Artmania, 28-30.07.2023, Large Square, Sibiu

The second Pain of salvation confirmed they will make amends and come visit us in 2023, I had my tickets and my accommodation for Artmania. I mean “we”. Yes, we. I did not in any way, shape or form declare that we are going in a way that allowed no objection. And because no cataclysmic event occurred (although maybe for POS I could also overcome certain cataclysms), this weekend we were in Sibiu, ready and excited. 

And this year was extremely cool because of their newly added Voice of Odin stage. They toyed a bit with the idea in the past edition and had a couple of bands on a different stage, but now they fully committed to it and had a bigger secondary stage which alternated acts with the main stage. The result was almost no breaks between bands, which allowed them to fit in more artists and us to enjoy a non-stop outpour of music. It was perfect. 

Day 1 was obviously under the sign of Pain of salvation. It didn’t help that I wasn’t the biggest fan of either of the other bands, but let’s be honest here, very few bands could compete with POS in my eyes. 

Samael and Emperor are really not my cup of tea. They don’t sound half bad, but the satanic imagery seriously puts me off and I’m sorry, but bragging about how black your soul is was cringy when I was in high-school, let alone coming from a man in his 50s. So I mostly drifted off and focused on other things. 

The two Romanian bands that played on the secondary stage, Asemic and W3 4R3 NUM83R5 were pretty good, but having POS sandwiched between them made me drift off once more because I was too excited about what was about to happen/ had just happened. 

Finally, Pain of salvation were absolutely glorious and being so close to the stage and being able to make eye contact with Daniel as he was singing made the performance even better (I may be imagining things, but I thought he looked straight at me a few times as I was singing along and being in the zone). The setlist was mostly comprised of tracks from the last two albums, but I was super excited and pleasantly surprised to hear them close with The perfect element. However, the best moment was On a Tuesday, which is one of my favourite POS songs and an absolute treat live. It was gut wrenching, intense and oh-so-beautiful, to the point where I almost felt like I was intruding because of how personal the lyrics are. The “I lost the way” moment gave me chills and later haunted me for days. 

Day 2 was a bit more balanced in terms of my interest, and it started with my 2023 Artmania revelation, Vulture Industries. On paper a progressive band, but with elements of cabaret and doom and all sorts of other curiosities, they were just awesome. The lead singer was very charismatic, gave a mini heart attack to the security people when he started walking among the crowd during a song and would keep going and going to the point where the camera lost him completely and he wouldn’t come back on stage. The music was great, the performance was fun and theatrical, even my son loved them. It was the only band he had the patience to watch with full attention from start ‘till finish. 

Koi koi were wonderfully crazy. I had no idea what to expect from them as they were a late addition and I didn’t have time to check them out, but it worked out better this way because they were an incredibly fun surprise. Chanting about Mississippi, Serbian folk, something core-ended, psychedelic rock and an explosion of energy made them one of the best acts of the festival. 

Tesseract, on the other hand, were a bit of a letdown. The previous setlists I saw from them had a lot more Concealing Fate tracks, which had made me very excited because I really enjoyed that album. However, the actual experience was different from what I expected and it ended up slightly… dull. The long winded trailing vocals on top of the harsh(er) instrumental is not a combination I particularly favour and they left me thoroughly unimpressed. It was especially funny when the lead singer was trying to get the crowd to part in two and everyone seemed confused as to what exactly we’re supposed to mosh to. He didn’t seem too pleased with the reception either, although by the end he started pretending he is having fun and praised the crowd even though nothing had actually changed in our demeanor. 

Porcupine tree are a cool band and I generally like their music, but unfortunately – blasphemy alert – I can’t stand Steven Wilson. The last time I saw him live, his arrogance and pretentiousness put me off entirely and it’s hard for me to connect with a band and properly enjoy their shows when the lead singer is someone that acts like he’s doing the mortals a favour by honoring them with his presence. I know they were the highlight of the festival for many people and they were even marketed as such, but for me it was the opposite.  

No disrespect to my beloved POS, but Day 3 is the one that that takes the crown for the best of Artmania. 

I was very anxious to see Port Noir, even rushed everyone to get there in time because I really want to see Port Noir and they’re awesome and I can’t wait and… uhm… I don’t know what happened. Apparently they had a massive change of sound a few years back and I listened to the earlier albums, while they focused mostly on the later ones and though it wasn’t bad, it was so unlike what I expected that it was difficult to get into them. 

Not the same can be said about Roadkill soda, which were exactly what I knew them to be, another infusion of energy and a lot of fun. 

Another memorable moment was Haken’s performance. I liked them quite a bit a few years ago, but this time they were on another level. Or maybe I had started to appreciate them more. Or both. In any case, great show, great energy, such a good vibe and of course, amazing music. To this day I still find myself randomly humming Cockroach king. 

I thought I should give Sirenia a chance and not pettily take pleasure in the fact that they were the only non-local band relegated to the secondary stage, but it didn’t really work out. I have a big pet peeve concerning Morten and his general attitude, combined with a huge disappointment over his decision to completely waste his potential. And after the beautiful whirlwind of sounds that Haken was, the simplicity and cliché-ness of Sirenia was almost bothering. It also didn’t help that behind me were a bunch of dudes hilariously chanting “in denial” over and over again on top of every song that sounded just like the over-repetitive In denial. So I decided my time is best spent taking up a front spot awaiting for…. 

Warduna. By this point it was raining pretty heavily and as the stage was being prepared, everyone was anxiously waiting for their performance huddled together. And it really was impressive. There’s something about rain and Artmania, some of the best times I remember from this festival took place when it was raining, and Warduna was definitely one of them. They managed to create a surreal trance-inducing atmosphere, and the reception was amazing. It was quite special to see a bunch of wet metalheads collectively swinging from side to side and standing in complete silence during Einar’s emotional solo. And I was extremely happy for them for being welcomed so warmly and for going from opening band to festival closer with two encores. Einar spoke beautifully about what Warduna is about and the role of music in our lives, encouraged us to sing with our families and offered some truly heartfelt moments. It was a lovely evening. 

Once more I have to express my admiration for Artmania’s team, to organise this festival for almost 20 years and not only maintain such a high level of quality, but even evolve from year to year is truly worthy of respect. The Voice of Odin stage was a great addition and I read an interview with the driving force behind this event where she mentioned they want to host no more than two persons per square meter, which I personally found impressive considering how the trend is to jam as many paying viewers as possible in the tightest space possible. They also strive to make the festival fun for the entire family, and you can tell they succeed by the growing number of children you see every year. It goes hand in hand with what Einar was saying about sharing the beauty of music with our children, no matter how young, which is something we have been strongly relating to in the past few years. And speaking of children, our son had a wonderful time as well. He couldn’t handle the entire festival because it was long and loud and it’s tiering even for an adult, let alone a 3 year-old, but the parts that he did attend he seemed to genuinely enjoy. He liked the music and the atmosphere, he danced and sung, he played on the ground and we couldn’t have been happier. Hopefully this will become a beautiful tradition in our family. We already organised things for next year 😀