told him to fuck off again, he failed to listen to my warning. By the time Kuin Ikuinen had started he was still there, still pissing me off, and a final direct threat was duly ignored. The girl next to me wondered if she should have a word with the security, as she could see I was by now incadescent with rage. Sure enough, she had a word, and the security man duly removed the twat from behind me... but not before I had clamped my hand round his throat and sent him, albeit briefly, spiralling back into the pit. It is nearly fourteen years since I have been induced to an act of violence; with a bit of luck it will be another fourteen before I have to react again. But, on with the show, and with both the utter dicksplash behind me no longer involved, and the sound turned up, Moonsorrow hit their stride and I was able to enjoy it properly. "Are you ready for some total..." howled Ville, and I knew what was coming next. "Fucking..." Yes, here it comes... "Darkness!" And that, on the evidence of Wacken, should have been the call for Pimeä (Finnish for "dark", for the uninitiated) - so what did they do? Turned the lights off and played Pakanajuhla instead, the bastards. The set was, all in all, strangely weighted towards the older material, mostly from Suden Uni - a style I thought they'd left behind. Still, we did get Pimeä next instead, and with (coincidentally) 25 minutes left in the set, and given the riff that Mitja had been playing during the soundcheck, I was half-expecting Tuleen Ajettu Maa. Not this time. Instead, there was a further romp through the back catalogue, in which I further attempted to drain every last joule of energy from my body, and a singalong with the again-abbreviated Sankaritarina to finish with. It was an excellent effort in light of the initial sound problem and the obvious absence of The Fat Man - he doesn't play Finntroll gigs at all anymore, and I wonder what it is that's keeping him away from just about everything that involves playing live. The bald bloke, who I assume was Janne Perttilä, did a decent job, though, regularly joining Mitja and Ville for a spot of rock-star-posing at the front of the stage. It was a longer set than at Wacken, but I think Wacken shaded it.
At the end of Moonsorrow's set I was flagging quite seriously. Fortunately, sustenance arrived as Victoria bounced excitedly up to me, squealing "How awesome was that?" Actually, it would have been a lot more awesome had it not been for that cunt behind me. As she is now entangled with one of Waylander, with all the access to the backstage area that entails, she was genuinely concerned about my continued existence, and fetched me a beer from backstage, no doubt leaving one or more members of Waylander thinking "where's our feckin' beer gone?" It was standard German lager (probably Krombacher or König-Pilsener or one of their ilk) but under the circumstances, was the best beer I'd ever had. Not to mention the most welcome.
By now, the security guards were throwing water at us in the last-ditch attempt to keep us all alive. It was worth their effort. Rumours continue to fly around about KORPIKLAANI's general behaviour; legend has it Jarkko Aaltonen was a right pain in the arse at Bloodstock, and their habits of pretending not to speak English unless it suits them (such as in the obtainment of beer) continue, allegedly, to annoy. On stage, though, they are capable of blowing this negative publicity into the weeds. But, yet again, the gremlins struck, with an initial attempt at Journey Man cut short with the sudden disappearance of both guitars, despite Hittavainen's attempt to keep it going. The problems were soon sorted, and what followed was an hour and ten minutes of sheer Finnish lunacy. I had planned to leave my station at the front after about half an hour and join the pit, but it was truly insane - far more than during the brief set at Bloodstock, and yet again I was crushed to within a micrometre of my life against the barrier at the front. And, having needed a piss for the entire duration of the festival, that kind of battering would most likely have let to a severely embarrassing accident. I was having none of it, and stayed rooted firmly to the spot until the very end, summoning up the very last of me energy and endurance reserves in the name of staying for the entire set. In that time we were treated to Jonne doing a yoik solo before Cottages And Saunas, a few Korpiklaani-ified bars of Black Sabbath in the lead-up to Happy Little Boozer (and they really, really should have played the whole track just so I could see how it turned out), all five of their drinking songs were intact, and to top it all off, another 20-litre tank of mead had miraculously appeared from somewhere, which may or may not have been Eluveitie's tour bus. The security guards had now turned to pouring it straight down our throats, direct from the tank, and you can imagine the mess that caused. Furthermore, Jonne was handing out free beer from the stage as well as spraying it all over the place, the way racing drivers do with champagne. By the end, I was covered in beer, covered in mead, and I couldn't be happier.
The crowd deserted in droves... but there was still one band to go. The "secret guests", it turns out, were KIVIMETSÄN DRUIDI, who have been Korpiklaani's support band on their recent tour. The mass exodus meant that, finally, I could leave to take a slash and take on a decent amount of water, and still return to the front - the crowd that remained was so thin that for the first time since Wolfchant were on, I had some room to move. Paul and Gemma were going to leave, having seen Kivimetsän Druidi's performance in London, but I persuaded them to stick it out until the bitter end. After all - why go this far through the marathon only to give up within sight of the finish line? And so there were 40 final minutes of headbanging in which Kivimetsän Druidi played a decent set - they have a warbly woman who really doesn't fit their style, but they had enough nods to Ensiferum and Finntroll to keep me interested. At times, though, what they do borders on plagiarism - the keyboard riff that I heard during the setup (and which was part of what turned out to be Kristallivuoren Maa) was cynically swiped from Moonsorrow's Soturin Tie, and now I found they've billed themselves as "Rock n' Troll". Anyone recognise that? Thought so. Still, it's not as if they could be called bad. Certainly there had been no Stratovarius or Dragonforce to piss on the fire at any time. Can't think why I was fixated on the warbly woman with her black and red ultra-gothic corset, though. Caroline has described her as "ugly and full of piercings". Have I really been deprived of female company for so long that I'll do anything to anything? Only time will tell.
And at 02:20, a shade short of fifteen hours since the doors had opened, it was all over. There was just time to take a rake through a CD stall to find Heidevolk's De Strijdlust Is Geboren and the latest Månegarm album, Nordstjärnans Tidsålder. [EDIT: Does not compute! This is their first album, from 1998!] Paul and Gemma departed, I hadn't seen Caroline at all (unfortunately), and all that was left to do was return to the hotel, crash onto the bed and hope that Odin's call would not come too soon...
SÖNDAG 04.11.2007: HEMFÄRD
...but the only call that arrived was the buzz of a vibrating phone. The shower called; it took a good ten minutes to remove all the knots from my hair, and if I'd had to put up with the cold shower that the Walsheim offered it could have put a terminal crimp on my day. Powerful showers when I'm in any hotel are generally the highlight, given the miserable excuse for one that I have to put up with at home. Breakfast, so it seemed, was on the house - it seems they forgot to charge me that morning, much to my surprise and delight. And so again I crammed as much as possible, and an even larger quantity of bacon than before, for the trip home. Unfortunately, they also saw fit to charge six euros for the parking.
Getting out of Oberhausen was blindingly easy, and led straight onto the A40 that would take me over the border into Holland. It was a clear morning, with conditions perfect for driving; no signs of the fog that plagued my entry into Germany. I had probably 25 miles to see if the claims Honda made about Mjölner were true, and once the "120" signs had disappeared after passing the turning, as if by magic the second lane cleared for a mile ahead, and the throttle was floored. Legally. I can tell you now, when Honda say the car will do 127 mph, they lie. The correct number is... 128. Can't say I stayed there for very long, though. And it's a good job I slowed down or I'd have missed another comedy sign, for Wankum.
There were plenty of service stations long the way; the first, just over the border, was a good place to pull in and wake up properly. When you're doing 128 mph, you are awake even if you've had no sleep for three days. Droning along at 70 is a different matter, and it was time for the first can of Relentless for the day. While I was parked up, two more cars with British plates pulled up... where could they have been, in Germany in November? Certainly they weren't Ultima Ratio people, and I doubt that the three Poles were either. A further stop was planned further down the line; I thought I'd stop for lunch in Eindhoven. This, as those of you who know your history will realise, was once the hub of the European metal festival, in the mid-90s before some upstart village in northern Germany took over. The remnants of the Dynamo festival live on in what appeared to be a nightclub in the city centre. As for the rest of it, though, there did not appear to be a lot of life around. All I could find was a sandwich stall serving not-particularly-appetising paninis; an immense number of shops were shut. Jeremy Clarkson was right; the Dutch are not a nation of weed-smoking pornographers, that's just Amsterdam. The rest are quite severely conservative and the thought of opening their shops on a Sunday never crosses their mind... so I left empty-handed, though fortunately not empty-stomached due to the massive breakfast earlier in the day.
By the time I'd crossed the Belgian border, though, I was hungry, and I turned off at the first junction into the small town of Arendonk. It too, was completely devoid of life, except for a shop with a "frituur" sign outside. That's Dutch for chips, you know. And if there's three things the Belgians do well, it's beer, chocolate and chips. So, now, I've crossed off number two from Keir's list of top ten foods - Belgian chips with frietsaus, which is rather better than the limp and floppy offerings from Greasy Joe's (or, probably these days, Greasy Üglü's) Fish 'n' Chip Emporium with a dollop of Hellmann's mayonnaise.
The constant stops, though, were taking their toll. Having negotiated Ring Antwerpen I took the road for Bruges, which I knew to be the next destination. Only it wasn't, and soon I was on a road I no longer recognised. As it turned out, Gent was the actual target, which would have meant staying on the motorway. As it turns out, I was on another motorway - known only as the E34 seeing as Belgium has dispensed with A-numbers unless they have no E (such as the stub of the A10 to Ostende) - but it wasn't marked as a motorway on the map, just a red dual carriageway. Still, I was heading directly for Bruges rather than going via Gent... but this was not the ideal way. The road surface was thoroughly horrid, sending all kinds of rattles and vibrations through the car's seven-week-old suspension, and wouldn't have been out of place in Albania. After a good half hour of stopping and starting at traffic lights every mile or so, the motorway having suddenly decided not to be one anymore, the sign said: 24 km to Bruges. Only I then shot clean past a sign for another motorway: to Brussels, Gent and Ostende. Marvellous. I turned round, retraced my route for a mile or two, and approached the turning slowly to find myself on the N44, towards Aalter. The surface was even worse than on the E34; it was a proper third world job. And to top it all off, after I'd successfully negotiated my way through the small villages, there was only one entrance onto the motorway, which headed towards Brussels and Gent. The wrong way. Where exactly had Ostende gone? Belgium's infamous signing had thrown me off course again, and by the time I'd headed up the motorway that I would have been on originally, the wrong way, and turned round, time was now tight. Time was made up, though, with the thromping power of the S. And there wasn't a cop car or a speed camera in sight. Furthermore I decided not to hedge my bets with missing Mannekensvere by filling up for the last time in Europe (for a while, anyway) at Jabbeke. The final problem was... the signing, which after passing the turning for Ostende showed the distance for Dunkirk with the consistency of Norwich City's defence. The first sign said 54 km; the next, 2 km down the road, said 48; then there was a huge, huge gap to the next sign, where we were down to 39; then, most bizarrely of all, 2-3 km down the road, the next sign said... 40. The dash was not quite as mad as it had been getting to Dover initially, but became quite fraught in France when sign after sign for Dunkirk's Port-Est was passed, with the car ferry signs appearing and disappearing at random. Eventually, though, it was all over at 17:10, arriving with ten minutes to go before boarding. Most of the crossing was spent eating something cunningly disguised as a roast dinner for too much cash (it was some kind of pork roulade that contained far more fat than meat - grrrr) and reading a binned copy of the Sunday Times once I'd pulled the chewing gum off it. Rather concerning was the ITV weather report that I managed to catch a quick look at - fog over southern England, it said...
...and it wasn't wrong. The fog held off in Dover, which was a relief as passing Polish truck after Polish truck on the narrow dual carriageway was anything but fun; the M20 was as clear as Diamond Sellotape, and after brief stop at Maidstone services I had my All-New Route To London planned. I would take the M26 and then proceed the wrong way round the M25, turning off at the M40, followed by the A43 towards Northampton where I could rejoin the M1. Progress was easy until the dreaded M3 junction where the variable speed limit started; progress from this point was fixed at 68 mph with the cruise control due to not knowing which of the gantries had Gatsos in them, followed by an extended period of accelerate-brake-accelerate-brake-accelerate-brake as the signs flashed up 60, 50 and 40 in turn. And the M40? That's where the fog descended. And this time, it really was London in the fifties. This fog made what I'd driven through in the Ardennes look like light mist. 60 was about the best I could manage as I had to fire up the front fog lights for the first time ever just to have any hope I could see where I was going. 60 soon became 50 as the fog became thicker, and down to 40 for a while on the A43. All this, again, didn't stop the great wave of BMW-driving fuckjobs who would insist on bombing at 90 even if they were blindfolded, and I'm just grateful I wasn't rammed up the arse by one of them. By the time I left the A43, I was revoltingly tired, and peering through the gloom to see where the road went wasn't helping my cause. For whatever reason, I sailed straight past the first service station I came across - after all, I didn't have a bed there and at home I did. I was on the verge of death by the time Leicester Forest East arrived - and passed that as well. By that stage, I was too close to home... and the fog lifted soon afterwards so I could finally see where I was going. The trip was all over at just gone midnight, and I was in a much-needed bed within no time at all.
SETLISTS
Suidakra: Pendragon's Fall; Forth-Clyde; Gates of Nevermore; The Well of Might; Darkane Times; Dead Man's Reel; The IXth Legion; Wartunes
Skyforger: (amongst others, this is all I knew) Kauja Pie Saules; Kauja Pie Plakaniem, Kauja Pie Veisiem; Pērkoņkalve; Nāves Sala; Kad Ūsiņš Jāj; Migla, Migla, Rasa, Rasa
Moonsorrow: Kivenkantaja; Kuin Ikuinen; Pakanajuhla; Pimeä; Ukkosenjumalan Poika; Tuulen Koti, Aaltojen Koti; Tulkaapa Äijät!; Unohduksen Lapsi; Sankaritarina (eight-minute edit)
Korpiklaani: Journey Man; Korpiklaani; Cottages and Saunas; Palovana; Tuli Kokko; Pellonpekko; Veriset Äpärät; Happy Little Boozer; Juokse Sinä Humma; Wooden Pints; Beer Beer; Hunting Song; Let's Drink; Ii Lea Voibmi
THE AWARDS
BAND OF THE FESTIVAL: Admit it, you know who I'm going to give it to. Actually, think again. Eluveitie swiped the top prize for a barnstorming performance.
TRIUMPH THROUGH ADVERSITY: Goes specifically to Minas Morgul's bassist, and certainly not to Equilibrium.
SURPRISE OF THE FESTIVAL: Minas Morgul, actually - I wasn't expecting them to be as good as they were.
MOST BIZARRE INSTRUMENT: A tie between Eluveitie's hurdy-gurdy and Skyforger's bagatelle board. I would have thought the hurdy-gurdy player was Eluveitie's most important and least replaceable member; research reveals they're on their third already...
MOST NOTABLE ABSENCE: One H. Sorvali, as I hadn't been warned of his non-appearance.
THE JIMMY CARR AWARD FOR THE MOST INFURIATING WASTE OF OXYGEN THIS SIDE OF... JIMMY CARR: Him. You know the twat I mean. If you've read the review it will be obvious.
ULTIMA RATIO 2008
So, you all know when it'll be happening again next year. Think of all the bands that didn't play this year who could turn up next time: Ensiferum, Amon Amarth, Finntroll, Turisas, Equilibrium (provided they're still alive), Týr, Lumsk, Elvenking, Trollfest, Wintersun, Månegarm... next year, though, I'm going to get a photo pass!
Who's for doing it all again next year?