The Journey to the Holy Land

The Journey to the Holy Land A photo documentary by Eija Mäkivuoti Faroese doom metal band Hamferð journeyed to Wacken Open Air 2012 to compete in Wacken Metal Battle. Each year around 75 000 metal heads pilgrimage to this Holy Land and it becomes for a moment a miniature of the world. Wacken Metal Battle is almost a ten-year-old institution founded to promote upcoming and fresh new bands from all over the world to step up to professional arenas. Since 2004 the winners of the local battles have been given “an occasion to play live on the world´s biggest metal festival, Wacken Open Air,” as the organisers put it. The first day of Wacken Open Air is in fact the Metal Battle Finale day (which makes the festival a four day festival). The local battles in 2012 were held in 33 countries worldwide, including countries like China, Japan, Russia, Mexico, Brazil and all the Nordic countries (only the self governing region of Greenland was missing, maybe they will enter soon with some inuit metal) and many European countries. So it is a very interesting concept indeed. This is the story of the journey for this fellowship from the Faroe Islands. Hamferð battled in the musical competition and to our surprise they also won.