With 80,000 festival visitors, and including personnel a total of roughly 86,000 attendees in 2011, the Wacken Open Air Festival attracts all kinds of metal music fans and hard rock from around the world. The festival, first held in 1990 as a small event for local bands, is now one of the biggest festivals worldwide. Including 1 track each of: AVANTASIA, ACCEPT, APOCALYPTICA & AVANTI! ORCHESTRA, SAXON, STEEL PANTHER, HAMMERFALL, DEVIN TOWNSEND PROJECT, SLAYER, MOTÖRHEAD, KREATOR, HEAVEN SHALL BURN, CHILDREN OF BODOM, AMON AMARTH, EMPEROR

With 80,000 festival visitors, and including personnel a total of roughly 86,000 attendees in 2011, the Wacken Open Air Festival attracts all kinds of metal music fans and hard rock from around the world. The festival, first held in 1990 as a small event for local bands, is now one of the biggest festivals worldwide. Line-up: SLAYER, MOTÖRHEAD, KREATOR, HEAVEN SHALL BURN, CHILDREN OF BODOM, AMON AMARTH, EMPEROR

As one of the leaders of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, Saxon had eight UK Top 40 albums in the 1980s including four UK Top 10 albums and two Top 5 albums. The band also had numerous singles in the UK Singles Chart and chart success all over Europe and Japan, as well as success in the US. During the 1980s Saxon established themselves as one of Europe’s biggest metal acts. The band tours regularly and has sold more than 15 million albums worldwide.

In the history of Heavy Metal not many bands can claim to be able to celebrate their breakthrough twice. Accept managed this in 2010, with their reunion record ‘Blood Of The Nations’; returning with a vengeance by charting all over the World and topping critics’ and fan polls in the process. In their home country Germany, Accept charted at an incredible #4 in the Media Control Charts. The newest Opus, Blind Rage, is the most successful chart album in the band’s long history. ‘Blood Of The Nations’ in heralded the modern era of Accept, and now with Blind Rage the band climbed the throne of the charts. With this pole position in the official German Album Charts and top scores all around the world the band breaks their own record once again.

Avantasia is a German heavy metal/power metal super group project created by Tobias Sammet, vocalist of the band Edguy. In 1999 he founded his side project “Tobias Sammet’s Avantasia”, an all-star Rock Opera that would allow him to collaborate with superstars such as Alice Cooper, Klaus Meine & Rudolf Schenker (Scorpions) and members of other legendary bands such as Kiss, Mr. Big, Magnum, Helloween, Uriah Heep, Rainbow and many more throughout the years. All of his recent albums entered the top ten charts in countries all over the world. His latest Avantasia-release “The Flying Opera – Around The World In 20 Days” went straight to number 1 in Germany, Sweden and Austria! He has sold more than 3 million albums worldwide, he has played more than 600 concerts in almost 40 countries in Asia, North America, Central America, South America, Australia and Europe: composer and vocalist Tobias Sammet is one of Germany’s biggest internationally acclaimed artists in recent music history.

Slayer has influenced many of music’s most successful bands, from Ministry and Deftones to Slipknot, Sepultura, and Killswitch Engage, and continues to earn new generations of fans while staying true to its ceaselessly devoted followers. Throughout its history, Slayer has played host to many bands’ breakthrough tours, taking out System of a Down, Hatebreed, Chimaira, In Flames, and Clutch, among others. Slayer’s legacy is cemented in music forever, and the band remains undaunted in its directive to make punishing, aggressive and exciting music. Since their debut album in 1983, the band has released two live albums, one box set, six videos, two extended plays and ten studio albums, four of which have received gold certification in the United States. The band has received five Grammy nominations, winning one in 2007 for the song “Eyes of the Insane”, and one in 2008 for the song “Final Six” both from 2006’s Christ Illusion).

Sabaton are one of the most successful uprising bands of the Heavy Metal Scene. They are the first metal act achieving platinum record sales in their home territory Sweden – becoming one of the leading Scandinavian acts. Currently they are touring the world headlining as well as with Iron Maiden and had their biggest live success headlining Poland’s Woodstock Festival in front of 600.000 people. They didn´t had a headline spot at Wacken 2013, but they definitely were one of the secret headliners for the 75.000 Metalheads.

Nine Inch Nails (abbreviated as NIN) – is the outstanding industrial rock project by Trent Reznor. Founded in 1988 in Ohio, Reznor produced several highly influential records in the 90s that achieved widespread popularity: many NIN songs became radio hits, two NIN recordings have won Grammy Awards and their entire catalog has reached record sales exceeding over 30 million albums worldwide, with 11 million sales certified in the United States alone. The in September 2013 released album ‘Hesitation Marks’ proved once more that Raznor is back at his old strength – reaching Top#5 Chart Positions all over Europe as well as entering the UK Charts at #2 and the US Charts on #3.

System Of A Down from the US, also known by the acronym SOAD, are undoubtedly one of the best live acts in Alternative Metal. The band achieved commercial success with the release of five studio albums, of which three debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and brought them several Gold- and Platinum-Albums. Moreover, SOAD were nominated for four Grammy Awards, and their song ‘B.Y.O.B.’ was awarded for the Best Hard Rock Performance.