This year\'s WOA featured a ‘best-of’ line-up including of at least one band from each of the past festival editions plus it branched out from the usual additional festival activities such as a metal market and big screens with a complete medieval market annex village.

»» Click here for all drummer photos of WOA 2009 day 1.
»» Click here for a review of WOA 2009 day 2.
»» Click here for a review of WOA 2009 day 3.

Skyline
On Thursday Wacken Open Air 2009 properly kicked off with Skyline, Wacken organiser Thomas Jensen’s former band who played at Wacken’s first edition and had reformed for this occasion. Skyline, featuring Wacken-founder Andreas \"Gösy\" Schlüter on Pearl drums, played some cover songs and special Wacken songs featuring Doro and Tom Angelripper (Sodom) as guest vocalists.

D-A-D
Danish hard rockers D-A-D, initially named Disneyland After Dark until Disney corporation threatened with a lawsuit, was another group from the old school, trying to bring back ol’ times. As vocalist Jesper Bintzer said: \"We\'ve been going through our basements and attics and found our old instruments, meaning we\'re playing old music today.\" So they did, accompanied by Laust Sonne on drums.

Schandmaul
An audience consisting of mostly German fans had gathered to see Munich based group Schandmaul. Performing with a lot of medieval folk instruments, Schandmaul features Stefan Brunner on DW drums (and some percussion) along with bagpipes, hurdy-gurdys and shawms as parts of their folkrock sound.

JBO
As Anthrax pulled out days prior to the festival after parting ways with their latest singer, German-in-joke-and-party-band JBO (meaning James Blast Orchester) jumped in for a surprise show. They had covered the Party Stage with countless floating pink balloons. Drummer Wolfram Kellner and his fellow band members sure showed how to party, a skill well appreciated by their – mostly German – fans.

Running Wild
More German metal songs were delivered by the original pirate metallers Running Wild, who were going to play their last show after 30 years. Since it was the last chance to see these genre legends performing live, their fans had grown into a massive sea of people in front of the stage. Drummer Matthias Liebetruth, who joined band in 2002, enthusiastically kept the pace on his Dixon drum set during the group’s entire two hour show. He even managed to incorporate a wicked drumsolo. It was a worthy farewell.

Heaven and Hell
As Heaven and Hell took the True Metal stage to close the first day, WOA 2009 felt like a genuine international event for the first time this day. Not surprisingly, a huge crowd had gathered to hear former Black Sabbath drummer Vinny Appice, singer Ronnie James Dio and Black Sabbath members Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler perform all these songs from the Dio-era Black Sabbath days as well as a fair chunk of the band’s newly written album ‘The Devil You Know’.

Vinny’s rock solid timing and deep, deep grooves on his huge DW kit with Sabian cymbals made it all up for his lengthy drum solo and Dio’s professional attitude made Heaven and Hell definitely of the highlights of this year’s Wacken and a perfect way to finish the first day of WOA 2009. Respect!