Despite the rain that would fall ocassionally, Metaldays was one of the best expiriences this summer, and if you weren't there, you missed out on alot of great bands and alot of fun.

Metaldays is located near Tolmin in Slovenia in a valley surrounded by mountains, beautiful nature, river Soča and Tolminka.. It makes you ask yourself, what else could make this festival better? Metaldays has a capacity of 12,000 – 13,000 visitors and two stages along with Meet & Greet opportunity to meet your favorite bands. The line up was very versatile this year, you could hear black metal, death metal, power metal, folk metal, thrash metal and even reggae metal.

Unfortunately the warm-up parties weren't great as last year, and there weren't as many merchandise tents like last year, but these are only minor complaints. The camp opens up 3 days before the festival starts, and it gives you the opportunity to explore Tolmin and its fortress on top of the hill, aswell as other natural beauties located all around you. You just can't beat the view waking up in the early morning and looking on the mountains and mist on them, it feels like Lord of The Rings.

 

On the first day we were welcomed by the rain in the early morning, but it didn't ruin anybody's mood, most of the days were hot, and when its hot the best place to go cool yourself is the river of Soča which i mentioned earlier, on the Beach stage you could also get involved in programs like Metal Yoga, limbo, Pirate races etc. You can even see some bands on the beach walking around or taking a swim. The beer in the camp was verry affordable, only 1 euro for 0,5l of Budweiser. You could also find vegetarian, vegan food, indian food etc. A great choice of food no doubt.  Also, every night after the shows you could go to afterparties, located on the beach and in the tent near the main stage, beer, metal, strippers, do I need to go on ?

Metaldays is perhaps one of the cleanest festivals in Europe, very little thrash is to be found around the stages and on the beach, organizers and volunteers did a great job with cleaning the festival site and perserving the beautiful nature.

 

Day one

Zix opened the festival on  main stage and Seduced opened up on the second stage. Later on we got to see bands like Deserted Fear, Battlecross, Orphaned Laned, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Sacred Reich, Dark Funeral, Testament etc.

For me the best shows were Sacred Reich, Dark Funeral and Testament, the crowd was very responsive. First Sacred Reich did a great job with their old school heavy/thrash metal songs, pumping up the crowd for what's coming. Dark Funeral were awesome, excellent dark atmosphere and an excellent choice of songs, in my opinion one of the best shows i saw.

Testament were great ofcourse, very interactive with the crowd, and delivered a great show, with a lot of moshing, headbanging, crowd surfing, you name it. 

 

Day two

Day two was going great until Gloryhammer hit the stage, because after their 3rd song it started to rain heavily and they were forced to cancell the show because there was alot of water on stage, a lot of people were dissapointed, but luckily for the rest of the bands the rain didn't last long.

After them, there were great bands like Skalmold, Cattle Decapitation, Nervochaos, Insomnium, Arkona, Skindred (which are very good at making a crowd go crazy by the way) and finally Marduk closed the second day with their brutal riffs and blastbeats, you have a feeling like you are in a middle of a raging battle with machine guns and tanks all around you when you are at their show, its amazing.

 

Day three

The rain was still falling from now and then, basically 3 hours of sun, 1 hour of rain and 3 hours of sun again, but it wasn't as bad as yesterday. Stand-out acts of day three for me were : Aborted, Pro-Pain, Dying Fetus, Misery Index, Napalm Death, Kreator and Die Apokalyptischen Reiter.

First you had a brutal afternoon with Aborted, Pro-Pain and Dying Fetus, to bang your head like a maniac and mosh, after that we could rest with some more „relaxing“ metal delivered by Graveyard, and after them visually the best show of the festival : Kreator (I'm not saying they were bad musically, they were awesome, just that there are no misunderstandings ). The show included alot of pyrotechnics and confetti, a visual spectacle.

Die Apokalyptischen Reiter closed the third day with a good note.

 

Day four

This day the rain started to fall a little more again, but it wasn't a problem, if you had no raincoats, you could easily make one out of garbage bags, it wasn't as pretty but it did it's job well.

In my opinion the best shows today were delivered by Immolation, Septicflesh, Electric Wizard, Devildriver, Gama Bomb, Obscura and melo-death veterans At the Gates closed the fourth day.

 

Day five

This was the most beautiful day of the festival, there was no rain at all, it was very sunny, but unfortunately it was the last day and we knew tomorrow we'll be heading home, so I spent as much as time hanging out with awesome people that I won't see until the next Metaldays.

As far as bands go, the fifth day was really awesome, we got to see bands like Skyforger, Varg, Einherjer, Gutalax (their show was like Obscene Extreme Festival, if you haven't seen that, check it out, its sick, you won't believe what you've missed), Exodus, Blind Guardian, Horna, Satan.

Unfortunately I gotta say I wasn't satisfied with Dragonforce which closed the festival, they were late almost an hour, their singer was unable to perform, and they had to call a replacement from Norway, a singer who does covers on youtube : Pellek. They only played 5 songs, and I'm not saying that they were bad, but Through fire and flames, sounded kind of dissapointing compared to the studio version, in my opinion it would have been perfect if it was Blind Guardian who closed the last day, because the atmosphere on their concert was amazing, the crowd was singing all the time and crowd surfing was a constant, truly a specatcle.

 

Overall, Metaldays is getting better and better, they fixed some minor bad things from the last year, toilets were emptied every morning, and you had trash bins all over the camp, the food and drinks weren't too expensive, and the monitors did a great job on the concerts catching the crowd surfers and having a good eye on things.

It was another hellish week in paradise.

I hope this wasn't my last time going there, i wish i could just keep going every year until i die, it's awesome, I strongly suggest you go as well, early bird tickets for 2017 are selling quickly, and they already announced bands like : Opet, Doro, Bloodbath, and more.

What else do you need? What else matters?

Cheers from Namazet!