The Athens Open Air "I wannabe a" festival was supposed to take place on the 5th and 6th of July at Alimos beach (after it had already changed venues a couple of times, confusing all the people who were going to attend the festival) in Athens, Greece.

The promoters, Omicron Music, got a 150 meter long area of the beach (and about 30 meters wide) and set a pretty lame stage at the end of it. The stage was practically next to the sea but not in the sea (as the owner of the promotion company had told Metal-Temple that it would be – a great stage with a great show…my ass). It was also too damn small and too damn low. You had to be really tall, or really close to see what was going on and the bands had little space to perform, let alone move with ease.

On the 5th of July (Monday) the gates were supposed to open at 16:15 and finally opened 1,5 hours later with some thousands of people already suffering under the burning sun. Why? Because (now here's something people don't know) the bands were supposed to start their sound checks at 11:30 and they started at 15:30! Are the bands the ones to blame for this delay? Of course not. The "smart" promoters had assigned "friends" and people working for them at the cafeteria (the owner of Omicron Music also owns a cafeteria in the center of Athens) to go pick up the bands from the airport and be with them all the time…pretty professional don't you think? Yes, it's unbelievable, girlies, DJs and "neighbors" all in charge of the bands! How can one expect everything NOT to go wrong when this guy (the owner) used young people with a love for these bands (and Metal in general) instead of employing professionals to do the job?

So thousands of people gathered on the beach and waited till 19:15…when The Haunted finally came on stage (defying millions of problems caused by the lousy equipment provided by the promoters) and played for three quarters of an hour. I must add that The Haunted were pretty pissed off with the promoter before their appearance because he hadn't given them all the money they had agreed for and they wouldn't start. Huge dust clouds started rising in front of the stage as people were head-banging filling everyone's clothes and bodies with sand, making it quite difficult to breathe. When asked, the promoters said that they didn't expect the sand clouds from the thousands of people gathered there (!!!). The fun part was that they were also looking for a working microphone. The result was a sound check while the band was playing to find a working one. I repeat, while the band was playing!
In the meanwhile I had noticed that the security was really bad (we all guess that the promoter paid for less security than he should have paid for) and there was only one security guy separating the crowd from backstage (well I wouldn't call it backstage but anyway) where most of the bands were sitting together with the press. Please note that there was no ambulance present, no doctor around, no first aid kit or whatever…nothing!
Circle II Circle were up next (I remember poor Stevens brushing his hair next to the chemical toilets…There were only a few by the way, and only backstage. The chances of someone amongst a few thousand people having the need to use a toilet are minimal, right?) and when they got up on stage for 5-6 songs, their sound was terrible; I bet even the best sound engineer in the world couldn't put up with such a lousy equipment. Stevens (Circle II Circle singer) seemed pretty pissed off and troubled after their appearance – no wonder. In the meantime the bands were pretty much confused since the lineup had changed (Circle II Circle were supposed to come out first). Sentenced followed up with an even worse sound (always because of the cheap, lousy equipment brought in by the promoters).

In the meantime, I learnt that Dimmu Borgir had cancelled their appearance (because there were no dressing rooms for them backstage to put on properly their make up and the fact that the stage was next to the sea pissed them off) and as Sentenced stepped off the stage rumor had it that Motorhead were also about to cancel their appearance. The crowd was now exhausted and pretty angry. As time went by (almost 23:00) the crowd started singing "you're assholes" (in Greek) and "give us our money back". Things started flying in (rocks, plastic bottles filled with sand and water, sometimes hitting the drums with the crowd cheering at the rock'n'bottle drum solos!) and when the promoter made the mistake and went on stage to announce that Motorhead would be here in like 10 minutes…the crowd started launching even more things at the stage forcing all the roadies to get off and run behind for cover (a band member was seen hiding behind his guitar). I can assure you that all of us were pretty sure the crowd would break in and unleash hell upon anything they found in front of them (gear, roadies, promoters, the press) and for the first time in my life I was horrified at the idea that everyone was in danger. I could hear people scream out loud threats against the promoter like "we're going to kick the shit out of you if we find you" etc and we (as a Magazine) were heading towards the back exit of the beach together with roadies and frightened band members. If it weren't for Motorhead who arrived at the last moment (at about 23:30) I guess the disaster would be unimaginable. The festival ended after an hour of Motorhead struggling with the worst sound ever (in their career), being showered by tons of sand; I remember Lemmy's expression every now and then like "what a fuckin' awful sound"- and all the people there leaving the grounds frustrated and exhausted.

We talked to In Flames, we talked to Circle II Circle, band managers, roadies during the "festival" and they all went like "what is this place man?" and "it's so weird here, how are we gonna play?". Doro was supposed to come out on stage as a special guest together with Motorhead but when she found out what was going on there she changed her mind (and so would anyone else). Hatebreed who had cancelled their appearance several days ago were supposed to be replaced by Heaven Shall Burn but that proved to be just a rumor…spread out by the promoter himself. Throughout the entire day the promoter showed up (backstage) 2 or 3 times but was quite "invisible" during the whole disaster.

He wont answer his cell phone ever since and won't show up anywhere . The second day was cancelled and we found out about it by coincidence. A lot of people (probably some thousands of people) went all the way down there to find out about it and they were also told that they'll get their money back on the 19th of July (!).

Some other BAD news I found out about are the facts that: Anthrax went to their hotel by taxi (and were pissed off for not having a tour bus waiting for them) and earlier tonight (on the 6th of July) they showed up at a rock radio show in Athens and they were completely angry. A band member of Dimmu Borgir had to leave the hotel to catch his flight but the hotel management wouldn't let him go since the promoter had not paid for their hotel yet (I was told about this by people who were there, at the hotel). He finally left but missed his scheduled flight. A friend of mine also told me Lemmy (Motorhead's singer) told her they were pretty annoyed by all the sand going in their face during their live performance. In conclusion, everyone got ripped off by Omicron Music, bands, fans…everyone in one way or another. This is by far the worst festival experience I've ever had to report in my entire life. I wish it was a bad dream (a really bad one) but it's not…it happened.

Ground Report - By Yiannis

This is one of the situations where words are simply inadequate to describe something; a situation that you have to go through this hell to actually realize what was going on.

Let's start with the Theory. Theory was that the gates opened at 16:15 and the first band would appear at 16:45. Theory was that the bands were Hatebreed, Circle II Circle, The Haunted, Sentenced, Dimmu Borgir and Motorhead for Day #1. Not bad for 37E. Theory was that the festival would be something special, everyone would have a great time and everyone would leave Alimos beach happy.

Let's move to Facts. Fact is that the gates did open around that time. Fact is that the first band appeared FUCKING TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER. Yes, 2 1/2 Hours. 150 MINUTES with us boiling under the hot sun, having to withstand a bunch of assholes from the sound check telling us that we should be happy for winning the Euro 2004 cup and stop moaning.

So, after these TWO AND A HALF FUCKING HOUR LATER did the show started as planned? Hell no. The guys who were meant to replace Hatebreed (Heaven Shall Burn) had mysteriously vanished from the face of the Earth. It was obvious that they would never appear and it was all just a gimmick to attract more people from one of the promoters. The Haunted took over before the crowd of several thousands would charge and transform "Athens Open Air" to "Bloodfest 2004".

Anyone who has seen "The Mummy" will remember the scene where a sand storm is chasing the biplane. Replace the biplane with thousands of metalheads coughing and trying to breathe under their t-shirts. For the larger part of the show, the place was a Mujahedin gathering. All we were missing was our AK-47s and the urge to fight for freedom. For the moment.

The Haunted managed to perform quite well amongst that chaos; even if the stage crew was looking for a microphone that actually worked and they had to do a small sound check while the band was playing. You know, "one, two, one, two, it works, here you go". Just great. At least everyone not choking to death from the sand was happy with their performance, including yours truly.

45 minutes later we took a first taste of what would follow. Each band had 40-45' stage time and even more time for sound checks.

Each band? You mean all six bands?

HELL NO!

I mean FOUR BANDS. Let the Athens Open Air-paxth (Greek joke) begin.

Because afterwards, Circle II Circle took over. By that time the sound was worst than a 1996 Ad-Lib sound card with broken speakers. Zak and his crew tried to fit in the petite stage which was as large as my room (without the TV in it). It's funny to see 5 people trying to perform on that stage. The closest thing I can imagine is a rugby match on a canoe, complete with overtime (if there is one in rugby). The vocals were too low and the backing vocals too damn loud. The songs were executed, literally. I think I almost cried at "Edge of Thorns" and it wasn't from joy. Well, try to perform with Im-Ho-Tep's sand curse flying on your face, fucked up sound and wondering if you'll ever get paid for this.

Sentenced followed with even worst sound and bored as hell. The singer was drunk and telling us about having intercourse with his mom. I think that's legal in certain parts of the US of A, but I am damn sure it's illegal in every part of Europe, at least the ones were goats are less desirable than Laetitia Casta. Don't know if it was the alcohol or the fucked up situation backstage, but that was one of the worst performances in the entire Sol system; including the Guitar solo from Armless Joe in "Horseshoe Bar" at Kentuky, 15 years ago. I swear that I saw a guy in a Sentenced t-shirt holding his ears, crying out "please stooooop, you are killing your history!".

With the fact that I stopped headbanging to "Nepenthe" 30ms after it started, I think that I've made my point clear.

It was 23:00 hours and we were wondering if we would even see Dimmu Borgir. Judging from the guys wearing t-shirts with inverted Pentagrams, there were a LOT of people who were there for the Norwegians. Guess what. The rumour spread like fire that they would not show up. I heard from the guys backstage that they were pissed off at the promoter for not having any place to change and to put on their corpse painting. The promoter was pissed off at them for not dressing and painting up at the hotel and then getting a cab to get there. Imagine some guys wearing black leather and spikes with corpse painting, waiting for a cab in the middle of Athens. And Shagrath giving the directions to Jack the cab driver with his singing (and speaking) voice. "HEAR THE CRIES OF THE MOURNING PALACE BLUAAARGGHHH. Alimos please."

It doesn't get more surreal than this and they had the NERVE to pass the chance to live the experience of a life time. Shame on you Dimmu Borgir.

My beard had grown already and brushing through my newly acquired facial hair that I got while waiting, I wondered what would happen with Motorhead. It was 23:20 already and there was no sign of anyone. My guess was that the promoters were already in the process of building a raft to escape via the sea but when the head promoter came out I was proven wrong. Avoiding the first wave of plastic bottles with great ease (he was probably training backstage with the previous rain of rocks and bottles filled with water and sand), he managed to say that Motorhead would be out in 10 minutes. Then gave a couple of headers to some incoming bottles to honour Greece for being the European Champions. That or someone was an ace at the Olympic event of bottle throwing and managed to hit his forehead.

As promised, the legendary Motorhead appeared after a while and there was much rejoice. The fans felt so F'd in the A already that somehow managed to ignore the poor sound and had as much fun as they could. Lemmy was shouting at the sound engineers to turn up the volume, the guitar was too damn loud and as a friend of mine said "I can only understand what the hell they are playing by experience".

The damn sound quality was too damn poor to fully enjoy such a band. Somehow the band managed to perform with all the buckets of sand thrown on their faces and they are heroes for that (like the rest of the bands). The set-list was too poor of course, since they performed for almost an hour, including the encore break and the 5' drum solo. Oh, and no "Orgasmatron". Blimey as their countrymen say.

And now some things about the place were it all took part. You already got the sand storm part. There were no toilets. If you wanted to take a piss, you could get in the sea and watch the surrounding fauna die. I don't want to think what happened to the people who wanted even more. There was plenty of sand to bury the "dead", but… uhem, you get the point. It's a good thing I went there with an empty stomach.

There were no ambulances. I guess if someone got hurt they would just dump his body in the sea and blame Flipper the Happy Dolphin for the crime. But there was Chalvas, the famous Greek (?) sweet that not only is irrelevant with a metal day, but it takes 2lts of water with every 5 spoons to be able to speak again. I don't know how chalvas tastes with a bucket of sand in your mouth, but I suspect the answer is "like shit with crap for dessert". The beer was too damn expensive and as far as I know the quantity they gave you for 2 euros was enough to dose off a 5 year old or a small fairy with liver problems. I heard that the small cup of Coke was as expensive as the famous Colombian Coke too. Hooray.

Many people managed to get in for free. How in hell they managed to get past the 10 security guys and the Super Secure-Nylon 3000 wrapped around the place to keep people from entering or peeping, well, I don't have a clue. I guess all of them were Marines trained in Guerrilla warfare. That's what you get for living in a country were joining the Army is not optional.

After the show was over, my ear picked up random words like "sodomize, violate, eradicate, exterminate" and that was not during a Dr.Who episode featuring the Daleks. The wonderful thing about Greek metalheads is that they manage to depress their anger and not a single fight took place amongst the thousands of angry people.

Each and everyone have my respect and admiration. It takes great patience to be able to live through this hell and still being able to control your anger, that's a rare quality. I didn't pay for this thanks to this magazine and yet I felt like a pig, a whore and a complete zero for 8 hours. There were people who travelled hundreds of kilometres to be there and paid big money; how should they feel?
I only hope that somehow, someday, someone will respect this beautiful crowd and give them what they deserve. A festival with excellent conditions where everything goes as planned, for once.
Why, oh why do we have to be the forgotten children of Metal?