I be a God-fearing and turnip eating good Amish boy. I love potato farming, talking about horses and eating! God didn't see fit to let be be fit so I'm carrying a little bit of baggage if you know I means, I'm a bit chubby but that will change soon though, as soon as me and my lovely Bride to Be (and half-sister) are married we will finally be able to have carnal knowledeg of each other and I expect to lose about 70 pounds while we do the deed so God can bless us with babies and children and suchlike.

I love workin on me farm, apart from milking cows, I usally let my siblings do the milking cos them things look ugly, yuck!

Potato farming's my passion, I loves it somuch my mum once forbade me to work on the potato fields for a year, dear Lord God in heaven taht was a terribel year. My mother, God bless her, was right to do it though. You see, you shouldn't enjoy your work that be a Sin. Cos work has to be hard artherwise it ain't really work, ain't it? Praise the Loard.


Frodo Thorson

This is my church
It stands so tall and proud
It has done for all time

It has no walls
Yet its vast halls
Reach from shore to shore

To whatever shore
You know as your own
We stand as one, we stand alone

We are born
From the same womb
Hewn from the same stone

From the frozen Baltic
I watched sunrise over Athena
Walked the battlefields of Flanders
And saw duskfall at Cintra

Beneath the spires of Sofia
Fields of crosses at Arnhem
Armenius stood tall in Teuteborg
Senatus Populusque Romanus

To the fjords of Hordaland
Shadows of ancient Albion
At the shore of a 1000th lake
Saint Vitus dance in Praha

Yet when to Ireland we Return
I know that I am home at last
And every sun that sets
Takes me closer to her Earth

Wacken is a small village in Northern Germany with a population of around 1,600. Every Summer since 1990 WOA is held in the grassy fields just outside Wacken. From a relatively small festival it rapidly established itself as the biggest Metal festival in the world, WOA 08 was the biggest ever, with over 70,000 Metalheads attending!

I had high expectations, which were spectacularly exceeded!

This year there was a great line up of 65 bands, including Iron Maiden, Primordial, Opeth, Kreator, Obituary, Girschool, Children of Bodom, At the Gates, Exodus, Job for a Cowboy, Nightwish, Nashville Pussy... There were more great bands than I had the stamina for and ended up missing Obituary and Gorgoroth which I wanted to see.


The atmosphere was amazing, a huge but friendly crowd (I saw very little if any trouble in 4 days), that weren't even that many people taht were obviously drunk, though the beer flowed freely.

The facilities were excellent (including flushing toilets and warm showers, all very clean), plenty of bars with reasonably priced drink, food stands with anything from typically German food to Asian noodle bars, falafel stands, breakfast bars... The choice was amazing.

On top of all that there were two great markets, the Metal Market (with dozens of shops with all kinds of Metal merchandise as well as a separate Record and a CD fair) and the Medieval Market, a Medieval style market selling hand crafted goods like swords, drinking horns (very popular with the German and Scandinavian Metalheads) chain mail, helmets, shirts, cups..... The people who worked in the market were dresed in medieval clothes and slept in medieval style tents right there on the market. It looked amazing and was one of the coolest spots in WOA.

I won't go into detail on all the gigs, highlights were of course Maiden, performing an all 80's classics lineup including songs they haven't played in 20 years. hearing Aces High, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, Moonchild and Powerslave live was simply unbelievable. The only bad point was it was since pretty much every Metalhead is into Maiden we were all squeezed pretty tight, it was really uncomfortable.

Primordial were another great moment, even though they had a crap slot at 11 am there was a good crowd there and they're music wasn't any less powerful under the hot German sun. They were awesome as always. After the gig there was a meet and greet and they signed my Primordial long sleeve and gave me a signed promotional photo and I was chating :yap: for a while with some of them. They are pretty much my favourite band at the moment so it was great. Of course them being from Dublin I've run into them several times and am not star struck when I do. We were on the same flight back to Dublin actually.

Airbourne were brilliant, they play classic Hard Rock not unlike AC/DC but with enough of a modern edge to make them interesting and a great band to rock out to, the crowd went wild!

Girlschool were one of the pleasant surprises of WOA, they're an 80's all female Hard Rock band, and can they rock! They had a great rapport with the crowd and were totally at ease even though they're middle aged women playing to a crowd of mostly male 20 somethings. It was a pleasure to watch.

Job For a Cowboy, an American Death Metal band were the first extreme Metal act. Though I love Death Metal I'm not a big fan of their particular style (would mostly be into Deicide, Nile,...) but just watching a 20,000 plus crowd go nuts with massive circle pits and even a "wall of death" was a sight to behold.


Opeth are a new favourite for me, only started listening to them a mere 10 months ago, but I'm completely hooked now. With their progressive, intelligent Death Metal expertly blended with acoustic interludes, melodic clean vocals and deep Death Metal growls they wowed the crowd. The hour long set left everyone hungry for more. They're one of the most interesting bands in Metal, or in any genr