Written by:	RaduP
Published:	August 30, 2024
Event:	Rockstadt Extreme Fest 2024 (Website)
Galleries:	Rockstadt Extreme Fest 2024 - Day 6/6 by RaduP (227) Rockstadt Extreme Fest 2024 - Day 5/6 by RaduP (201) Rockstadt Extreme Fest 2024 - Day 4/6 by RaduP (194) Rockstadt Extreme Fest 2024 - Day 3/6 by RaduP (176) Rockstadt Extreme Fest 2024 - Day 2/6 by RaduP (206) Rockstadt Extreme Fest 2024 - Day 1/6 by RaduP (73)

The first time I attended Rockstadt Extreme Festival back in 2015, Combichrist were on the second row in the poster, their logo big and visible. The festival had a big stage and a small stage, and the first out of the four days only had a couple of bands on the small stage. There's plenty of time between each band playing. This year, on the poster, Combichrist have their band name typed out in an alphabetically ordered list of bands which aren't big enough to make it to the first four rows of bands that have their logos painted, alongside other acts like Insomnium and Cattle Decapitation that had their logos on the first rows back when I first saw them at previous editions. The festival has two big stages and a small stage, but that small stage is larger and no longer under a tent, and the first out of the six days has a couple of bands on the two big stages. There's often more bands playing at the same time. The earliest of early bird tickets costed more than what it used to cost to get a full pass at the gate.

I think that paints a bit of a picture about how Rockstadt Extreme Festival has changed, and even if I wasn't there for the first couple of editions, I never expected it to grow this huge and rival the other European festivals of its kind that I looked up to. There are editions I missed out on, but last year's edition was also a watershed moment for how big a metal festival in Romania could get, and a watershed moment for me as a photographer. For one, that's when the number of stages got increased to three, and there was a hugeness to the lineup that was unparalleled. And with that having been, at that point, the largest number of bands I had to photograph, it was a huge challenge. In my review of it, I argued that perhaps the festival reached a ceiling of growth.

Well, this year's edition had over a hundred bands. Even if there are no bands that feel like they couldn't have been part of previous editions, the festival overdelivered on the sheer quantity and variety of stuff to see. Six days! Three stages! And now the third stage had a running order separate from the order two, meaning that there were clashes. Let's see how that worked out!

Once again, I wish I had as good a memory and as versatile a way with uniquely describing sets the way musclassia recently did for ArcTanGent, and because of how the huge quantity of bands meant even more time spent editing the pics, in addition to a trip I had with X-Ray Rod, this is the latest I've ever written a writeup for this festival, so forgive the blurry memory.

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Day 1 (Tuesday)




The weird thing about this day is that it was added after the first festival announcement, and that pissed off a lot of people that have already made accommodation plans according to the initial five day announcement. I also reserved my accommodation prior to that, but I was lucky enough to get it starting from that Tuesday so we'd have time to be settled in before the full day of Wednesday. So we were properly accommodated and had plenty of time to eat and settle in before the concerts of this day started. And because this is the short day of the bunch, I can afford to do something akin to a band by band walkthrough.



This day had the worst of technical difficulties, with the top-up system and the entry having some issues resulting in very long queues when the festival opened. Thankfully, I did manage to get my top-up done after doing the Eihweh pics, and neither me nor my friends felt too bad about having to queue up during this band. This kind of Nordic neofolk is usually pretty cool, but not only having seen much much better bands, but also having some very questionable live presentation, partly in how cringeworthy every "brothers and sisters" appeal to the crowd done through processed vocals was. Every song following basically the same "RPG main menu background music" structure didn't help. Combichrist is a band I skipped during my first Rockstadt, which is a decision I question now, but also they were the band that made the least impression on me out of the six that day. Cult Of Fire comparatively had the most striking live presentation, something that does kinda justify all the kvlt metal bands calling their live shows rituals. The feast on that table did make things feel overtly ritualistic, and kudos to the guitarists for not getting too numb playing in that position for roughly one hour.



Loathe felt like a pretty good split between something more hardcore and something similar to Deftones, and they had a pretty smooth delivery, but what I remember most about the set was that the band stopped their set due to a fight breaking out in the first row. The couple of moments where I had no idea what was going on or whether the show would continue were not my favorite. Cattle Decapitation were originally cancelled as they had cancelled all their European appearances, so their effort to make it to this one show is commendable, but it was sadly ruined by some of the worst live sound during the festival, to the point where my friend that knows most of their songs by heart couldn't tell the songs being played. Meanwhile Behemoth were a very worthy headliner for the day, not only maintaining an air of theatricality, but also having some surprising cuts in the setlist, like "No Sympathy For Fools" and "Cursed Angel Of Doom".

Top three of the day: Loathe, Behemoth, and Cult Of Fire

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Day 2 (Wednesday)




Alright, at this point any kind of band by band walkthrough becomes impossible. Back in my 2019 writeup I kinda grouped everything together because a lot of bands' sets remain kinda blurry in memory. I am gonna try to still remember something from everything, but I can't possibly be expected to remember if metalcore band A or metalcore band B were any different. Also in my 2023 writeup, I went day by day and started each day with a mention of what cancellations or lineup changes happened, because that edition was plagued by them. This year though, even though we were all mentally prepared for cancellations, there was only one cancellation, which happened on this Wednesday, with Arkona having to miss out due to visa issues.



For a moment I though I already shot Svalbard at last year's edition, before figuring out that I was mistaking them for Employed To Serve. I mean it's not like I was gonna miss them anyway, because I knew they'd be really amazing live, and they did deliver a great opening for the day. Alternating that with Bipolar Architecture, a band we've covered since their first EP, and seeing them making it is pretty heartwarming. Ufomammut ended up having some of the biggest impact out of the very fuzzy bands, and they're one of the bands that made the most out of how well the small stage could sound. Having both Cancer Bats and Kvelertak so close to one another was a pretty cool one-two punch of more groove-tinged hardcore that isn't really hardcore. Brutus did technically have the worst conditions out of the three times I've seen them live, but they also finally played "Dust" live, which along with how great they are at what they do was enough to catapult this one straight to my favs. DragonForce were cheeky, but I don't think the vocals fit.



I wish I caught more of D.R.I., but the hardcore band of this day really delivered on the energy, both the older Terror and the newer Jesus Piece. The Dillinger Escape Plan were a band I never expected to see live after they break up, and though I'm still jealous of all the folks who saw them with Puciato, this reunion with original vocalist Dimitri Minakakis more than made up for it, and I hope this ends up being more than a tour (and Botch as well while they're at it). Seeing The Black Dahlia murder without Trevor was a bit weird, but it was still pretty worthwhile. I'm glad I finally got to see Amon Amarth live, and their live show is indeed pretty cool, I just wish I got to see that one song that got me into them, and the songs from the past ten years have kinda left me unimpressed. Also, the first Rockstadt edition that I missed was in 2018, and there were mainly two bands that made me regret not going, and with me finally seeing Converge here it erased all traces of regret for missing it. Three out of the five favorite sets from this festival season came from this one festival day, so yeah, this was a pretty strong one.

Top three of the day: Brutus, The Dillinger Escape Plan, and Converge.

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Day 3 (Thursday)




The day started stupidly strong with Gaerea, which were supposed to play last year but had some issues at the airport. I was kinda expecting some great black metal, but I didn't expect such a great stage presence, and especially not such a zesty vocalist. Norna benefited from being the only honest to God post-metal band on the roster, and they have a new album out this Friday so I'll be on the lookout for that. Slope were ridiculously smooth and fun for four people that look like they stereotypical campus students. Also smooth but with unimaginable swagger came Baroness.



That said, the day was centered around the monolithic clash of the titans of the big for Teutonic thrash metal bands. Individually I wouldn't be too excited about them, but the opportunity to see them all in a single day is something that I'm far from the only one to want to experience. Though they didn't play one after another, it's still something that felt very omnipresent. I was expecting to like each band more than the one that came before it, but that was altered by how disappointed I was in how unenergetic Destruction sounded, how taken aback I was by how much I liked Sodom's pummeling sound, and how Mille's vocals didn't sound in top form during the Kreator set. Comparatively, almost all old school thrash metal bands were outclassed in energy by the old school hardcore bands.



Some of the biggest impact was had by three bands I had already seen before, but for different reasons. Amenra and Eivør made the most of the slightly more intimate atmosphere of the small stage, and sound quality and atmosphere created some of the most immersive sets of the festival, the kind that made me wish I could see them uninterrupted without having to go shoot something on the other stages. From the opposite end, I really didn't gel with the vocal tone of Eluveitie's new singer, so it felt like all old songs that I wanted to hear got butchered in an act quite akin to seeing your ex with someone new. But at least "Inis Mona" sounded alright.

Top three of the day: Amenra, Eivør, and Gaerea.

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Day 4 (Friday)




I liked what I saw from Strigoi, but sadly I missed the part where they asked the crowd to do a circle pit but with slow zombie-like strolling instead of running. Helga were a band I did not expect to see here, and the material itself and the performance were strong but it's clear that there's some lack of live experience and the confidence that would come with playing more. Bodysnatcher and Lastelle were a fun contrast, with Bodysnatcher the kind of really heavy hardcore overly reliant on breakdowns that you get tired of very quickly, while Lastelle were a more emotional screamo/post-hardcore that felt very ambitious but didn't manage to make all the elements work (the cleans sounded particularly cringeworthy) in a way that you're willing to give them a pass for it because of how clearly passionate they are.



Something about Cynic felt very empty and unexciting, a stark contrast to how bonkers and explosive Anaal Nathrakh were, them also being the kind of band noisy enough that the subpar sound on that stage seemingly didn't work in their disadvantage. Speaking of metalcore, the most surprising of the bands of this kind were Imminence purely due to having their singer also play a violin, though this didn't sacrifice any of his pathos for over the top performance. Havok had more technical issues than reasonably bearable. Orden Ogan had the best fan interactions, especially during the times when the crowd delivered subpar performances when asked to make some noise, comparisons to grandmas abound. Almost as funny as when Aborted made the crowd do jumping jacks to burn the fat they gained from festival food.



Dark Tranquillity were pretty good, and I liked them more than the other time I saw them. Deicide, who were supposed to play a Legion set last year but lost their instruments at the airport, were relegated to the small stage. A pretty good performance but also a crowd much bigger than the bottleneck between the stages allowed for. The most meh out of the consecutive 3D, Delain did surprise me with the knowledge that their new singer knows/is Romanian. Saxon continue to rule, regardless of their age. One of the worst clashes for someone interested in black metal was between the Venom Inc. and the Abbath playing Immortal sets, and without concise setlist information, I ended up having to constantly switch at random between the two, in the process missing songs from each that I really wanted to hear. Dimmu Borgir had a surprisingly good setlist, encompassing songs from most of their albums, opening with something from For All Tid, a much better setlist than their newest album centric set from 2019. Seeing one of Galder's last performances with the band is also a plus. At this point I've seen Sólstafir plenty of times, along with most songs they played, but they had some of the best lights of the festival, and were a perfect end for the day.

Top three of the day: Anaal Nathrakh, Sólstafir, and Orden Ogan.

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Day 5 (Saturday)




The first part of this day was dominated by two groups of bands. First there were the stoner bands like Dopelord, Stoned Jesus, and 1000mods, most of which I already saw live and photographed, and it was the one that I hadn't, Dopelord that impressed me most. Second off there were the comedic acts, with Serrabulho's party grind (think people dressed in animal onesies and folk costumes onstage while a techno song based around chicken sounds is playing, while the band introduces themselves as Opeth), Nanowar Of Steel's tales of Norse gods working in Ikea, and Emmure's sorry excuse for "music". I want to personally apologize to every band I called bad previously after having to sit through Emmure.



Other than that, Indian Fall were the one Romanian band I got to see at the festival so far (the other ones I conveniently skipped). Music aside, this one was pretty touching because the band were playing on a stage named after Andrei Calmuc, a bandmate of theirs that passed away, and some tributes were due. Having seen Death To All playing Death but focusing on the latter half of the discog, Left To Die were a pretty neat counterpart for the former half. Leprous and Crownshift failed to make much of an impression, the former because I've seen them live way too many times, and the latter because they're not impressive. Humanity's Last Breath win my award for the best modern core band of the festival, incredibly heavy and atmospheric, while The Exploited are contenders in the classic core, and considering how many times they were supposed to play around me but cancelled due to health concerns, I'm glad a show of theirs finally happened. I vibed with The Halo Effect more than I expected to, and I think more than I did with Dark Tranquillity.



Jinjer were cool, but I'm poised to see them later in the year so I didn't spend much mental energy on them yet. Instead I saved all of it for the Opeth show, which was to be a "by request" one. Sadly, they still didn't play "Black Rose Immortal", instead some songs that I already grew tired of, like "Deliverance" and "Heir Apparent", still cling to the setlist. Otherwise a pretty good setlist, entirely made out of pre-Heritage material, and a sound that was absolutely fantastic. The extensive but not exceptionally interesting stage banter gave me just enough time to go and shoot Dark Funeral as well. A lot of comments on my 2019 article mention how the common experience of Paradise Lost live isn't overly positive compared to my very positive experience. This time I got to see that first-hand, with a set that was delayed by 20 minutes but ended on time, a sound and lightning quality that was subpar, technical errors that persisted during the set, and a band that felt like they really didn't want to be there. Comparatively, Suicidal Tendencies were miles ahead in really seeming like they relished their time on stage, so they brought as many fans as possible on the stage too. 1349 were also a band I enjoyed more this time around than when I saw them the last time, but it might also be that their live presence worked better on the small stage.

Top three of the day: Opeth, Humanity's Last Breath, and Left To Die.

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Day 6 (Sunday)




For some reason this day had the highest share of non-metal stuff, or rather borderline metallic stuff, and a lot of it was concentrated in the first part of the day. Well, there's also a catch. The Devil's Trade is a more neofolk-y project, or at least is one as a one-man thing when I saw the Roadburn performance, so I was quite surprised to see a full band delivering something with a more sludgy edge. Show Me The Body is also a band I previously saw at Roadburn, though this was more in line with what I saw then, though I can't say I remembered the banjo. The day also had three different post-rock bands, Shy, Low, Maybeshewill, and God Is An Astronaut, each delivering some really nice somber atmospheres on the small stage, while also each being slightly better than the previous one.



Misery Index were more barebones deathgrind, but they were a pretty good appetizer for when Napalm Death took that same stage and delivered some of the best punk of the festival. Urne win the award for the best facial expressions while riffing. Incantation were the one death metal band I was most excited about seeing for the first time and they didn't disappoint. But going back to the non-metal bands topic, there was one band I was most excited about seeing for the first time, and they ended up having my favorite set of the entire festival. A Place To Bury Strangers made such wonderfully noisy and psychedelic music that really worked in tandem with me discovering where to get the good cuba libre near the stage, and their out of the box approach to music fully manifested in them eventually moving away from the stage itself as a medium, instead taking the sound from the sound booth and setting an impromptu sound station in the middle of the crowd and creating one of the most in-your-face musical experiences I've ever had, something that reminded me of why making music and breaking boundaries can be such a joy.



I knew Lacuna Coil had a change of direction, but I didn't expect them to embody it to that extent. This isn't a compliment. It's also a bit funny knowing that Textures were one of the bands that had their logo painted on the very first edition of the festival, but what I remember them most for is that this is when the rains started, and with my equipment not being waterproof I had to be more careful in my shooting, though the sets most affected by this were God Is An Astronaut's and KK's Priest's. Hearing "Night Crawler" and "Burn In Hell" live was definitely a rewarding experience, but what stuck in my mind was the irony of seeing Insomnium's guitarist wearing a Judas Priest shirt while KK's Priest were playing on the other stage. To no one's surprise, Insomnium were amazing. To my surprise, Watain didn't spray blood (even if all photographers were very wary of the potential for that), but still had some of the most convincing live presentation, as well as probably the best black metal performance. I could afford to skip a lot of Pendulum in favor of Watain, having seen the former at a non-metal festival, but the latter part of the set that I still managed to see ended up as a huge highlight. I was kinda expecting Frog Leap, Leo Moracchioli's band, to be something I'd see for 20 minutes max, but when he pulled out a cover of the Pokemon theme song, I knew I'd have to stay until the end. Ending with a cover band is a bit of an odd move, but Toto's "Africa" and Survivor's "Eye Of The Tiger" are just corny enough to have me consider that the festival ended on a convincingly silly note.

Top three of the day: A Place To Bury Strangers, God Is An Astronaut, and Pendulum.

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CONCLUSIONS AND SUCH

AS A PHOTOGRAPHER

I also divided my previous writeup in conclusions as a photographer and as a concertgoer, and while even back then I mentioned how a lot of me engaging with the festival came from the perspective of me being a photographer, that was a festival where one band was playing at a time. After shooting the band, you had a choice between engaging with the set, or chilling at the tables, but you always had the option to see the set in full. This time, with there almost always being clashes between sets, seeing a set in full became a rarity, because taking pictures of the bands was my first priority.

I still didn't shoot all the bands, some were bands I've shot before (Saturnus, Gutalax), some were local Romanian bands that played early enough that I could skip them, and some were delayed by almost an hour while being the last band of the day (Ho99o9). But I still ended up with roughly a hundred bands to shot, a hundred times I had to get in the photo pit, face various lightning conditions, position myself in a limited space among a dozen other photographers, sometimes with that mobility limited more by presence of the pyrotechnics or confetti canons. The two big stages, more than just being tall, would also often have a bunch of equipment or props obscuring the view, while also facing a slowly setting sun for most of the day. However thankfully the small stage has been replaced with one that has a more standard stage backdrop compared to the gray tent of last year. And then there's a hundred sets to edit at home, when you notice that perhaps you should've used a higher shutter speed, or that for some reason the focus is weird in some pictures.

I also mentioned in my previous article that the festival ended up being a ceiling in terms of what I can do as a photographer and the standard to be reached is something I have to improve myself in order to reach. The distance is still quite immense, and I haven't had ample opportunities to improve, evident by how few the galleries I've published since last year have been, but I did do my best to invest in some better hardware in the form of three extra lenses. After testing some of them at ArtMania, I had more capabilities to zoom in, as well as slightly better results in subpar lightning. It's tangible improvement, but also one where it's clear there's much more work to do.

Shooting a hundred bands does end up being a rewarding experience when all is said and done. Not only because that lead me to seeing, albeit very shortly, some bands I would've skipped due to clashes; but also because there have been quite a few bands where the set I added for them was the first set they have on Metal Storm. That includes local bands like Indian Fall, newer bands like KK's Priest, as well as older bands like Cro-Mags, Armored Saint, and Incantation. There's also bands that haven't been photographed by us in more than a decade (probably because they didn't tour Estonia). But even the ones where it didn't feel like Metal Storm needed more pics of them, it feels rewarding to know that you have Exodus and Amon Amarth pics in your portfolio.

AS A CONCERTGOER

Because I had to constantly check when the next performance would start so that I could get in the photo pit, I rarely had the time to exit photographer mode and just enjoy the concerts for what they were. In a way, I sacrificed my experience as a concertgoer to make sure that I deliver to Metal Storm the pictures that I could. It was a conscious choice, I was under no obligation to shoot as many bands as I did, and I could've also aimed for just getting media creds if I wanted to not bother with photography, since I knew I was gonna write an article anyways. I chose what I chose and I don't regret it.

But I can't say that there weren't moments where I regret that I had to sacrifice my own enjoyment of a set in order to move to another stage for pics. Amenra, Eivør, Insomnium, just to name a few, would've been sets I definitely wouldn't have left in normal circumstances. There are others where it was the clash itself that hurt rather than me prioritizing photography, with the Watain/Pendulum, A Place To Bury Strangers/Maybeshewill, Abbath/Venom Inc., Eivør/Kreator, Svalbard/Bipolar Architecture being the worst ones. If I were adamant about seeing only sets in full, it would've been a nightmare.

But also because previously there was only one band playing and you could choose to either engage or go to sit down, while now you often had another band playing or ready to play on another stage, it left for fewer opportunities to take a break from things. Prior to the festival I was anticipating how exhausting of an experience it would be, seeing how huge the lineup ended up being, and with the extra days. But ironically, I endured much better than expected, because the fewer opportunities to take a break somehow made the experience feel more rewarding and leave less time to focus on being tired. Because of the larger distance between the bigger stages and the small stage, plus us having an accommodation in the city itself that was 40 minutes away by foot, meant a lot of walking that needed to be done. Two of my friends each took one of the festival days off though, and it was understandable. My fear of missing out could never let me do that.

I think the general festival information I outlined best in my 2019 writeup. Not much fundamentally changed, though prices for food and drinks are more expensive nowadays due to inflation. The third stage not being in a tent in between the food area and the big stages the way it was last year was definitely a plus. Now it's some walking distance away, in a place that's surrounded by pine trees that do give off a certain atmosphere. The path towards this stage ended up being less of a bottleneck than I anticipated, even if I had the opportunity to use a crew only path that made things much much easier. With our accommodation being in that same city, conveniently having been a 5 minutes walk away from Kaufland, while also having been blessed with one of our friends being an excellent cook, meant less of a need to rely on festival food this time around, though what I have tried has been mostly decent but nothing to write home about. The one exception being the langos in the parking lot right outside the festival.

There were some technical issues that plagued the festival. There was the topup issue in the beginning of the festival that created huge queues. There was an issue with the water supply from the city (not the festival's fault). The sound on the bigger stages was hit (Opeth) or miss (Cattle Decapitation). The smaller stage also had technical issues that lead to the sound occasionally going off (like during Havok), though this was thankfully a very rare occurrence. But this did lead to the smaller stage often experiencing delays, the worst offenders being Paradise Lost and Ho99o9. Also, not exactly a "technical" issue, but there were a shitload of wasps. I personally marked myself safe from the REF 2024 wasp attacks, but a couple of my friends weren't as lucky.

On the flipside, there was only one cancellation during the festival. For the huge number of bands, one would've expected that at least a couple of them would run into issues at the airport or whatnot, especially considering the prevalence of such happenings during last year's edition. Sure, sometimes the running order did shift a bit, but these changes were announced ahead of time and the festival always posted the most recent version of the running order on the day's respective morning.

To close things off, I find it a very happy parallel that the grandest of the bands announced for the 2025 edition is Gojira, which was the headliner of the first edition of the festival back in 2013. I have a feeling that was intentional.

Top five of the entire festival: A Place To Bury Strangers, Brutus, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Converge, and Amenra.