WALDROCK 2008 - INTRO

After the great success of the 2008 French’s Hellfest, it’s time to see what our neighbours have to propose. Fist difference: the waldrock is a one day fest (with a pre-party on Friday evening) while most of the European biggest festivals are from 3 to 5 days long.

For its 21st edition, no less than 20 bands are on the bill : Slayer, My Dying Bride, 1349, Lordi, Queensryche, Morbid Angel and many more. Wow!
Obviously, with so much bands in a single day, you’ll need three scenes: two outside and one under a great tent.

But let’s start at the beginning. The Waldrock festival takes place in the small town of Bergum (Burgum) in the Netherlands. After a quick search on the internet, we decided to stay in Leeuwarden, larger and not too remote. So here we are after a 6 hours uneventful drive. Just the time of a stop by our hotel and we’re on our way to the festival.
First good news: it’s straight forward, it should be roughly a quarter of an hour to get back to sleep. Cool.
Second good news : the site is well signposted and the car park access is eased with the help of many volunteers.

The site spreads on several fields, and when I say field it’s actually grass meadow! A flat (or almost) thing without the smallest tree (and hence shadows…). Somewhat surprisingly for a festival that has been around for so long, there is no permanent settlement anywhere. Each year this festival is completely assembled from scratch!
Much smaller than Clisson’s site, the festival is confined to a rectangular plot. There are two entrances : a main entrance, for the mere mortals like me, and a secondary for the lucky holders of AAA pass.

However, it’s there we’ll have to get the little precious sesame we’ll need : two bracelets. One “photo pass”, which give access to the photopit, and the other, a press pass. This is the same system as this year Hellfest’s system.
Once crossed the bodysearch at the entrance, you can find the Tent stage immediately on your left. Slightly larger than the Hellfest’s one, it can host 2000 people in. There’s a gentle slope there, slowly1 rising from the stage to the outside, allowing a pleasant view from almost every point, even from the immediate vicinity.

For the rest, on each side you’ll find a long set of stands : shops & food.
Talking food, welcome to the kingdom of uniformity. Here no small independent sellers, everything is Waldrock’s stamped. You’ll need token and food prices are the same everywhere.

So let’s go to the “Tokens Box” where we’ll buy 25 tokens for 50€. Prices are easy to catch : one token for a 20cl drink (beer, coke, wine…) or two for a strange brew mixed with Jagermeister. Two tokens also for basics (burgers, hotdog, braadwurst…), one more token will buy you French fries, while you’ll have to throw away three tokens for the rest (pizza or Mexican food).
Food is not really bad (even if MacDo seems quite better) but the quantities served are rather small. The only good food I’ll find during the day will be the giants pan cakes that one can purchase for the modest sum of 3 or 4 token (depending). I know, it hurts …

All of this is very, very well established and running at full speed all along the day. There are no doubt that profits are going extremely well. But after all, it’s only one day, and if the benefits help having a great festival … It’s not the same problem as in France, where the food’s profits are not going in the festival’s pocket. However, since it does not begin before 12AM, you can have a big breakfast/lunch before ;).
And, whatever … with the ambient heat, it’s the beverages that are going to monopolize your tokens

As for the Merch’s corner, nothing to be amazed. The rates are similar, but there is much less choice than in its French counterpart. For the moment, as the festival’s official merchandising is not yet on sale, I pass my way.
The last part of the site is not yet available (being assembled), but we can already see from here the two outdoors scenes : the Main stage (which seems huge even from here), and her little sister, the Jagermeister stage, much smaller. Here, it’s the Tentstage who acts as the “second” stage

Well, since we’re here … let’s take some shots. It’s Incursion Demantia playing currently … not really my cup of tea, therefore I will not dwell.
First observation: stage in the tent is extremely high (around 2 meters), and the lights are coming straight in your face from above …hail to the contre-jour ?.
For the rest, the crowd seems quite mellow.
Well, as we have not eaten yet and since I am quite curious to visit Leeuwarden, we decided to get back to town.
Bad choice … Town’s dead and Dutch people eat earlier … At 10PM don’t hope to find anything to eat, even on Friday’s evening. Well, fortunately a waitress will take pity on us : saved ;).