Day 1

Waking up the next day was a dreadful experience, as the moisture hadn’t evaporated quite yet, and the heat of the direct sunlight created a sauna-like state inside the tent. I felt like a crab being slowly boiled alive inside the tent. 
 
The first day opened with the female, thrash trio, Nervosa from Brazil on the main stage. Their high-energy and intense show kicked major ass with a couple mosh pits in the early afternoon. Despite their brutal show, they all seemed like the sweetest girls and looked to be having the most fun up on the stage. A perfect way to wake up! 
 
Next up on the secondary Fire Stage was the Swedish band Scarlet, which I had never heard of. They were an odd band to say the least, with a style that’s hard to pinpoint. They sounded like a female version of Blue Stahli with an emo-like and kinky Britney Spears stage show. It wasn’t quite my taste, but it was a very fun show. 
 
There was also a third stage on GMF called the Gas Stage; a small, completely circular building that was used for distributing gas throughout the area, but is now used as a concert building. The first band playing was Northgate; a completely brand new progressive metal band from Sweden. There are very few progressive bands that I enjoy watching live, and Northgate is now one of them. All the members of the band looked so young, yet they played their show with such great confidence on such a large gig. It felt a bit awkward toasting them, as I’m pretty sure none of them are above the legal drinking age. 
 
Flotsam & Jetsam was the next band I saw, but I only got to see two of their songs performed before I had to leave for the campsite and close my tent as it was raining. From what I heard they were really good. A really cool blend of heavy, speed and thrash metal. 
 
With a deer kebab in hand from the trailer in the campsite, I was ready for the Finnish melodic death metal band, Wolfheart. I had never heard of them before, but the Swedish Finns in my camp raved about them quite a bit, and rightfully so. Their show was wonderful and much more serious and dark than previous bands. It was a show that should have been performed when dark out, but the sun kept on frying everyone there. 
 
Dying Fetus was the next band that I on the menu for me, and they were great. So ridiculously good live. I wanted to livestream their performance, but I arrived too late and caught only the last three songs and the area was packed. Brutal death metal is always a winner at festivals. 
 
The Dutch symphonic black metal band Carach Angren “suffered” the same fate as Wolfheart by that the setting wasn’t the most fitting for their show. The bright sunlight does take away a bit from their horror-filled performances. I had seen them a few times before, but their show is always entertaining. I am always impressed by how intelligible the lyrics are with the growls. It’s always fun to watch the vocalist go to town on the bloody mannequin that they bring with them. 
 
I decided to go for another bite and just listen to Kataklysm from afar. They really hit you like a wall and were so damn heavy, it was insane. Their songs were great, but there was a whole lot of talking and silence in between the songs. I didn’t go up there to take a look at what was going on, so I don’t know if it could have been technical difficulties or if they changed guitars after song, but it still felt a bit out of place. 
 
Up next was the band that I had been looking forward to the most out of the whole line-up, the epic folk metal band, Equilibrium from Germany. I hadn’t seen them for a couple of years and I was really looking forward to jigging to them once again. They sounded a bit off this time around at the start of the show, especially the bass and drums. It got better throughout the set, fortunately, and “Blut im Auge” will always be great, no matter what. 
 
Last, but not least, the grooviest black metal band, Satyricon from Norway finished off the first proper day of the festival, and it was perfect. It finally became dark out to really set the atmosphere and a light drizzle fell from the night sky. They played all their most known songs as well. It was stunning. To finish this lovely day off I had some fish and chips with a deep fried Mars bar for dessert. The deep fried chocolate bar was probably the strangest culinary experience of my life, as it was both disgusting and delicious at the same time. Peak decadence.