Hey there!

That's right, next week's coming up quickly! But we'll supply you with the hottest news right now:

One important note for the overzealous folks out there: The hill is accesible to the public from Friday, July 13, 2007 9:30AM. No exceptions! This condition is imposed by local authorities who have already announced to patrol the hill on Thursday night to expel anyone who violates this rule. Please keep this in mind, so you don't end up camping on the autobahn. We want all of you guys to have a fun party with us.

Let's move on to the actual news though:

Unfortunately we have to announce a program modification: Due to personnel problems, Aeveron won't be able to play at this year's Dong. Of course we already got a replacement to rock the stage on Saturday at five past noon: Nitrolyt! What do they sound like? Like the best aggressive progressive metal with strong rock influences you can imagine. Or: Older Disillusion stuff gone rock!

This is for everyone who didnt't get a hold of one of the wonderfully rare tickets: big portions of the Dong Open Air program will be put online as a live audiostream by the guys of #Musik! So if you couldn't make it to the hill, sit back and relax at home, while checking out www.rautemusik.fm at the 13^th and 14^th of July.

During the festival there will be many other dong-related things going on: Plenty of amuesement! Of course we will be selling t-shirts for the guys and gals out there, decorated by out most insanely awesome Dong cow, at the fair price of 15€. Also there will be pretty patches of the D:O:A for sale at 3€/patch, as well as some rare Dong 2007 promo posters.
Sold where? Of course at the rockzoom.de booth! The rockzoomers led by Jana Legler are pretty much the successors of metalius.de. Find out more about rockzoom at their booth at the Dong or on their website www.rockzoom.de which is about to be launched.

Not only will there be sales at their booth, but also signing sessions with all six (co) headliners and as another highlight of the festival the metal vest battle. So dress up and win the price for the being most condign wearer of the patches!

Last but not least, we don't wanna miss out on telling you about our little jewel, the program magazine. Four extra pages compared to last year's issue, stronger than ever in it's third year. For the first time ever though, the Dong Kultur e.V. is producing it together with – guess who – rockzoom.de.
Expect nothing less than amongst other splendid things: poster, interview, letters sent in by you guys, a journey to the world of whalism, several other extras and of course little portraits of the bands so you won't miss out on anything you might like.
This year's program mag comes for free with every wristband!

To get to the dong hill properly, we highly recommend our dong board, to find someone to give you a ride or vice versa. Alas, there will be no bus from the Duisburg trainstation to the festival. You can certainly try public transportation, but from the closest bus stop it is still quite a long walk to the festival site.

We hope you all make it safely to the Dong!

Take care and til next week,
your Dong Team

Time is flying by as the Dong is approaching, so we would like to take this opportunity to inform you about some improvements (do not forget to read the info on low-priced and rare decoration swords!). We decided to first sum the new arrangements up quickly in an overview (for a reason!):

1. no glass in the stage area
2. tokens
3. wristbands
4. prices of drinks
5. the market
6. the shuttle service
7. security

1. For the first time in Dong history, drinks will only be sold in plastic cups in the stage area. Glass will not be permitted in the stage area at all! And we will make sure that you keep this in mind by checking at the entrance. So please, empty your bottles beforehand and return them to the bar before rocking out with the bands! If you were there last year, you will well remember what the tent looked like after the headliner's show and will very much appreciate this rule we set up. Outside the good ol' glass bottle will of course still be sold.

2. Another new thing are the tokens. One token will be worth 1,50€, so it won't be a hassle to get a beer. Neither for you nor for the bar staff. No more searching for spare change and getting your beer quicker than ever! The deposit for the bottles is still the nice and shiny 10 cents coin.

3. Wristbands will be issued at the same booth at which the tokens can be purchased. It will be close to the entrance and easy to find.

4. Here's the list for the beverage prices:

Warsteiner Pilsener / Bolten Alt beer 1,50€/ 0,5l
Water, Lemonades, Coke, Soda 1,50€/ 0,5l
Beer+soda mixtures 1,50€/ 0,3l
Mead 3,00€/ 0,5l
Whisky-coke 3,00€/ 0,5l

These prices only apply for those who have a wristband. All other guests will be paying one more token each beverage. As you can see, the mead price went down a good bit since 2006. Bolten Alt by the way is a beer the organizers appreciate a lot! Some Mr. Diebels seems to be involved with this private brewery...

5. As usually there will be a nice little market with textile products, CDs, jewelry, signing sessions and of course snackbars etc for refreshment. A special highlight of this year's market will be the booth of “Enter The Dragonshop“, who nationwide are the only vendor of decoration swords at festivals. So equip yourself with everything you need since the range of objects they offer are quite a bargain!

6. We are working very hard on improving our shuttle service! This means we will provide more cars and more useful shuttle stops. The price to get you and your stuff up the hill is – just like last year – 1,50€.

7. For the first time ever our staff will be supported by professional security. This is not due to anything like expected outbursts of violence, just to assure that things run smoothly, especially at the entrances to the stage area. Of course we made sure that this will not be working in a mess-up-and-get-smacked-system, but much rather with a mature and reasonable concept.

This much for now... We hope you got a bit of an insight on how things are going to work out this year,

Take care,
your Dong Team

Dear congregation,

sadly we have to inform you that Primordial will not be performing at this year's festival due to upcoming recording sessions for the new album. We found a decent and worthy replacement though: The Swedish Pagan confreres of Månegarm are planned to turn the tent into a Norseman party at its finest! Orphaned Land will take over the headlining position (00:20) on Friday while Månegarm are going to play at OL’s previously scheduled slot (20:50)

Still, we stick to our motto of never missing out on something worthwhile and thus had Primordial sign up for 2008! This should already fuel your expectations for their new CD and will yet give you the chance to find out more about Månegarm's new long player “Vargstenen“.

And still we want to have your stories for this year’s program booklet! Tell us your weirdest Dong experiences and best ideas! Please send them to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Take care,
your Dong Team

Hey guys!

Here's news from the mighty Dong hill! Good news first: There's still a very limited amount of tickets available! Of what used to be a respectable stash of Dong tickets, we now offer the left amount of tickets to you until probably the end of this week. It's the same procedure as every year: Go to www.dongopenair.de and check out our presale section!

Now it's also about time though to confront you with the bad news. For the past six years we could offer you half a liter of beer for 1,-€. With the currency change from Mark to Euro we even had a slight decline in the price in 2002. As you will probably understand, we have to keep the counter-business cost-efficient. Not only as a result of the VAT raise in Germany from 16 to 19%, the profit we actually made from serving beer has become very small. To cut a long story short: We present to you the new beer price of 1,50€ per 0.5 l bottle! At this price we still beat every bar and pub out there!

There's also news regarding our website. In our Line Up section you can find the extended running order of this year's program. Just click on a band name and find a quick introduction of the band in both words and images, of course along with a link to the band's homepage. Use this opportunity to find out all about the combos you might not be familiar with to make sure you don't miss out on anything at this year's fest!

Besides, many texts of our website were updated. One update we would like to stress in particular is the one about unwanted folks. Please keep this in mind:

The Dong Kultur e.V. explicitly dissociates the festival and the everything related to it from extreme right-winged and Nazi thought and will – by use of their domestic authority - rigorously expel anyone who attracts attention through extreme right-winged and Nazi symbols, gestures, music and articulation. This also applies to any other politically extreme, trouble causing or violent group.
In the case of ignored expulsion, we will redeem this with the most severe legal consequences.

We do this on behalf of all peaceful fans and good common sense. Also, we would like to express our support for everyone in the scene who shows their colors! Be it individually or by supporting campaigns like “Metaller gegen Hass und Gewalt” (Metalheads against Hate and Violence) which we have joined, too.
We are not interested in any kind of witch hunt and making this a political issue, but just sticking to a neutral statement when it comes to an official disagreement or public dissociation from people who live their lives using inhuman devices and violence to achieve their goals, is not enough for us!

Please contact personnel, security agents and authorities as soon as you notice persons or groups mentioned above. Of course this also applies to our online-forum and our guest book.

Take care,
your Dong Team

Hello dear people!

We did it again! We sold out! This year even earlier than in previous years! There may be some leftover tickets if some people happen to not pay, which we don't expect though. But in case of this happening, we will let you know right away.

We would also like to present our main sponsor to you. As you might have noticed our crazy Dong cow put a picture on the wall. Don't ask how on earth the cow did this considering the straight jacket, but we definitely know that it's the logo of ENNI (Energie Wasser Niederrhein Inc), our electric utilities.
This partnership gives us a good chunk of financial security to help us continue what has been successfully proven itself over the past years: to encourage and assist the young and unknown bands!

In this spirit: See you soon!
Your Dong Team

After feeding you the new program of this year's Dong Open Air bite by bite over the past weeks (hope you enjoyed it!), now it's time to present our running order.

We did our best to make the D:O:A of 2007 as diverse and fun as possible, now proudly presenting the interesting schedule of bludgeon-ous metal orgies, a capella presentation, oriental exotics, traditional groove, merry folk and progressive rock at D:O:A 2007 -> Line UP.

For the very first time 21 bands are going to perform, which is just outclassing 2005's 19 bands with 20 shows. We reserve the right to change line up and running order though.

Please get going with your ticket reservations since as you are reading these news, less than 500 tickets are available!

Thanks a lot for your support,
you Dong Open Air Team

Here we go with the final announcements regarding bands playing at the Dong Open Air 2007:

A warm welcome goes out to the top-class newcomers Eluveitie from Switzerland! They got a fresh mixture of both Gothenburg sound and traditional celtic folklore going. Their first mini CD Ven was sould out within six months, their most recent album Spirit found enough fans to have the band enter in four charts of Swiss metalpolls (www.metalfactory.ch).

They are the top act among Swiss metal bands along with Celtic Frost, Gotthard and Samael. They made the third rank with the best album, rank 9 at best concert. And of course they got the Best Newcomer award 2006. Plenty of great reasons to invite the eight lads and lassies to come to the Dong Open Air!
www.eluveitie.ch

Gothenburg sound is not a stranger to the next band either, yet they celebrate the Swedish death quite a bit straighter. Absence from the esatern part of the Ruhr district are going to show up to prove that there are also domestic bands who know their way around with Soilwork, In Flames etc. You will find influences of Bay Area Thrash and Heavy Metal classics as well. With this explosive mixture of established subgenres nothing can go wrong.
www.absencemusic.com

A new German star on the Thrash-Metal sky is being born. With lots of live shows among the most active bands in German underground, you probably heard of Guerilla, who already played at three fabulous Dong Open Airs. Over the past years several band members left the band, yet Marcello, Westi and Pete got back together to get back on stage with their drummer Patric. All We Hate is their combos new name and they are currently working on new material to thrash some German stages this year. Come and enjoy their routine and musical competence!
www.allwehate.de

Looking for some good Death metal? The final band announcement for this year's Dong Open Air is about no one else but Debauchery. During the past five years the Swabian combo has been making rapid strides to being one of Germany's most popular musical butcheries, touring with Napalm Death and Six Feet Under.
As diverse as possible when it comes to this genre, this troupe performs their songs, allowing comparisons to both Cannibal Corpse and Benediction. Partly groovy, partly fast and bludgeoning, but always bloody!
www.debauchery.de

Now that we've let you know all about the bands, we set our hopes high that we got something for everyone to enjoy! We will soon inform you about the festival's playlist!

Till then: Take care,
your Dong Team

We are still not all done with our announcements yet! Watch out for these new guys on our program in 2007!

This year we thought we could go a bit exotic: After some brainstorming in our entire team, we soon figured out that we would really like a band singing in six languages. Also they should bring along some historical instuments, but still be death metal. Our wishlist went on with this one: We want a band who deals with cultural and religious issues: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Pretty much a combo of both occidental and oriental goodies. Making all this sounding very progressive would be musical perfection. Considering this entire idea a good plan, we just went ahead and booked Orphaned Land from Isreal!

Straight down the metal road will be the show of Runamok who are notorious for celebrating their phantastic thrash metal. Even though their sound is inspired by 80s thrash, they still kick ass today. In reviews they have been compared to the old Metallica, Megadeth and Annihilator. Certainly for a reason, since the band knows how their shows have to sound like without giving the impression of simply copying others.
Melodic Vocals, strongs riffs and diverse variety will convince you at this year’s Dong!

We didn't want to be short on power metal! Chainsaw from Poland made the shortlist of our team this year. They may not have reached their breakthrough into business yet, but the press (amongst others Metal Hammer) already considers them the new hope of Polish power metal. Why this is made public opinion soon becomes obvious: perfect soli based on strong riffs and a more than decent voice grow together to a perfect ensemble. Alternating tempos keep the sound interesting, the melodies sweep the audience away and every now and then their delicate guitar acrobatics in the background reminds of Nevermore. Don't miss out on their show!

Next week we are going to fill in the final blanks on the billing! (and by the way: 50% of the Dong tickets are alreay sold!)

G'day!

First of all: The ticket sale for this year's Dong Open Air will be starting at the 19th of February. Just like last year, you can reserve your tickets at www.dongopenair.de at "D:O:A 2007" --> "pre-sale". Ticket costs 25,52€, there will be no further fees involved at our festival! We advise you to buy your tickets early, since the festival in 2006 was sold out a long time before the festival actually happened!

Let's keep it short and dive right into the news of recently confirmed bands for the Dong Open Air! Even hough this is not their first time at our cozy little get-together, they will certainly not give you any time for boredom! Skyclad, founders of folk metal and one of the Dong audience's favorites shall once again rock our stage, sticking to the motto "Never change a winning team"!

While keeping a good level of internationality at this year's Dong, we still don't wanna miss out on regional talents either. Why go abroad, trying to find exceptional expertise, when gifted people live right across the street? November's Fall from Neukirchen-Vluyn are awfully agog to win you over with their Death metal!

Of course the Dong stage shall neither lack nor miss out on some good thrash! Verdict from the south of Germany, not uncommonly mentioned in the same breath as Kreator and other big names, are going to add to the diversity of this year's program!

This is not it, of course! But since we didn't wanna flood your inboxes, we figured, we'd just put further news on the website www.dongopenair.de, check out "D:O:A 2007" --> "Line up".
You better stay tuned, because the pre-sale countdown started!

Take care,
your Dong Team

Nun ist es vorbei, zumindest für die Besucher und die meisten Hilfskräfte. Während wir noch mit den letzten Aufräumarbeiten beschäftigt sind, möchten wir uns schon mal herzlich bei allen freiwilligen Helfern bedanken, ohne die das Ganze einfach nicht möglich wäre (oder zumindest nicht zu diesen Preisen).

Dank gebührt auch den Rettungskräften der Malteser und der Freiwilligen Feuerwehr Neukirchen-Vluyn, sowie der Polizei, die wieder sehr gute Arbeit geleistet haben.
Für den langen, und bei diesem Wetter ziemlich schweißtreibenden, Job am Technikpult danken wir Jochen und Klaus. Habt wieder super Arbeit geleistet.

Last but not least danken wir natürlich euch, den Fans, die die ganze Veranstaltung am Leben erhaltet, indem ihr die Bands feiert, uns die Karten in immer kürzerer Zeit aus den Händen reißt und uns nach jedem Dong lauthals euer Lob und die weniger häufig vorkommende Kritik kund tut. Das holt uns aus der (nach der vielen Arbeit häufig auftretenden,) Lustlosigkeit und lässt uns die Arbeit für das nächste Jahr beginnen. Ihr mach das Dong auch für uns zu einem riesen Spaß, ohne den wir sicher nicht weiter machen würden.

Also noch mal an dieser Stelle:


DANKE an alle,

euer Dong Team

P.S.: Bitte nutzt unser Formular, welches hier online steht, um uns eure Meinung vom diesjährigen Dong mitzuteilen.

P.P..S.: Genaueres Feedback wird es voraussichtlich erst in 1-2 Monaten geben. Wir gönnen uns jetzt erstmal eine Pause und beschäftigen uns mit der Nachbereitung.

Hi Ihr Lieben!

Ersatz ist gefunden! Statt Black Messiah werden die Thrasher von Guerrilla ordentlich einheizen. Dass die Band zu den Großen des Undergrounds zählt, beweist sie seit vielen Jahren immer weider auf's Neue. Unter anderem schon zweimal auf dem Dong. Das letzte Mal liegt allerdings schon vier Jahre zurück, so dass es langsam Zeit wird! Black Messiah und wir selbst hoffen sehr, die entfallene Show im nächsten Jahr nachholen zu können.

Und noch eine gute Nachricht: Äußerst kurzfristig ist es uns noch gelungen einen Shuttlebus vom Duisburger Hbf zum Dong einzurichten. Um 15:00Uhr startet der erste Bus ab dem Osteingang. Ein zweiter um 17:00Uhr. Rückfahrten am Sonntag wird es ebenfalls geben. Die Uhrzeiten dafür werden im Laufe des Bühnenprogrammes am Samstag verkündet. Preis für eine Fahrt (One Way) wird voraussichtlich 3? betragen. Reservierungen sind auf Grund der knappen Zeit leider nicht mehr möglich. Seid einfach da :)

Terminliches: Am Freitag öffnet das Dong Gelände um 12:00Uhr seine Pforten. Erst zu dieser Zeit wird der Parkplatz freigegeben, ebenso wie der Zeltplatz. Ab 12:00Uhr steht Euch auch das Personenshuttle zur Verfügung, welches Euch und Euer Gepäck für voraussichtlich 1,50? pro Person vom Parkplatz zum Gipfel bringt. Bitte nutzt dieses Angebot, denn andernfalls wird es schnell wieder verschwinden... Das Programm startet um 14:30Uhr. Am Sonntag müsstet Ihr bis spätestens 14:00Uhr Eure Zelte abgebaut haben.

Wir freuen uns auf eine riesen Sause mit euch!

 
Viel Spaß und bis bald,
Euer Dong Team