The Hammer crew arrive in North Wales and carnage ensues… well, what did you expect?

We arrived at 7pm and Pontin’s was like a ghost town… or so it seemed. Stumbling out of the 8:56 from London and directly into the Queen Victoria pub venue. Ah, here they all are. Two hundred early birds getting battered at the Viking Ball while British metallers Beholder tear a hole in our sobriety. Attica Rage inherit the mullered masses and everyone bangs their heads and thrashes around wit the excitement of an intoxicated and rowdy mob ready for a weekend of hard rock madness.

Almost everyone has made an effort and is clad in Viking apparel: horned helmets, inflatable hammers and the odd rubber troll mask (actually genuinely terrifying when your in North Wales with a skin full of Jagermeister and industrial strength cider surrounded by people who look like GWAR roadies). GMT do even better with their rocking blues set finishing at about 11:20.

Luckily the Hammer crew bump into Italian metallers Arthemis. The genial Italians invite us in and we are treated to a midnight feast of spag-bol (or as it’s known in Italy, ‘el spag-bol’) and Hammer scribe Dom Lawson even manages to negotiate a rare steak from the culinary masters. (The band were in chalet number 321 but Dom did manage to fight the urge to “do the Ted Rogers thing… you know… Dusty Bin, come on down… all that” deciding that explaining an old British game show to a bunch of Italian metal heads at 1am with a head full of white sambuca might be a slightly pointless endeavour). At some point after all of this, we all stumble back to our own chalets and collapse. This was just a trial run for a weekend of extended drinking and moshing marathon… bring it on!

Come back tomorrow to see reviews of tonight’s acts: Monster Magnet, Ratt, Black Spiders and loads more!