M'era Luna Festival Review
August 10th & 11th, 2013 Hildesheim, Niedersachsen, Germany

“Where is Waldo” is usually a pretty difficult game to play, but imagine putting Waldo into a crowd of people where everyone else is dressed in black. That may seem like a rather unlikely scenario, but once a year exactly this happens at M'era Luna in Hildesheim, Germany (minus Waldo). Though not a Metal festival, it offers a good deal of Metal and related genres, along with a variety of electronic styles. This year the festival sold out with about 25,000 visitors, beating its own record of around 24,000 in 2010. Just like in the past years there were not only bands to watch but also numerous of other treats: Fashion shows, club nights, a medieval market/village, readings and signing sessions left nothing to be desired. And once you hear who was headlining this year's fest you'll realize why attendance was obligatory: Nightwish made this their very last show before going into hibernation mode.

Fantastyval Wouwse Plantage (Netherland)
Saturday 13 July 2013

If you've never been to a fantasy festival, I only can recommend you to go to one if you have the opportunity, especially something like Fantastyval. The name is chosen very well, and includes elements of all it wants to achieve; Fantasy oriented, with tasty food when staying the whole day and a festival with good music for all on two stages. The music on the small stage (het Boomcafé - The Tree Café) is folk oriented. The Wouw Stage is more symphonic oriented. This is not that strange if you know that Elly Stolk organizes the festival in the tradition of the late Wim Stolk, a fantasy writer and initiator of the band Maryson, which played symphonic rock based on his books Master Magician. I can recommend checking out the albums Master Magician and On Goes the Quest. When I had a chat with Marcela Bovio (Stream of Passion) the week before, I also found out that SoP played twice at Fantastyval (2009 and 2011).