Hell On Earth
Party San Open Air, August 7-8-9, 2003 Bad Berka, Germany.
Nestled just above the Thüringia Wald, a medieval forest in Eastern Germany, Bad Berka seemed an unusual spot for such an extreme metal festival. Rolling green hills, quaint villages and ancient fortresses dot the countryside, not to mention these were once the stomping grounds of famous philosophers, composers and religious reformists (Goethe, Bach and Martin Luther). There’s much history to be found in Thüringia, but for us metal heads, history has been made every August for the past eight years with a small, underground, but nonetheless an extremely important metal festival called Party San Open Air. Each year the organizers have brought together the cream of the crop of extreme bands, no power metal, nothing mainstream, just aggression in its purest form, death metal, black metal, gore grind and death thrash. This years line up included Marduk, Vader, Behemoth, Malevolent Creation, Kataklysm, Naglfar, God Dethroned, Primordial, Aborted and more. Amongst the beauty of the ancient countryside, they threw an intimate metal party for 3000 hardcore metal-n-beer fanatic Germans and it’s time the party should catch on in the outside world.
I actually wasn’t planning on going to any festivals this summer, but somewhere around July 5th US Airways had a sale that was too good to be true, and I just couldn’t restrain myself from buying the plane ticket. I tried to get over in time for Wacken also (the weekend before Party San), and planned to go to both festivals but alas, all the cheap seats were sold out before Wacken so Party San alone it was. To tell you the truth, I kind of enjoyed the atmosphere of Party San compared to the chaos of a big festival like Wacken. No overlapping stage set times, no running from stage to stage missing half of bands sets and getting a bad vantage point, and no two stages playing in one field at the same time, with the music interfering with each other. It was a relaxed atmosphere that was comprised of seeing blistering sets of mega metal and downing some brews with friends.
The only downer was the extreme heat, as the festival coincided with the worse heat wave Europe has experienced in 50 years. But it all seemed fitting, as my friend Scott and I arrived for the Thursday night kickoff to see the sign above the entrance that said Welcome To Hell and the signs above the stage proclaiming Hell Is Here. It was hot as hell all weekend. And all the bands smoked. |
