Summer Breeze Open Air 2015

The Summer Breeze was my second big metal festival (around 40.000 people) I have been to. I got my ticket on pretty short notice - but after Wacken I just wanted to do another festival. And bands like Knorkator, Blutengel and Powerwolf got me convinced that I really want to go. Sadly the Summer Breeze will properly be the last festival I will go to this year.

We arrived on Wednesday afternoon, one day later as the majority of our camp group because we just came back from some holidays. But our camp group was so nice to set up our tent for us. After settling into the camp we went to see our first band – Thränenkind, parts of Panzer, Deserted Fear and Death Angel. On Wednesday only the small stages – the T Stage and the Camel Stage - where used, because the festival started official on Thursday.

The Summer Breeze started out a bit as an opposite to Wacken. It was melting hot. Most of the times I was running around in a Bikini.

Thursday we started with going to the town Dinkelsbühl to buy some food that we didn´t bring along with us and some ice for our cold boxes. Afterwards we had breakfast and then went to the stages.

My first band of the day was Trollfest, a pagan metal band that was a lot of fun to watch. Afterwards I went to Megaherz. I didn´t see them live jet and I really liked their concert. Even though they only played half an hour because there were some sound issues on the pain stage in the beginning.

Afterwards I needed a short break for refilling my water bottle, getting out of the sun and for a short shopping trip to get some sun glasses. I returned to the stages to see Die Apokalyptischen Reiter. Their music is great for head banging.  After them I saw the last bit of Ost+Front. I went for a break again and returned for Black Stone Cherries and  Opeth. I think Opeth was my favorit band of that day. I decided not to go to any bands afterwards, because I didn´t want to spoil the impression from their music.

On Friday the line-up was really great. But since the first band I wanted to see started at around 13:30 pm I had some time beforehand. I spent the morning/noon with wandering around, visiting some festival friends and meeting some fun people. One of some could do a flick-flack - even while he was drunk.

The first band I saw that day was Blutengel. I saw them already this year at the WGT, and there they got me conviced of them. It was nice to see how this goth band got accepted at a metal festival. (Even before they brought their 4 beautiful arguments to their stage.)

After a short break I went to Alestorm. This band is fun, especially live. And it is good for crowd surfing, which I did again.

Afterwards I saw Kadaver, Ensiferum, Gloryhammer, parts of Combichrist, Powerwolf and parts of Bloodbath. This day was just packed with good bands.

After Ensiferum we finally got the thunderstorm. The festival was interrupted for one hour. But they didn´t chancel the bands, but rescueduelled everything to one hour later. We spend that our in the car watching the thunderstorm and having some beer. Because of the new running order, we still made it to Gloryhammer which made me really happy. Gloryhammer was fun to watch and the crowd was in a really good mood.

Combichrist played some of their older songs as well, which I like. I am not too fused about their new songs on the other hand.

It was great to see Powerwolf again. Even so it was a bit too much power metal for me that day.

Bloodbath was nice as well, but I was just to tired to stand any longer.

On Saturday I saw Be’Lakor, Kataklysm, Knorkator, Dark Tranquility and Nightwish. I didn´t know Be'Laktor and Kataklysm before but I really enjoyed their music. Knorkator was just amazing. I love their music and the stage show was awesome. The crowd was having so much fun as well. And in the last couple of songs I went crowd surfing again. (As a girl you have to be a bit careful - the guys like to open the bras from female crowd surfers during Knorkator concerts^^).

During this Summer Breeze I found a lot of awesome new bands for myself. Dark Tranquility tured out to be one of them.

Nightwish was a bit of a disappointment. They where supposed to be the headliner of this festival. The first couple of songs the sound was really bad, so that you couldn´t really hear the singing or the guitar. And they played a lot of new songs that only real Nightwish fans knew. Personaly I think that you can promote your new album on a concert with your fans. But when you play at a festival you should play the songs that most people know so that everybody can enjoy the gig.

But I made the best out of it and had a lot of fun making soup-bubbles during the concert.

So that were my impressions from the Summer Breeze festival. I think I like this festival even better then Wacken. It is big enough to get all the great bands - but not as gigantic as Wacken. You can walk more easily to all the places, the queues are not as long, it is easier to get a good place in front of the stages. And it is a lot less comercial. Compared to Wacken tickets, the Summer Breeze ticket cost about one half.

So definitly next year again:)