German heavy metal festival admissions have been suspended after days of rain turned the venue into a mud puddle.
Tens of thousands of fans of heavy metal music attend the annual Wacken Open Air festival, which is held in fields outside the German municipality of Wacken.
However, this year’s relentless rain converted the farmland into a muddy swamp, creating serious accessibility issues and forcing organisers to impose a quota on attendance for the first time since the festival’s inception in 1990.
According to Germany’s dpa news agency, the event’s organisers declared a “total admission stop” on Wednesday due to the worsening weather, which left just about 60% of the 85,000 ticket holders able to attend.
The reasonable visitor capacity for Wacken Open Air 2023 has now been reached, according to a statement on the festival’s website from the organisers.
We’re really sorry, but there is little we can do given the current severe weather conditions.
Unattended “metalheads” with tickets were instructed to turn around and head home.
Social media videos that depict participants trudging through ankle-deep muck demonstrate the gravity of the issue.
Some people made the decision to embrace the challenging circumstances. One man stripped off his shirt and dove headfirst into the muck, while another laid on his back in the soil and flailed his limbs.
Wacken’s running order has also been impacted by the muddy weather, forcing a delay in the festival’s opening. Six bands could not play as a result, according to a statement on the website. On eight stages over the course of four days, 150 musicians were scheduled to perform at the event.
Bands like Pennywise, Megadeth, and Iron Maiden are among those scheduled to perform at the festival, which ends on Saturday.
After building an underground pipeline to transport the hundreds of thousands of litres of beer that attendees drank to the venue, the festival grabbed news a few years ago.