#1 MARCH 2025 Your last chance to get W:O:A-Tickets First time in Bahrain : Dimmu Borgir Floor Jansen Papa Roach Callejon Robb Flynn about his forever love for the pit, the new album and an unforgettable Wacken show The Head of a metal Machine Credit: Travis Shinnt is the symbol of the Wacken Open Air, well known all over the world – the Bullhead.Towering high in the sky be- tween the Faster and the Harder Stages, the two main stages, it shines year after year, illuminating those loud festival nights in fiery splendour. Here are the key facts about the Bullhead: it stands ten metres tall twelve metres wide, with a weight of 2.5 tonnes. Those majestic flames can and will shoot out from up to 40 openings. It was crafted by a local steelworker – a true metalhead indeed. Dear Metalheads, Have you already heard about this? Something big is literally on the move in the AC/DC camp! The Australian rock giants have hopped on the (toy) train and are now teaming up with the Swabi- ans from Märklin. In April, the new „Rock’n’Roll Train“ will be unveiled by the model railway manufacturer. How cool is that?! We all have of course known for a long time that hard rock and heavy metal fit perfect- ly on the rails – not least since the Metal Train, the train that has been bringing fans from all over the country to the Wacken Open Air for many years. By the way, the Metal Train is one of more than 60 official travel partners of W:O:A worldwide – „Whole Lotta Travel!“ We’ll be introducing them to you in more detail in this issue. Here’s a hot tip: they of- fer the last chances for tickets to the sold-out W:O:A 2025! Who and what you can expect this summer on the Holy Ground will once again be revealed by the art- ists themselves. We’ve spoken to Robb Flynn from Machine Head, Jacoby Shaddix and Tony Palermo from Papa Roach, and we asked Floor Jansen from Nightwish about her first solo show at W:O:A. We also talked to BastiBasti about the new members of Calle- jon and learned from Silenoz of Dimmu Bor- gir what he remembers from his first Wacken appearance. All this and much more can be found in the first issue of The Bull- head 2025. Enjoy reading! Andrea Leim Editor-in-Chief IMPRINT The Bullhead is a product of WOA Festival GmbH Schenefelder Straße 17, 25596 Wacken Management board: Thomas Jensen, Holger Hübner Editor in chief: Andrea Leim Design: arne__creates Project coordination: Peter Klapproth Editorial team: Christof Leim, Timon Menge, Victoria Schaffrath, Marcel Thenée Copy editor: Christof Leim Proofreading: Matthias Franz, Dr. Sascha Gerhards (EN) All five issues of The Bullhead published in 2024, as well as this first issue of 2025, can be found on the W:O:A homepage. You can read timeless interviews with Johan Hegg from Amon Amarth, Rudi Schen- ker from the Scorpi- ons, Tarja Turunen, Blind Guardian, Biff Byford, of course the two festival organisers Holger and Thomas, and many more. We take you behind the scenes and onto the stage. The Bullhead is published bilingually and completely free of charge for the fans. Simply click and read. www.wacken.com #1 FEB 2024 The morning after Kiss For the first time in Bogotá Three sisters and their family life on tour The power of black shirts Amon Amarth frontman Johan Hegg played his first show at the W:O:A 25 years ago #2 JUN 2024 The most scandalous band shirt in the world A puppy for a Grammy How old metal shirts turn into brand new ones Big Metal Nights Scorpions return to Wacken Open Air after 12 years Interview with Rudolf Schenker Foto: Monsterpics/Moritz Künster #3 JULY 2024 Kicking things off with the bosses Headbanging with a perm A battle to remember Heavy metal time travel with Blind Guardian Powered by #4 AUGUST 2024 bring Metallica to the Acker talk friendship 25th anniversary at W:O:A 2025 Post-W:O:A is pre-W:O:A. Review and preview of the world’s best festival #5 DECEMBER 2024 Mario Duplantier about the Olympics, discipline and childhood dreams Everything about the new festival in the Zillertal Alps „“ Why the frontman of Rage is truly metal to the bone Interview with Tarja Turunen Credit: imago Whole lotta travelMachine Head have been absent from the festival circuit for more than a decade. About time they returned to Wacken as headliners, bringing with them their new album „Unatøned“ that was written with three unusual rules in mind. And main man Robb Flynn still loves to see a good circle pit, just like he did as a rowdy kid in the Bay Area, wearing all bruises with pride. Robb Flynn (57) started playing guitar at school, joined the band Forbidden, then Vio- Lence, before founding Machine Head in 1991Machine Head took a long break from festivals. What was the reason? Robb Flynn: When we stopped doing it a decade ago, festivals were a bit different. Before that we did festivals for 20 years and it was great, we had a good run. But other times it just felt like it didn’t matter who was on stage. I didn’t feel a connection. I really needed a break from it. I needed to do By Andrea Leim & Christof Leim After 30 years in the game, do you still enjoy watching circle pits in the crowd? Robb Flynn: Oh yeah! When I started going to shows in the Bay area, I was that kid in the circle pits – so much fun! I came out with bruised rips and a broken nose but it made you just feel so alive. There was an element of danger to it that added to the excitement. I loved it. Even if you got hurt? Robb Flynn: Especially if you got hurt. That was your badge of honour. I used to go to thrash shows like Exodus, and we’d crowdsurf and stage dive, I remember coming out of the pit and my arm was fucked. When I came out of a Slayer pit one time I had a broken rib. It was pretty hard to heal and lasted for two months. But I thought: Fuck, yeah, it’s a battle wound! You actually took your sons to the pit as well. Weren’t you afraid that they would get hurt? Robb Flynn: They were around 15 and 17 at the time. They started crowdsurfing a few years before that at my shows. Then we went to a System of A Down and Korn concert. We went backstage and it was a killer hang. But I said: “We got to go in the pit, boys.” They had their friend with them, and he had never been in the pit either. It was the perfect time: a big show with a huge circle pit. I stayed with my youngest the whole time just to block him from bigger dudes. But my oldest just went super into it. He had this look on his face, one I had never seen before, as if he was possessed. He was so into it. It was killer. something else, to feel creative again, inspired and not just go on tour to play the hits. How did you change that? Robb Flynn: For 10 years, we did only ’Evening With’ shows: no openers, just Machine Head for three hours. Playing deep cuts and playing songs that we rarely ever played and really mixing up the sets. From an artistic standpoint, it was incredibly liberating and incredibly inspiring because now we were playing material that was way outside of the usual 45-minute, hour-long set that we’d get at a festival. My mind was always active. We were learning songs two days before we played them live and debuted or played them for the first time in 10, 20 years. It just reinvigorated me. When did you decide to do festivals again and why? Robb Flynn: After the pandemic and being on lockdown I wanted to see what festivals were like by then. And because I took that break from it and got off of the hamster wheel, it was fun again. It was “ , , . . .” The current line-up of Machine Head: bassist Jared MacEachern, drummer Matt Alston, frontman Robb Flynn and newcomer guitarist Reece Scruggs, who joined the band in 2024Do you already have a vision for that show? Robb Flynn: We’ve been working on it for months and are actually doing a whole pre-production run in June for the August show at Wacken Open Air. It’s going to be a big, important run for us. We’re getting a bunch of new custom content made for the video wall, because of our new album coming out. We do have some flexibility built in, to be able to throw in a song, if we feel like it. But it really does take quite a bit to put on a big high-level production. So much fucking pyro… I think it’s important to bring something that’s just larger than life, a spectacle for the eyes. But most importantly, you also got to have these moments where you just make the whole show small. When it is about music, about life, anger and rage, sadness and beauty, love and whatever it needs to be – because that’s what music is about. With your upcoming “Unatøned” you changed really inspiring. I looked at it in a different light, and we were able to really bring the show that we always wanted to bring. Do you still feel obliged to play the hits at festivals? Robb Flynn: Oh, yeah. Nobody’s coming to a festival to hear deep cuts. And that’s fine. If you want to hear other songs, come to the headline show. You played Wacken three times so far: in 2005, in 2009 and in 2012. Is there a special memory you have from one of the shows? Robb Flynn: I’ll remember our 2009 show until the day I die. First of all, it was like a thousand degrees, a really hot summer day. The show was very important for us and we knew we had to deliver something special. We were headlining, and it was the first time we had used a video wall, and so we made all this really cool content. I just felt like we had something to prove. Wacken had just moved up to a capacity of 80,000 and I just remember the crowd being so fucking crazy the whole show. It was insane. I think Saxon was on the billing that night, too. I’ve always been a big fan of Biff Byford, I think he is just an awesome dude and a fucking total rock star. We were talking to those guys and I remember really, really enjoying that day. It was like the stars aligned. Sometimes this amazing special moment just happens, and I will remember this forever. You will headline again this summer. “ , ” Beard, jewellery and charisma - frontman and singer Robb Flynnthe formula compared to its predecessor “Øf Kingdøm And Crøwn” while keeping your style. That has pretty much always been the case in Machine Head’s history. Is it that just what you happen to write –or an intrinsic need to evolve? Robb Flynn: In Rock & Roll, there’s certainly this desire to stay the same. Don’t ever change! I get it, I think that change is scary for sure, especially with a band. But life changes. I wrote “Burn My Eyes” 32 years ago, and I’m not the same person that I was back then. I’ll never be that 24-year-old kid in the streets of Oakland again, selling drugs, fighting every weekend and dating strippers. And I will never write another “Burn My Eyes” because I always write about my life. We’ve worked really hard to carve our own lane and be able to open up a little bit. But it’s always Machine Head, and you know it when you hear it. That’s the one thing that I feel very proud of. Probably the biggest challenge for any band is to get a style that is just undeniably you. So how did you approach “Unatøned“? Robb Flynn: “Øf Kingdøm And Crøwn” was a massive success on every imaginable level. Fans loved it, critics loved it, it propelled us back up to headlining festivals again. It’s a concept record, the opening song is 10 minutes long. I’ve been lucky enough before, to be in the position, where I’ve got to follow up a record that is so beloved by the audience. No matter what you do, to a lot of people it’s never going to equal the previous record. It’s like you captured lightning in a bottle. I’m not a big believer in talking about what direction you want to go writing a record. You just got to go where the music takes you. But this time around, for the first time ever in my life, I put three strict parameters around what I wanted to do: I wanted every song to be under four minutes. I wanted every song to have a key change that was outside of the typical chord structure of the song. I’m a huge Slayer fan. I think one of the most overlooked things of the greatness of Slayer is their use of key changes throughout their whole career. The last thing is that I wanted the music for the last chorus to be different than the music of the first chorus. Something had to change when the last chorus came back in. Drums drop out, guitars drop out. Just something that made the key change happen there. It was a challenge to write in these very strict parameters but we ended up with ten songs, two instrumentals, 41 minutes long, the shortest machine head record in history. You use the “Ø” on this record again and the cover art is similar to the last record. Why? Robb Flynn: It’s just a style I love. I really like working with Seth Siro, the artist it. He’s incredibly smart and really funny. The new album cover is causing quite the stir up here in America because it shows a nipple. I guess we should have seen this coming, but stores actually refuse to carry it unless we change the cover. It’s just a painting! As far as the “Ø”s, we’re just playing with the alphabet. Like Motörhead or Mötley Crüe have done it with the “Umlaut”. Just adding something that makes you stand out in a sea of a million bands. Flynn on stage at W:O:A 2009 - a show he says he will never forget Machine Fucking Head - nothing more to add Credits: Travis Shinn, Imago, WOAA major documentary on the wild history of Wacken is in the works. Of course, this includes the perspective of the metalheads. That’s why the two organisers, Holger Hübner and Thomas Jensen, are asking fans for video and photo submissions By Andrea Leim “ ction! Wacken, take one! Camera roll- ing!” That’s how it might have been over a year ago, when the first scene for a very special project was filmed: a new documentary about the Wacken Open Air! 35 years of We need your Wacken memories! Who saw, filmed or photographed Doro’s first W:O:A show in 1993? Thomas and Holger are excited to see pictures or clips of your Wacken memories Wacken is full of emotions! Who has similar pictures in his own archive?heavy metal history, pre- served for eternity. What makes this documentary spe- cial is that it isn’t just pieced together from old TV foot- age. Both organisers, Thomas Jensen and Holger Hübner, have been significantly in- volved in the project. Their team, as well as friends and acquaintances, have played a part. And now, as the final shots are being taken, the cherry on top is yet to come! “We want our fans and vis- itors, the Wacken family, to be a part of this film too,” ex- plains Holger Hübner. “That’s why we need their help and the memories they’ve cap- tured themselves.” The production compa- ny is specifically looking for self-shot festival highlights from the years 1990 to 2005. These could be special perfor- mances by favourite bands, traffic jams during arrival, amusing nights at the camp- site, or metal action on the Holy Ground. “Maybe some- one even has material from the concerts of Motörhead, Saxon, Skyline, or Doro,” says Holger Hübner. “It would be great to have behind-the- scenes footage or footage of meetings with Thomas and me.” Anything can be sent in, but videos are particularly sought after since there’s al- ready a good selection of pho- tos available. Hübner: “Any format is fine: both analogue and digital.” “We’d like to show how the village, the site, the campsites, and the festi- val have evolved and what they looked like in the early years,” adds Thom- as Jensen. “Unfortunately, we don’t have much material from that time, as most of the official archive material and news contributions only start from later years.” For the documentary, the two organisers have, of course, also rummaged through their own archives: “I was quite shocked to find that I have so few photos from the early days,” admits Thom- as. “Our mate Gösi was much better prepared. We owe him a big thank you!” Looking through the existing material has, of course, also been quite emotional: “Every photo brought back great memo- ries, and I immediately knew exactly how it was back then,” Jensen recalls. “There were also some surprises. Seeing these images was just awe- some.” Nowadays – thanks to the possibilities that smart- phones offer – both festi- val founders capture many memories every year. “I tend to film small clips,” says Hol- ger. His business partner Thomas, on the other hand, takes photos of pretty much everything: “I often use pho- tos as reminders, especially if I notice something pro- duction-wise or see things that I want to improve in the coming years,” he reveals. But that’s not all. “I also capture a lot of the atmosphere, or curi- osities, and occasionally take a selfie when I bump into old friends.” How much of all this will be seen in the docu- mentary, Holger Hübner and Thomas Jensen are not yet allowed to reveal. All they’ll say is: “The film is going to be something truly special. You can look forward to it!“ Did someone attend in 1994 already and capture the experience with a camera maybe? Did you watch Atrocity in 1996 and took a picture of the show? Were you part of this crowd at the W:O:A in 1996 and equipped with a camera? Credits: WOANext >