Written by:	RaduP
Published:	August 10, 2023
Event:	ARTmania Festival 2023 (Website)
Location:	Large Square, Sibiu, Romania
Galleries:	ArtMania Festival 2023 by RaduP (125)

It is only now that I'm writing this article that I realize that there have been ten years since I first went to ArtMania. I went back in 2013 for a single day, but it was my first festival experience as a kid who only saw one big concert outside of the local ones before. ArtMania was a very different festival back then, more focused on gothic and symphonic stuff, which I was very into, slowly shifting into proggier stuff that seems to create the bulk of the lineups now. It was the first festival I got media creds for, and I've also covered the last edition too. So, I have a lot of history with this festival, and it's something I hope I'll get to mention with future editions too, considering next year's edition got announced.

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ARTMANIA DAY 1: FRIDAY, 28th JULY

Because we were at a Depeche Mode gig in Bucharest that Wednesday, we actually arrived in Sibiu one day early, leaving plenty of room to not rush things. Sibiu is not a city that's new to me, so I pretty much already visited all that I wanted to visit (outside the Astra Village Museum, that I finally visited during this edition), and with us getting our accommodation ten minutes away from the large square, being able to just sit down for a coffee and the biggest lemonade I've ever had was nice. Plus getting to play Fear And Hunger at our accommodation without any fear of missing out on any bad.

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SAMAEL

Samael is a band I don't have any big connection to, so I was mostly curious about whether they'd play more from their purely black metal stuff or from their more electronica/industrial stuff, and I'm pleased that it was a mix of both. Even if Ceremony Of Opposites was the oldest album they played from, it was a pretty all-encompassing set, that my friend who is way more into Samael than I am enjoyed, so they have his vouching. As for me, what I enjoyed the most, and I feel bad for not having captured it in any photo, was the drummer, who also played the programmed drums live, and thus was standing the whole time, would occasionally jump in such a jolly fashion, which was such a silly contrast to the kvltish vibes that black metal usually has.

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ASEMIC

A bit weird to see the smaller Romanian act placed after the old international act, but ArtMania once again divided the lineup on two stages, and the secondary stage was bigger and more easily accessible than it was last year, so that's a plus. Asemic are an instrumental progressive band, sometimes that progressive is metal enough to be progressive metal, and they're certainly a band I enjoyed a lot in the studio and hope to see a new album from, but live they sounded even tighter and more precise than I could hope for.

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PAIN OF SALVATION

I have seen Pain Of Salvation at this very festival quite some years back, so I wasn't as invested as I would've been if this was my first time seeing them. And my biggest reason was that back in 2016 they also played songs from Remedy Lane, my favorite album of theirs, whereas now they only older album they played stuff from was The Perfect Element, with the rest of the setlist being relegated to their two newest releases, which I'm still fond of but not as excited to see live comparatively. It was a pretty good show, and their stage presence is something that's very admirable, it just lacked the "wow" impact for me.

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W3 4R3 NUM83RS

A decent Romanian metalcore band with a pretty hard to type name. I literally don't have anything else to say about them.

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EMPEROR

I can't put into words how stunned I was that Emperor of all bands would be coming to this festival. This is one of those bands I was hoping so much to get to see live, but I never thought I would get to do it in Romania, let alone at a festival where I would be able to also photograph them. I was internally jumping up and down in excitement at the prospect. And indeed, they were the tightest band of the night, and the sound of it all was about as perfect as it gets. The only problem being my subjective one of feeling like the anticipation of seeing such a fabled band felt more rewarding than the actual experience of seeing them. I realized that I didn't feel as huge of a familiarity with the songs as I thought I did, and that's a me problem that the band couldn't have done anything to make better, but I left more happy that I saw Emperor than that I enjoyed a great black metal concert. Couple that with me having seen Ihsahn at the same festival a few years ago (coincidentally also 2016), a performance where an Emperor medley was also performed, it did make me retrospectively realize that I had a greater affinity for his solo work.

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ARTMANIA DAY 2: SATURDAY, 29th JULY

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VULTURE INDUSTRIES

Norway's Vulture Industries are one of my favorite live bands ever. I have seen them numerous times, I have interviewed them, but I haven't seen them in a pretty long time so I was curious to see how I would relate to one of their performances after all these years. After all, I pretty much knew what the most likely surprised of the show would be, and I was most interested in seeing the reactions of my friends who hadn't seen the band. When onstage, even if something about the guitar sound was a bit strange, what really sold the show was frontman Bjørnar Erevik Nilsen's stage presence, with his very theatrical mannerisms and posture. But the real standouts were the moments when he'd jump off the stage and into the crowd, and I managed to get behind him for one of the "follow me" dances in "Blood Don't Eliogabalus", but as he wanted to take things back to the stage, security wouldn't let any of the crowd through, so I'm curious what that moment would've looked like if things went according to plan. Also this was one of my friends' favorite band of the festival, so it's not just me who likes them.

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KOI KOI

So just one band on the secondary stage this evening? And not a Romanian one? Strange, but I'll take it. Serbia's Koi Koi were the only band of the festival I hadn't heard of before, but with a name that, let's just say, sounds like something silly in Romanian (something that I hope the band was eventually informed about), I still wasn't expecting to encounter the most fun band of the festival. They played with such a glee and lack of care that contrasted the most with the more somber and serious tone that the rest of the festival had. From making fun of the language barrier saying that we have no idea what he's singing about to just having the largest grins musicians had this festival, this was a pleasant surprise and change of pace.

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TESSERACT

My second favorite djent band after the very obvious Meshuggah (who I saw at least year's edition and also the following week at another festival), but with a significant gap between the two. I first saw TesseracT at another festival back in 2016, and I also reviewed the record they released since, so I had a pretty good familiarity with the setlist, other than the couple of songs taken from the upcoming War Of Being album. There is something pretty imposing about their sound, and it's something that they translate very well into the live setting.

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PORCUPINE TREE

Just Emperor would've been enough to seal the deal, but the presence of two "I never thought I'd get to see you, let alone in Romania" bands felt so immense that it pretty much overshadowed the rest of the lineup. Out of all the bands on the lineup, this was the one where I every time a song was played I cared which song it was rather than merely enjoying their overall sound. Songs from the new album integrated really well alongside classics like "Blackest Eyes", "Anesthetize", or "The Sound Of Muzak". Steven also commented that it would be impossible to please everybody with the setlist, and I certainly would've made some switch-ups, but I'm happy that some of the other songs I wanted to hear I already heard when Steven Wilson played on the same festival a few years ago. The only disappointing thing was that, in addition to being excited about seeing Porcupine Tree, I was also excited about photographing Porcupine Tree, but that seems to not have been how things would play out. Prior to the show, the screen would inform that the band has requested no photography. That wasn't something I saw specifically enforced, as plenty of people around me were filming anyway, maybe less than they would've been otherwise, but the only tangible consequence was that we weren't allowed in the photo pit. Despite the moral conundrum, I still went ahead and snapped a few shots from afar, just enough to not leave this article empty.

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ARTMANIA DAY 3: SUNDAY, 30th JULY

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PORT NOIR

Proggish alt rock that sometimes gets sort of heavy but most of the time leans closer to a pop direction, sprinkling elements of soul/R&B/hip-hop. I felt a disconnect with the band, despite the singer's clear ability to emote and how energetic the guitarist/keyboardist's stage presence was. Does seem like the kind of band I might warm up to in time, but for now it just felt like I didn't mind them being there.

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ROADKILLSODA

Romania's stoner scene isn't too big, but out of the names that did become more commonplace, Methadone Skies became the more post-rock inspired jammers while RoadkillSoda became the fuzzy hard rockers. Having just recently seen them opening for 1000mods in a venue that was smaller and made their in-your-face sound more, well, in-your-face, seeing them on a slightly bigger stage did diminish the impact of their presence, but not their music, which did sound better. For the most part, because at one point, for "As Black As My Lungs" they brought a guest vocalist (see the last pic) who could barely if even that be heard.

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HAKEN

Another band I've already seen at this very festival, and one of the biggest prog acts to come out of the 2010s, Haken definitely deserve the attention they got during this period. As much as I was a bit crunky that they didn't play any song from the one album of theirs I reviewed, they did play songs from The Mountain, which is the album that made me get into them, especially "Pareodolia". The setlist was understandably more dominated by songs from their newest record. But still the most instantly memorable part of their set were them donning the floral pattern shirts that became a silly contrast with the rain that started right before their set, and it was the one set that made me regret choosing to grayscale the entire gallery.

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SIRENIA

It was a bit odd seeing Sirenia on this lineup before realizing that they were exactly the kind of band that ArtMania would host in its earlier days. Even weirder was seeing them on the smaller secondary stage. Even in my symphonic metal phase from ten years ago, they were never among my favorites, but I still had some songs of them that I knew and liked and I was happy whenever I recognized another song of theirs while they were playing it.

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WARDRUNA

The big finisher, and, as awkward as it is to day it again, another band I saw at this exact festival before. Having went back to read my writeup on that performance, I was mostly disappointed with internally comparing their lack of spectacle to Heilung's going all in on the spectacle, something which was thankfully less of an issue now. While the conformation was still mostly just musicians performing on stage standing still, the lights and the projectors that created various shadows on the background did create something more immersive this time around. To the point where the most interesting pictures I took were not the closeups from the photo pit (they were standing further back and there were projectors in the way, so that very much exposed the limitations of my current hardware's zoom), but the ones I took from the crowd where you could see the entire installation. Soundwise they were also fantastic and immersive, but what I didn't expect to like that much were Einar's talks between songs. They were very few, but him contextualizing "Helvegen" as a death song by first going through the lost cultural significance as singing beyond its artistic and consumerist merits, for example, really enhanced the experience. Him cracking a joke at how a roar of applause erupted when he mentioned the Ragnar Lodbrok name was because the actor that portrayed him in the Vikings TV show was admittedly really good looking, might've cost him some mystique but it definitely brought some humanity to the presentation. And to top it all off, it came to a close with a solo skaldic performance of "Snake Pit Poetry".

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CONCLUSIONS AND SUCH

As always, one of ArtMania's strongest points is its location. Sibiu is a pretty large city, though it's not one whose airport has a lot of connections, and trains in Romania are notoriously bad, it is still one that isn't very hard to reach, and having a population of around 100.000 means that it's not very difficult to find accommodation in that same city. I didn't search for one right as the dates were announced, and I still managed to score one very close to the center. The center which is also full of restaurants, supermarkets, pubs, museums, and parking spots. Maximized convenience. Another related plus is that concerts take place between 7PM and midnight, leaving plenty of time to rest, and it's generally a more relaxed experience than the camping festivals with huge schedules.

Now those are things generally valid about ArtMania, which I don't expect to change in the coming years. As for what was specific about this edition, it had a continuation of the cashless system, the festival specific card. The range of beers wasn't huge, but it was decent enough, and if you wanted better beers one could easily just get one from the shops nearby (though they wouldn't be able to enter the festival grounds with it). With concerts starting so late, I didn't feel the need to eat from the festival grounds, so the only thing I tried was an admittedly overpriced burger that served its purpose.

The festival also worked with an app that would give push notifications about bands starting, or if there was an extra event like a meet and greet happening, which is always nice to have instead of having to manually check the festival's social media.

There were a lot of extra activities outside of the concerts on the festival grounds, from film screenings to mock rituals to actual concerts on a stage from the square nearby. Sadly, I didn't participate in any of those, but I wish I did.

Having a festival with no cancellations, whether weeks prior or during the fest itself, was nice for once.

The secondary stage being bigger was a definite improvement from last year's edition, even if the stage's lightning isn't exactly top notch for photographers, it does its job of filling the time between main stage acts with bands that have so far been pretty worthwhile.

The only big disappointment was how Porcupine Tree could demand the absence of photographers from the pit, but Vulture Industries could not get a couple of people onto the stage for their moment.