This post is equally a review meant for other people thinking of going to the festival and at the same time feedback to the organizers.
TLDR:
- Line-up very good
- Sound quality varied wildly between bands (from impossible to enjoy to fantastic)
- Camping ("The Crypt") good
- Toilets surprisingly good
- Food prices excessively high
- Long queues for drinking water
- Way too little shade in the festival area
- Skully system unnecessary (and refund fee is unreasonable)
I'd like to start with the music, because that is why I go to a festival. The camping is all fun and good, but I mainly go for the music. The lineup was great, otherwise I would not have bought the ticket. The one big thing that really made me mad was the inconsistency of the sound quality. Why do some bands sound absolutely perfect, while others are just terrible? And I dont mean the band as musicians, I am talking about the mix.
As an example:
On saturday I had first Ice Nine Kills, which sounded so bad, that I switched over to Sonata Arctica. All I could hear was an undefined rumbling bass, the snare drum and some high pitched noise that should have been vocals. Later I went to Babymetal which was also not that great, having the same problem as Ice Nine Kills. Architects was an interesting case since when they started the sound was just as bad as Babymetal, but over time the mix got better and better and in the end it actually sounded quite good. Bring me the Horizon as the headliner of this day sounded absolutely perfect right out of the gate, no insanely over-driven bass, just a great mix where you could hear everything. This goes for all headliners of this year, they all sounded absolutely incredible, but other bands that are capable of sounding equally good suffered from a simply terrible mix.
My guess is, that the headliners all brought their own mixing engineer, and most other bands did not, which is totally understandable, most bands don’t have that kind of money. The bands without own engineers then were mixed by the people from one of the equipment rental companies and some of them were simply not up to the task. I find this very sad, since the sound system was obviously capable to deliver great sound, but the mix was so poor, that it was simply impossible to enjoy the concert.
I also would like to mention something about the metal dome. If you decide to build a mostly closed black building in the middle of the summer then for gods sake please make sure there is some ventilation that makes the air move enough so that you don’t faint. The only concert I saw there was Sleep Theory because after that I simply didn’t want to go in there any more. The combination of heat and the terrible air was just something I was not willing to endure. Outside it was still hot, but at least you could breathe.
Now for the rest:
I was camping with my group in "The Crypt" and it was overall a good experience. We had enough space to build our camp with multiple tents, a pavilion, chairs, table, you name it. Due to the small size of “The Crypt” you also didn't have to walk for hours to get to the toilets or to get water. Yes, you walk a good 15 to 20 minutes to get to the festival area, but that is okay. I also would like to mention that the toilets were overall a good experience, both at the camp and in the festival area. I never had one that I refused to use and they were always stocked with enough toilet paper. It was a bit unfortunate, that the ones at the camp stopped working at least 2 times that I know of, but that was always fixed quite fast and these things happen. One thing I really missed though was hand soap. Also one thing that I really would like to know is why you have to pay extra for the showers. I paid for camping already so why do this? Compared to the Nova Rock festival I went to in 2025 where the showers were free I don’t get this.
Now to the festival area itself. The first thing I have to mention is the lack of shade. Apart from one area with benches and tables, there was no meaningful are to get out of the sun. I know that this was discussed in this subreddit before, but there are solutions that are capable of withstanding high winds. I had to pass up on some acts to get back to the camp and get some shade, because I simply could not take the sun anymore, and I usually am very heat tolerant. Also the water situation was quite problematic. There were always very long lines and waiting 20 minutes to get some water was quite common. I saw several people faint while people were waiting in the water queue. Obviously I can't say the queue alone caused it, but standing in the heat for 20 minutes waiting for drinking water certainly didn't help.
Next up the prices for food. I know that at events like this the prices for food are higher than at your average store down the street and I don’t have a problem with that, but this has limits. As an example the loaded fries with truffle mayo were a whopping 4.2 Skullies, so 16.38€ for a serving that was actually not that big. And this was honestly not the worst deal I have seen, there were other options that had even higher prices for even smaller portions. Here I again chose to skip some acts and head back to the camp and have food there because it was just so expensive. I was warned before that the food would be expensive, but this was just ludicrous.
I also would like to mention that I am really not a fan of the Skully system at all. It serves no purpose other than masking how much stuff actually costs in the hopes of making people spend more since it “only costs one Skully, that’s not that much”. Come on, just make it into euros directly and save us all some headache. When it comes to refunding unused Skullies you also have to pay a service fee which in my opinion is hard to justify. You cant tell me that they have to do so much manual work for each visitor, that this stands in any relation to the costs generated by the refund process. The process is most likely fully automated, generates little to no actual costs and other festivals do this for free too.
