PARTY SAN OPEN AIR 2012

Archgoat - Assaulter - Behemoth - Bolt Thrower - Cattle Decapitation - Dark Fortress - Dead Concregation - December Flower - Entrails - General Surgery - Ghost Brigade - Gospel Of The Horns - Immolation - Immortal - In Solitude - Incantation - Insomnium - Iron Lamb - Malignant Tumor - Mortjuri - Naglfar - Necros Christos - Nifelheim - Nile - Nocte Obducta - Ragnarök - Rectal Smegma - Skalmöld - Sodom - Sólstafir - Tankard - Toxic Holocaust - Trash Amigos - Vallenfyre - Warbringer

[BRT] PARTY SAN, you are so great!!! Gerre’s (of Tankard fame) declarations of love to the crowd of this year’s PARTY SAN OPEN AIR can be taken for the entire festival with the whole shebang. I rarely have experienced a festival with such phat and smashing billing and such relaxed audience with a mostly great organization. Chapeau!!!

[Dajana] Ah, yessss. Time has come for my favorite summer festival: the PARTY SAN OPEN AIR 2012. My anticipation was overwhelming, my adrenalin early on a high level. Just great! After the new festival ground proved itself it did not really matter what weather we would have. What more can happen? And that might be the secret why we got blessed while almost every other festival went down in rain and mud ;) The PARTY SAN OPEN AIR was granted with sun, a blue sky, clouds, fresh breeze and starlit (and thus very cold) nights. That’s the way it has to be! Okay, a little bit more sun would have been fine, at least for me ;)

[Terry] It was my very first PARTY SAN OPEN AIR and I was much looking forward to it. What can I say? My anticipation didn’t get disappointed. The great weather had its part and of course the delicious dark beer.

:: Stories :: Thursday :: Friday :: Saturday ::

:: Pics :: Thursday :: Friday :: Saturday ::

[Dajana] Let’s go to Schlotheim! We got off the grind a little bit later than expected but had an easy travel. Arriving at the “gate to hell” we had to queue in and wait, and wait… and wait. Luckily we did not run out of beer and moonshine ;)
From an organizational point of view almost everything went smooth. Only one band got replaced, weeks prior the festival, and on Saturday there was a slight change in the running order due to traffics. There have been new things and others changed to the worse.

NEW was the Tent-Stage, giving German underground bands the possibility to present themselves to the crowd during the change-over-times. Per se a great idea but first: creatures need breaks for a new beer, food and such stuff and second: playing times from the Tent-bands were overlapping with the end and/or beginning of the main bands. Sorry, too much for me. I unfortunately did not make it even once to the tent stage.

[Terry] While getting fresh beer from the named tent I also managed to see 3 of these underground bands. All of them great, worth to have seen playing live and worth to keep an eye on them. On Friday CHAPEL OF DISEASE or DECEMBER FLOWER (sorry I was too drunk), on Saturday MORTJURI and ZERO DEGREE. Latter one played melodic Death Metal that could not be any more melodic. Harsh singing and 3 guitars that actually made sense. Top!

VERY BAD I found the fact that toilets/showers were halved in numbers, backstage and on the camping ground. Backstage food-prices had almost doubled (from former 4.50 Euro up to 7 Euro), while the ones on the regular festival ground remained constant. Another smelling peeve was the piss-box at the backstage entry. Last year there was just a fence seeing men pissing against it what ran into the backstage area. This year they (actually clever) placed dixies and an urinal there but men still pissed against the fence, again with it running into the backstage area and stinking. Last but not least the non-existence and/or miniature editions of waste bins should be rethought.

AND then… is there the issue with the photopit. At the risk of biting the hand that feeds me… Dear Mieze, dear Boy, please change. There are way too many photographers in the pit with an uncoordinated handling. Sometimes we are allowed for 3 songs, for 2, 1 or only 30 seconds. Then there are 1, 2 or 3 groups. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Please limit photographers! Give out photo passes already in different groups. Leave AAA-photographers in AFTER the regular 3 songs, stop “photographers” with mobiles or small digi-cams and make the stage security learn to count till 3. An intro with no band on stage is no damn fkg song!

[Dajana] Generally speaking the PARTY SAN OPEN AIR gets more and more popular and it is great to see the festival growing. As for me I think the perfect size is reached to keep up this unique atmosphere.