Wacken is a small town ,if not a village, in Northern Germany about 100 kilometres from Hamburg. The 2003 Wacken festival had three major stars to headline each day of the gathering of metalheads from all over Europe. The stars were: Running Wild, a German band , sort of like old Judas Priest on speed, Twisted Sister, well, they were supposed to be a star, and the real star : SLAYER!

Everyone was waiting for Slayer to play as a headliner of the last day of the festival, you could feel it in the air, most of the people there were to see the GODS! While watching a band called Stradivarius ( kind of like old Helloween ) there was a guy behind me talking to another guy saying: Slayer is going to play a concert of the century, and I don't if he meant this century or the last century but still.

As the crowd was pretty much plastered from 3 day drinking spree, you could hear wild voices here and there yelling : SLAYYYYERRRRRR and HELLLLL AWWWWWWWAITSSSSSSSSSS! Just to let you know, SLAYER is BIG in Germany, ask Kerry King where he likes to play the most , and the answer will be: Germany!

They started with Darkness of Christ, at this point I was still farther away from the stage, I was finishing my beer before getting into the pit, the sound was awful, I saw a bunch of bands over the last three days but pretty much all of them sounded better, even Twisted Sister, I was hoping the sound would improve with time, but is did not! How disappointing! I do not remember the order of songs but I know they played a lot of stuff from Reign in Blood, which is always great, one song I have not heard them play before, or at least I do not recall, was EPIDEMIC! By that time I was in the pit , it was huge and pretty rough - as always at Slayer's concerts.The sound in the pit was much better - no surprise there. I was taking some pictures while in the pit , then I got on top of the crowd and got hit in the eye. I had enough, went to buy a WURST- a German sausage, and another beer.

They played the usual, closing the set with Angel of Death, unfortunately there was no encore , maybe because there was a time constraint.Vader was playing next - not an easy task to play after Slayer, but Vader pulled it off!