Best moment of the whole weekend was seeing Jeff Becerra. He was genuinely overwhelmed by the crowd reaction. Possessed were absolutely amazing and he did an incredible job from the wheelchair. Metal horns aloft, respect is mandatory regardless of whether you like death metal or not.

Best band of the weekend to my surprise were Cannibal Corpse. They delivered an object lesson on how to deliver a death metal set. It was tight, bedwettingly heavy, sounded absolutely fabulous and was straight to the point. Hats off to them, even after almost 20 years they still have the hunger to deliver.

Biggest disappointments were Dimmu Borgir and Immortal. I was really looking forward to seeing Immortal but they seemed strangely flat and rusty. It wasn't bad, just not as good as I was hoping. I missed Stormwarrior (featuring Kai Hansen) where they played songs from Helloween's Walls Of Jericho, to see Immortal instead. I think that was a mistake. Dimmu just didn't click for me, the material they played was generally stuff I liked, it just seemed to get lost in the sound system and they seemed to lack the artillery to deliver.

There was also a fire, probably caused by a cigarrette end, which stopped the festival on friday for about 40 minutes. Incredibly every act still played their full set!

The schedule for the WET stage was changed on the Saturday, which pushed Vital Remains out to beyond 3am so we either missed or they didn't play, which was a pity.

Other stuff I liked:

Napalm Death delivered as usual. I find Barney one of the most hilarious front men to watch, his random body movements are stuff of true comedy! Sacerd Reich were fabulous, a real treat. Saw them in London on the previous Sunday which was a riot as well Destruction delivered a cracker of a set and the circle pit during Bestial Invasion was a monster. I lost count of amount of the people I sent up for a crowd surf, in the end they were forming a queue!! 1349 were on course to end the day with a bang until the sound system appeared to go bang itself and we lost everything for about half a minute! When it returned something had clearly gone wrong because they were almost indecipherable. Shame, they were doing really well until that point. Sabbat were fabulous, although Simon Negus's drumming leaves a lot to be desired and Fraser Craske was absent. Didn't matter though, we were well happy! Belphegor had to put up with a terrible sound but they still came up with the goods. Well impressed.

Stuff I disliked:

I've not bought a Rage album since Trapped way back in 1992 but I was utterly horrified with their set. They used to be a pretty handy melodic thrash act - now they are churning out this horrid rock opera dirge. What a waste! I'm not a big fan of Stratovarius either but the Germans seem to love it and it is a German festival after all. Type O' Negative were terrible, I really don't see the reason this band are so popular, especially not when the singer seems to be hellbent on pissing the crowd off. Went and saw some of Moonsorrow but wasn't too impressed with that either!

If I haven't mentioned it I either didn't see it or it didn't stick too well in the mind.

I will be going next year for sure!

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