Still, that 2013 edition was one I hadn't attended. In fact, I wasn't even aware of it when it happened. It was the 2014 one where friends and acquaintances of mine attended and then made me jealous with stories of Obituary, Sodom, and Katatonia that made me actually want to start attending. 2015 was my first year attending the festival, my first and last time choosing camping for such a festival (never again), and the first time I ever experienced seeing so many bands I knew for the first time. At that time it had also been the first time I got to meet a lot of the metalhead friends I made online beforehand, making it feel like this was the Mecca of the Romanian Metalhead.
The years came and went, and I ended up skipping some of the editions (2018 and 2022), usually for financial/logistic reasons. In 2019, even though I didn't get photo creds, I got media creds to cover the festival. Photo creds would soon follow in 2023 and in 2024, but by that time the festival was becoming larger than ever. Five or six days full of bands, three stages, some of the biggest names out there. But back in 2023 I noted that "it feels like the festival reached a sort of ceiling in terms of how much the citadel parking area that the festival placed its grounds on can host". It sounds like the festival thought the same thing, making this edition a quite bittersweet one in it being the last to take place there.
Day 1 (Wednesday)
We were lucky enough to have passed by the festival one day prior, right before arriving to our accommodation in Brasov, meaning that we got to get our festival bracelets and do our top-ups one day early, completely forgoing the massive queues that formed on the first day of the festival. The top-up ones were ones I quite expected, given that they were just as massive on the first day last year, but there were also much longer ones for each drink/food stand because of technical issues, which made the long queues become the lasting image of the first day of the festival. Thankfully this day was also full to the brim with bands I wanted to see, with the only "local-ish opener" being Clitgore. The rainy forecast did eventually turn out to be not as severe as initially announced, leaving the day to feel more morose than oppressively rainy or sunny. Even so, the day had a bunch of acts I had seen before in an indoors setting, like Dool and Night Demon, with the former being clearly more suited for the indoors setting and the latter working just as well outdoors. Rotten Sound were my first new band this edition, and I didn't expect to make as big of an impression with their pummeling energy as they did.
The Slomosa / Ghost Bath clash was the first clash that felt challenging, but at least that was one where I had seen one of the two (the latter), making the soon to come one between Green Lung and Shining (NOR) more painful by comparison, especially since I managed to catch at least a bit out of all of them due to photographing them, and all of them sounded really good. Demolition Hammer were a band I had absolutely no expectations from, and I was more charmed by how silly one of the guitarists looked. Katatonia had one of the worst performances of the festival, not only because of dubious sound quality, but the band has sounded more lifeless each consecutive time I saw them, and with recent lineup changes leaving Renkse the only member to have played on the band's classic records, it really feels like there's barely any passion left.
I had seen Witch Club Satan's antics at Roadburn, so I was aware of them and curious how well they would be received at a less underground festival. Thankfully, the only people who shouted anything in regards to the onstage nudity where other women in the crowd, and said nudity didn't make that huge of an impression on the attendees itself, but became the subject of the local press who churned out "Norwegian rock band got naked on stage at a festival in Rasnov", leaving this the only mention that the press made of one of the biggest metal festivals in Eastern Europe. The article obviously didn't mention anything about the band's reasoning, nor that one of the members was heavily pregnant during the show, but it got so much traction that non-music fans colleagues at work sent it to me.
I decided to fully skip Zeal & Ardor, having already photographed them at this exact festival, in favor of Kanonenfieber, who ended up being one of the best sets of the festival in how intense and eye-catching the performance was. Emperor was quite a disappointment compared to the time I saw them at ArtMania, mostly because of technical issues and a toothless sound quality, so I'm glad this wasn't my first time seeing them. Mastodon were the one band that weighed the most in my decision to come to the festival, and I was a bit bummed to have never seen them while Brent was in the band, since he sings on some of my favorite Mastodon songs, but I had heard plenty of feedback about how they don't sound as great live. That was far from my experience! Since I didn't experience them before, take what I say with a grain of salt, but it felt like the lineup change totally revitalized them and gave them some newfound joy of performing live. Hearing songs like "The Motherload", "Mother Puncher", "Steambreather", and "Blood And Thunder", as well as a cover of "Supernaut" dedicated to Ozzy, was pretty much all that I could ask for, but because of how awesome it was, it made seeing Machine Head and Myrkur live for the first time less exciting. Machine Head sure do love their fireworks though.
Top three of the day: Mastodon, Kanonenfieber, and Dool.
Day 2 (Thursday)
By day two it had become clear as day that the food/drink stands were now working rather properly, and since most people had finished their top-ups, it made the previous day's queues a thing of the past. The day did start with a couple of local-ish bands, some from Romania, some from Bulgaria, with 1914 being the proper start of the day. It was quite a good combo to see two World War I themed bands at the festival, both of them being debuts for me, but that inevitably leads to some comparisons, and it didn't feel like 1914 held a candle to how intense Kanonenfieber were live, although they were still quite good and mostly suffering from an overly loudly mixed blast beat.
The Wolfheart and Omnium Gatherum combo was a nice Finnish melodeath pairing, both bands being pretty good in a live setting. I was a bit surprised to find that High Parasite is the new band of (ex-?)My Dying Bride's frontman, mostly because I mistook them for High Command (which would've made the thrash vs thrash clash a bit weird), but I liked seeing Aaron perform in a similar style but with songs that feel more direct and less languid, and he was just as good when I saw him with My Dying Bride at this same festival in a previous edition.
Orange Goblin and Brujeria both had really fun performances, but the scarcity of knowing this is or could be the last opportunity to see them live because of one retiring and one having lost some of its members did make it more memorable. Out of all the hardcore bands, Madball seemed to be the most specifically excited to play at a metal festival. Soen delivered in the most unsurprising "of course they delivered" way. Seeing Exhorder and then passing by him in the staff corridor when moving in between stages I had a big "Oh my God, that's Pat O'Brien!" moment.
Usually, a band starts losing some of its appeal to me the more times I see it, and it is never as appealing as the first time you see it. Hence why I make it a point to mention which bands I've seen live before. Out of all the bands I had seen live before, Oranssi Pazuzu were the ones I was most excited for, specifically skipping them at Roadburn this year due to clashes and knowing I'd be seeing them here. It didn't feel as special as them closing Dark Bombastic Evening in 2022 in full rain, but their sound was so easy to get immersed into, and their explosive nature so well enhanced by the transition to a live setting. If this had been my first time seeing them, it would probably have ranked as my favorite set of the festival.
Within Temptation were one of the first bands I got to see live in 2013, so they have a special place in my heart, and hearing some of my favorite of their songs live again was pretty cool. However I spent most of their set waiting to get a spot for Gojira as the photo pit was closed for their performance so I had to find a good spot in the crowd to be able to shoot them. As packed as it was, I was thankfully able to navigate through one or two mosh pits (dangerous to do with a camera equipped with a long objective) and get relatively close. Few moments have made me as irrationally angry at fans raising their hands or filming with their phones as trying to photograph the band from the crowd this time. The sound though felt surprisingly awful, overly loud in a way that definitively affected the sound quality, as if some of the speakers had burst, making the songs harder to recognize. The coolest moment was when Mario got to the front of the stage with some signs in Romanian asking the crowd if they want more blast beats and how about a song with 5 minutes of them nonstop. I'll let you guess what song that was. Between The Buried And Me, who not only had to switch spots with Madball, sadly also had to play a shorter set, instead of the initially announced Colors one, and though this set did have some of my favorites of their songs, it had no songs from Colors, which I think was a bit weird and disappointing.
Top three of the day: Oranssi Pazuzu, Between The Buried And Me, and Soen.
Day 3 (Friday)
A weird case of the international bands starting before the Romanian ones. Hellripper, as the name suggests, ripped and they were probably the best of the thrash bands at the festival. Dopethrone made me think that they had a very difference performance from last year, before realizing that that was Dopelord and that I'm an idiot.
Harakiri For The Sky were one of the bands I had seen in my first Rockstadt edition, and ever since then I though their albums got gradually less interesting, and especially on the vocal side they lost that oomph, so I was surprised not to be disappointed by the vocal performance. The Thy Catafalque / Doomnezeu clash was interesting because it was between two bands I liked and I already saw, but only one of them I have photographed, multiple times at that, and this would also be my first time seeing Doomnezeu, the Orthodox liturgical doom metal band, in its full lineup. It does feel like the band would've needed even more space on stage to fully do their thing, but it was more entertaining and well-rounded than when I saw them as a trio. Definitely the best out of the Romanian bands.
Septicflesh mostly played newer stuff, so I was mostly monitoring their set to see when they would play "Anubis". They did, but they spend most of it hyping the crowd to shout along to it than actually playing the damn song. Envy made me skipping most of their Roadburn sets worth it, even if that meant having a career spanning set instead, but the charm of seeing a Japanese man alternating between rambling poetically and screaming his soul out never fades. I was very bummed about only catching the last two songs because of a long entrance queue when I first saw Wind Rose, so seeing much more of them this time around (and from much closer) healed that wound.
Me And That Man was something I didn't expect to like as much as I did, especially since most of the songs I like from them are duets, but the new vocalist being so out-there and the band's style clashing so beautifully with the rest of the festival made this one super memorable. I was planning to completely skip Alestorm in favor of Asphyx, but I happened to be around the photo pit when they were starting and they played "Keelhauled" instead of their "joke that was funny three albums ago" songs so I stuck around for pics. Asphyx were hella good, so I'm glad they didn't clash with something more interesting.
Blood Fire Death might not have been a Rockstadt exclusive, but it did feel very special nonetheless. Not only because I never thought I'd get to see Bathory's music played live with all the exuberance it deserves, but also because each appearance so far has had something special about the songs played and the singers who guested. Most of the vocals were done by Watain's Erik Danielsson, but then you also had the vocalists of Behemoth, Primordial, and Nifelheim joining on certain songs, as well as one of the old Bathory bassists (sadly can't remember which). It was a bit weird following this up with Kerry King, not because of anything regarding the quality (I wish both had better sound quality than they did) but because you spent each set hoping to hear songs from a band that isn't technically the one playing, no matter the connection. The coolest thing about the latter set was a security guy taking a Show No Mercy vinyl from a girl in the front row and giving it to Kerry to sign it and then returning it.
The friend I was with was super excited about Electric Callboy (to this day his favorite of the festival), and even before the band started, the amount of pyros and setup and rules we had to follow in the photo pit did set quite the expectations for what would follow. After the most creative intro I've seen so far - a video of an inspector checking the pyros and the confetti synced with each going off before having to check if the crowd is ready as well - I had to take my photos while "glued" in place to the best of my ability before moving to catch as much of Primordial's set as I could, but sadly I arrived after they had already played "Empire Falls", but I managed to catch just enough out of the rest of their To The Nameless Dead set. It was great, but the one thing that felt most memorable was Alan being so intrigued by one of the people in the front row carrying a Corsican flag. I did return to Electric Callboy afterwards, mostly to satisfy my curiosity about what my friend could be so excited about. And I didn't feel that same excitement not knowing any of the songs except that one with Babymetal, but I really got why they are seen as so fun, to the point where it was hard to even register Hellbutcher besides how silly the live presentation was.
Top three of the day: Electric Callboy, Me And That Man, Blood Fire Death.
Day 4 (Saturday)
The day started with me managing to catch two of the local hardcore acts, one Bulgarian, one Romanian, and somehow the day continued in a similar core-heavy way with the deathgrind Benighted and the crusty Wolfbrigade, so even if they were all under a punk(-ier) umbrella, they all had a wildly different take on it. That streak was broken by ex-Delain singer Charlotte Wessels (I had seen the new incarnation of the band at a previous edition), with a sound that felt more pop rock than the previous band, and a guitarist that felt like he was very much living in the moment. It was around this time that I received the awful news that Blind Guardian cancelled due to an illness, which was one of the bands I was looking forward to the most.
Of course one band wouldn't be enough to completely break the punk streak, so Discharge followed soon after, in a much better setting than the tent in which the festival had them the last time. Even though energy-wise the things were there, enough to get me to join the circle pit for a while, sound-wise it feels like something was lacking to really give it the punch. Rivers Of Nihil graced us with the second saxophone of the festival (unless there was one in the few sets I haven't seen). Seeing a semi-seated Czral reminded me too much of how good Ved Buens Ende were to focus on the thrashier Aura Noir. Back when acquaintances told me stories of Rockstadt 2014, one of them claimed that Fleshgod Apocalypse were their favorite they've seen, so obviously I had a lot of internal motivation to see this already, and the live presentation alone made it worthwhile.
What followed was a walk down memory lane from the first Rockstadt I ever attended, with a streak of three bands which I hadn't seen since. Two K-starting death metal bands that I'm quite ambivalent towards but were fun enough to see again, and Ensiferum, who I could have been convinced to see again at a solo show, and were very much at the top of their game. Lord Of The Lost I had also seen as an opener for Iron Maiden, so from very far away, so this time it felt like I could actually properly see them for a change.
The only other time I saw Apocalyptica they played solo material with a singer, so I expected more of that. Instead, the band played more and more Metallica covers before I figured out that this is gonna be the theme of their set. Obviously it was fantastic anyway, but mostly I never expected "St. Anger" to be one of the songs that makes the cut. I also never expected to like Bane (USA), a band I hadn't heard of before, this much, but then finding out about the lineup connections to Converge it made a lot of sense, and seeing them gave me similar feeling to seeing other like-minded hardcore bands like Botch and The Dillinger Escape Plan for the first time.
I've actually written about my time seeing a solo Powerwolf show a year ago, so that freed me from feeling like I have to stick around after (trying to get some) pics. Dark Angel proved to be one of the best performances in the thrash category, so I'm really happy that they reunited and might come out with a new album. Carpenter Brut feels like this edition's answer to last edition's Pendulum, which in turn were that edition's answer to the previous edition's Perturbator, though it is the one I enjoyed the least, by a small margin, out of the three, but still enough to gather in a circle with my friends and dance. Normally, it would feel like following it up with anything else would make it not register properly (like what happened with Hellbutcher after Electric Callboy). But that's Nile we're talking about, so of course they ripped and I felt it.
Top three of the day: Nile, Ensiferum, Bane (USA).
Day 5 (Sunday)
It was a bit funny having the day open with Am Fost La Munte Și Mi-a Plăcut a post-rock parody band whose name makes fun of needlessly elaborate post-rock name like And So I Watched You From Afar, and then seeing the latter band later in the day too. Still don't let AFLMȘMP parody titles mislead you from thinking that they're not serious about making actual post-rock, because their performance sure proved it, even if ASIWYFA eventually took the festival's proverbial post-rock cake. But it was a better start compared to the myriad of technical issues that Dope faced, leaving them to delay by quite a lot, start with a defective sound, re-start one of their songs, and only play half their original set.
Party Cannon is a band I only knew because of the funny contrast between their style and their logo (a brilliant marketing idea), so I didn't expect their live performance to be that fun as well, partly because of the live presentation and because of the crowd engagement (and the couple of folks who dressed up for the pit, costumes include sharks and penises). Nasty and Paleface Swiss felt like on opposite sides of the hardcore spectrum musically, and also in terms of my enjoyment of them, though eventually Agnostic Front took that proverbial cake as well.
Bloodbath had the stage presence and live presentation of a bunch of guys holding a work presentation, but at least they sounded a lot better than Katatonia did. Dirty Shirt had a special anniversary set, an expanded lineup, and the show started with the results of a crowdfunded charity donation in the form of a guitar signed by a lot of musicians, though sadly I had to use the timespan of this set to go check something at my car's engine, this being the only day when I had driven to the festival and finding an oil spillage after parking it (it turned out fine, but I missed out on the set). Swallow The Sun's set focused a lot on the new album, which explains why I found the performance so unengaging, at least compared to how engaging the similar sounding Draconian was by comparison.
I am generally reticent of bands reuniting and continuing after the death of one important member, as cool as it is to still be able to hear the band's songs live. But something about Static-X's anonymous android cosplaying new frontman feels less like a replacement and more like the sweet spot between that and a tribute, and it's immensely entertaining to experience live. Sepultura was also part of the group of bands that I had seen solo shows of very recently, so the most specific part of their performance was them inviting members of other bands onstage as percussionists for "Kaiowas". Terrorizer ended up being the last band I'd get to add to my "seen live" list, but they also get the award for the most creative microphone stand. Wardruna is the only band I've decided not to post any photos of (I've already photographed them twice) because they positioned themselves so far in the back of the stage that there was no way for the stage not to get in the way of the pics, but photographer frustration aside, it was just as magical as the other times I've seen them, enhanced by all the people around who clearly dressed up for the occasion. I wasn't specifically looking forward to seeing Marduk, their performance at this festival back in 2023 having left me quite cold, and upon seeing them I figured they're as phobophilic as last time given how awful the lightning was. But something about their live performance felt much more reinvigorated compared to that other time, reminding me more of the 2015 time I saw them at this festival. Having fully expected to leave early after the photos, I was entranced to stay. Noticing some people in the front crowdsurfing, I remember how it was specifically during Marduk that I also first crowdsurfed all the way back then. So I went closer to the front and asked people to lift me up. In 2015 I was crowdsurfing to Marduk. In 2025 I was crowdsurfing to Marduk. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Here's the last pic I took, taken while crowdsurfing. I checked the automatic name the file received. It's "IMG_0666". If that ain't a sign!
Top three of the day: Wardruna, Draconian, and Static-X.
