Secrets Of The Moon - Deathstars - Dagoba - Opeth - Bury Me Deep - Voivod - Evocation - Volbeat - Ghost Brigade - Legion Of The Damned - Hate - Moonspell - Excrementory Grindfuckers - Evergreen Terrace - Waylander - Brainstorm - Narziss - Epica - Unlight - Born From Pain - Krypteria - Grave - Before The Dawn - The Storm - Black Sun Aeon - Benighted

We first went to Illenschwang, which borders on the campsite, to pay a visit to the local tavern. It was time to have a rich midday meal after all this dry festival muck consisting of salami and smoked stuff in any form, bread, so called canned “Königsberger Klöpse”, cooked meatballs in a white sauce with capers (cheerz to Alex!), sweets, Pepsi and beer. The “Wiener Schnitzel” with chips was delicious and we let ourselves be carried away to staying a bit longer in the tavern. Afterwards we went to the local bathing pond where we met some metal heads to chill a bit. As we made for returning to the campsite, I had this fear in my head “Damn, you certainly have missed UNLIGHT!” And that was the case – not only that, but GRAVE was also positioned pretty early in the billing. I misremembered here something – keep in mind: never trust your brain on a festival!

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Thus the last festival day started for me with Portuguese Dark Metal band :: MOONSPELL ::. I had the honor to see the band on their tour promoting the Irreligious album opening for Type O Negative some years ago. The follow-up Sin/Pecado was another highlight before I lost track of the quintet. The first songs were all of recent past before Opium was intoned as track number six. The song hasn’t lost its magic over the years and Fernando still coped with the clean, spoken and aggressive vocals without any problems. Great! Further “vintage” songs were the obligatory Vampiria, Full Moon Madness and the band hymn Alma Mater. But also songs of the recent past such as Scorpion Flower were well received by the many fans in front of the main stage. Front man Fernando has neither lost his qualities as shouter nor as entertainer. Thus he handed out his opinion about e.g. the phenomenon “wall of death” (“Fuck wall of death! I want to see you mosh!”) – personally, as a fan of the traditional mosh pit this was the statement of festival!

It is self-evident that :: VOLBEAT :: don’t miss a thing on stage. And so the Danes were once again best humored today and let off their melodic riff firework into the crowd in front of the main stage. The playlist was well balanced. The feel-good Rock, which sounds a bit one-dimensional on the records, was the best solution for the festival considering such high temperatures.
It was clear that the gig of the Danes should become a winner of this year’s SUMMER BREEZE for many of the attendees as Michael asked the crowd to do a “wall of love”, where the fans should hug each other.
Another plus factor is Michael’s good taste in clothes: right before the gig of Opeth you could see him walk about in the VIP-area in a “Nazipunks Fuck Off” shirt of Napalm Death.

Once again I had to leave a gig earlier not to miss another one, in that case, the show of the Swedish Death Metal commando :: EVOCATION :: in the party tent. And how the guys from Borås stepped on the gas. The four shorthaired guys (only guitar player Marko has shoulder-length hair), who utilized the full size of the stage, proved that it ain’t necessary to have long hair as a Death Metal musician to appear cool on stage. Great songs both from the last record Dead Calm Chaos as well as older tracks such as The Ancient Gate off the first demo released 1992, were unleashed to the crowd in front of the stage. Personally, THE new discovery of the festival!

As Saturday’s headliner :: OPETH :: entered stage to the already known sounds of Through Pain To Heaven off the Nosferatu soundtrack of the German Prog Rockers Popol Vuh and what the hell is going on in Heir Apparent? You can’t hear anything of Fredrik’s guitar. Thus the band seemed very insecure. As the song was performed poor rather than good, a short break was necessary to solve the problems. The break got longer and longer and so the band decided spontaneously to cover the Deep Purple song Soldier Of Fortune, with vocals, drums and keyboards only. Fredrik was still busy solving his problem on stage, furthermore Mike and him had the wrong guitars for the song and bass player Martin quite honestly forgot what he has to play in this song… Well… Afterwards Martin and Axe improvised a short jam session, which was entertaining, but sounded somewhat strange. The next day Mikael released a statement on his Myspace site where he told that neither Martin heard anything of Axe or vice versa. Considering that, it sounded pretty well.
The gig actually re-started after Ghost Of Perdition. And now the sound was crystal clear. That was the first OPETH show where I could hear both guitars pretty well – if it only worked this way from the beginning. All in all each record from Deliverance on was included in the set list. And even though this evening’s songs have been included on older play lists, I still like to hear them.
What I also like to hear is when Mikael emphasizes the great relation between OPETH and Katatonia (from which some members are part of THE Death Metal band of the hour, Bloodbath at the same time). Mike asked the crowd: “Did you see Katatonia? – Yeah? Were they good? – I didn’t expect anything else!” That’s the way it has to be! Furthermore Mikael told the crowd, that Bloodbath might be part of the festival billing in the near future. Hope dies last!
The bouncer tonight is Deliverance. Mikael apologizes politely to the fans – in spite of the big problems at the beginning for me personally a felicitous gig and a worthy closure of an anew humungous festival!
Setlist: Heir Apparent, Soldier Of Fortune, Jamsession, Harvest, Ghost Of Perdition, The Leper Affinity, Death Whispered A Lullaby, Closure, The Lotus Eater, Deliverance

To come to a conclusion: the billing of the 2009 edition of the SUMMER BREEZE once again was the cream of the crop – and a couple of improvements were also reached organizationally: the waiting times at the entrance have been lowered notably by installing a better thought-out system with the pass gates, the toilet situation was better than the years before and the security was friendly and fair. Furthermore there was a shopping mile with loads of merchandise and the food and drinks offerings were sufficient although a bit overpriced.
And for me personally it was great hanging out with the guys I went to the SUMMER BREEZE as well as meeting a couple of people I haven’t either seen long time or I didn’t expect to meet them… And finally I could get to know one of our crew personally – Leo aka Stormlord was at the SUMMER BREEZE with Napalm Records and I visited him at the merchandise tent of the Austrians on Thursday. Great! Cheerz! :)

story & pics © Haris