It's around 10pm on Saturday night, and up on the huge stage in front of me, a worried-looking keyboardist in priestly garb and corpse paint is getting burned at the stake. Behind him is a giant image of a grinning, hooded werewolf, looming over crumbling ruins that resemble an old, decaying church. In front of him are about 70,000 screaming, fist-pumping, circle-pitting and crowdsurfing metalheads. Some on the front row are so overcome with emotion that they're bawling their eyes out. It's unlike any spectacle I've seen in 25 years of metal shows.
This is Powerwolf, the supernaturally-inclined German power metallers that have become one of Europe's most surprising success stories, playing their biggest ever show at Wacken Open Air, their country's premier metal event. It's a powerful moment for Wacken itself, which over 35 years has grown from a small, local gig nestled in some farmland in North Germany into the biggest metal festival on planet Earth.
