Just as the church choir pipe up the chorus of "We praise you, dear Lord", a few hundred metres away on the Black Metal Stage, a loud rumble can be heard. The lead singer of "Kreator" is bellowing "Enemy of God" into his microphone, roaring out his visions of death and the immortality of evil, brimming over with hatred.

At first glance, the cultural chasm that exists between the inhabitants of Wacken and the heavy metal fans who have travelled from all over the world to be here could not be greater. On one hand, lace shirts, golden crucifixes and dark single-breasted suits; on the other, black Lederhosen, studded collars, tatoos of Satan and shoulder-length hair.

Once a year, on the first weekend in August, the tiny village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein bids farewell to the peace and tranquility that normally characterize this community of two thousand souls. It is then that the Wacken Open Air Festival takes place.

Things all started 17 years ago in a barn full of a couple of hundred "headbangers", with their numbers growing to a few thousand in the years which followed. The Wacken Open Air Festival has now become something of a place of pilgrimage for 40,000 heavy metallers from all over the world.

"Full Metal Village" examines the curiously amiable clash between these two cultures. Through its focus on the temporary music event, however, the film documents a picture of a rural community whose sense of identity and cohesion would now be practically unimaginable without the heavy metal festival.