Twelve Hours at Atmospheric Arts
Arriving at Atmospheric Arts last Saturday felt a bit like accidentally driving into the wrong event entirely.
Speyer was packed. It was Brazzeltag at the Technikmuseum.
Brazzel-what? Yeah, you and me both.
Apparently it’s some kind of weekend event involving roaring engines, vintage cars, stunt shows and tractors. More importantly, it meant that every family within a fifty-kilometre radius had collectively decided that Speyer was the place to be that Saturday.
Roads were clogged. Parking spaces full and closed off. Including the parking lot in front of Halle 101 where the festival was taking place.
We were waved away.
It took two laps around the entire area before I finally did what all modern humans do when reality fails them: I checked Instagram.
Turns out you could park there.
You simply had to show your ticket at the barrier.
You know what would have helped?
A sign.
Just saying.
Once we reached the right parking area, things started making a lot more sense. People in functional jackets and Lycra were gradually replaced by black denim, long hair, tattoos and enough black fabric to absorb all nearby sunlight.
Doors opened a bit late—apparently also due to Brazzeltag—and entry itself was fairly slow. Bags were already being checked beforehand, but the queue barely moved. Possibly because there had been neither physical nor digital tickets sent out in advance. Entry relied entirely on stating your name, which then had to match both a list and your order confirmation. Probably a logistical nightmare.
Still, my name was on the list, Chris got in too and we eventually received hand-numbered tickets.
So far, so good.
Morok & Riesling Schorle at 1 PM
Morok started at 13:00 in front of an almost empty hall because most people were still trapped outside in queue purgatory.
Attempting to quickly buy a drink before the set also failed because apparently one first needed a drinks voucher card from another counter nearby. Again—a sign would have helped.
The drink stall sold Riesling Schorle and something inside me immediately went:
Ah. Willkumme' in de Palz.
Armed with a Schörlchen at one in the afternoon, I approached Morok and immediately had a genuinely good time.
Hair down to their arses. Corpse paint immaculate. Leather spikes strapped to arms and legs like they’d just walked out of a 1997 black metal starter pack.
Classic.
Extremely classic.
Blue ghostly lighting. Rasping vocals. Relentless drums. Ice-cold riffing.
Most importantly: the sound was excellent.
That remained true throughout almost the entire day. Nothing disappeared into the mix. Vocals remained audible. Bass had actual weight.
Morok kept atmospheric flourishes to a minimum and instead focused on riffs, blasts and sheer forward momentum.
And honestly? Against all odds, black metal complete with spikes and animal skull at 1 pm next to a family steam festival in 25-degree sunshine worked absurdly well.
Strong opener. No complaints.
The set ended at 13:40 with drumsticks raised in the air like an inverted cross before we were released back into the blinding daylight.
Enter The Poncho
Afraid of Destiny followed next and unfortunately turned out to be one of those cases where a band I'd enjoyed beforehand simply did not click live for me at all. Not disastrous. Just enough to make me start thinking about food.
Food, as it turned out, meant fries for the vegan and several forms of sausage for everybody else. Mercifully, tap water was free. With this amount of glutamate in my system, staying hydrated felt important.
Then came A Symphony To The Void—Kim Carlsson’s ambient project and first-ever live performance. I had already spotted enough Lifelover shirts throughout the venue to guess several people were probably really looking forward to this one. Singing bowls were arranged on stage. Soundcheck immediately appeared troubled. Feedback loops abound. At some point the transition between soundcheck and actual performance became so seamless nobody realised the set had technically started.
At least I think it started.
Still not quite sure, to be honest.
People just kept talking. Carlsson knelt on the floor with the singing bowls, dragged a violin bow across guitar strings, attempted to summon atmosphere directly from the astral plane—and then suddenly the sound was gone. Like someone had simply pulled a cable.
Carlsson disappeared off stage in a flowing poncho.
Returned moments later.
Collected the singing bowls.
'Fuck you. Maybe next time.'
The microphone flew dramatically across the stage.
Exit stage left.
Honestly, the audience reaction was less outrage and more '…beg your pardon?'.
We had all been standing there patiently waiting for whatever exactly this was supposed to become. Getting verbally dismissed for the crime of witnessing technical difficulties felt slightly ambitious.
Look, I'm not here to tell a grown man how to conduct his live debut. But insulting the audience is not a particularly endearing move. And don't throw the equipment around. It looks deeply silly. And that stuff is expensive.
The Point Where I Started To Worry
Bilwis stepped up to salvage the situation with good cheer. The combination of monks’ robes, corpse paint and Vans felt deeply committed to several aesthetics simultaneously. They started ten minutes early to make up for the lost set and their thank-you to the audience and the organiser at the end had the warm, slightly desperate quality of someone trying to clear the air after a family row.
I decided to brave the sunshine on the concrete courtyard to get myself some coffee. You know the kind. The kind of brutally efficient truck-driver coffee that briefly restores your will to live.
Severoth was up next. Second gig today for Illia Rafalskyi, whom we had already seen with Morok earlier. Severoth is the less straight forward project. More elaborate soundscapes. Praised songwriting skills. The hall filled considerably. Clearly, many people had been waiting for this set. And yet—it still didn't click for me. At this point I started wondering whether I was somehow faulty that day.
Thankfully salvation arrived in the form of the Nocturnal Depression merch finally appearing. I had been circling that desk for hours now because there was just no way I was leaving today without a shirt. I got one. Bat design and all. My spirits were lifted.
While I went to stash my new-found treasure in the car, Emyn Muil started their set with flutes, horns, hammer-on-anvil samples and enough Tolkien energy to conquer Middle-earth outright. Some fist-raising occurred. People seemed into it. I really wasn't. This might have been one of the most beige sets of the day for me.
By now the audience alcohol level had also reached fascinating heights.
Around 7 pm, a woman beside me attempted to leave the hall through a wall.
Literally.
The wall consisted of interconnected panels which she carefully examined for several minutes, trying to slide her fingers underneath them as though she’d discovered a secret passage in a murder mystery manor.
Eventually she gave up, sat on the floor, spent roughly twenty minutes rolling a cigarette and then smoked it directly underneath a no-smoking sign.
I think in her mind she technically had gone outside already.
At this point I realised I was simply too sober for whatever dimension the evening had entered. Another Schorle it was.
Emotional Damage, Finally
Then Unreqvited walked on stage and suddenly everything made sense again.
This was one of the bands I had been most excited for beforehand.
I write to this music. Entire feralscripts exist because Autumn & Everley was playing in the background while I stared dramatically into middle distance.
So when they opened with exactly that track, I nearly ascended.
And they were incredible.
Absolutely incredible.
I had genuinely worried atmospheric black metal of this kind might not work live. Too drifting. Too delicate. Too internal. I worried this might get lost. It didn't. It worked out perfectly.
After all the "meh" of the day, all the standing around waiting to feel something, something in my chest finally unlocked. Three songs in, I had tears running down my face in a very undignified fashion.
Embarrassing.
Wonderful.
Their first European live performance and not a hint of ego about them. No theatrical nonsense. No self-important posturing. Just complete focus and sincerity.
I loved everything about that set. The absurdly perfect man bun. The hyper-focused melodic picking. The atmosphere. The restraint.
For that set alone, the trip had been worth it.
Enter Bathrobe
Headliner time. Hypothermia. I'd sampled the most popular tracks beforehand in preparation, never really understood the hype and moved on with my life.
So imagine my surprise when none other than Kim Carlsson himself walked back onto the stage.
This time in a flowing mauve silk bathrobe.
Because apparently we had all entered the arthouse phase of the evening.
Soundcheck once again descended into chaos. Cables failed. Presets were wrong. Everybody looked stressed. The tension among the sound technicians became increasingly palpable while Carlsson fretted his way around the stage. I am fairly certain at least one sound engineer developed new psychological conditions during this set.
They did eventually play, and they played the whole set this time, which we were apparently meant to be grateful for. The most enthusiastic fans in the room—directly behind me — had the absolute time of their lives.
Me? I still didn’t get the hype. Hypothermia felt strangely mechanical to me. Like all the right ingredients were technically present, yet nothing underneath them felt alive.
The bathrobe stayed on for the entire set. The violin bow came out occasionally to make ghostly sounds on the guitar strings. The drama was considerable.
And maybe this is unfair.
But after the earlier ambient-project implosion, I simply could not take the theatrics seriously anymore.
The whole thing felt deeply self-conscious.
Which, to my own surprise, I seem to have grown increasingly allergic to over the past year.
Bass was great though. Phil A. Cirone—absolutely cracking. Dextrous, relaxed, completely unbothered by any surrounding chaos, occasionally appearing to improvise something extra just because he could.
The set ran long because of soundcheck. At some point I spotted a sound technician making cut-off gestures from the side of the stage. Eventually Carlsson wrapped things up on his own.
This time we even received a “thank you” instead of “fuck you”.
Personal growth.
As the stage crew immediately began preparing for the next set, Carlsson attempted to save himself an extra trip backstage by gathering up all his belongings at once. This ended with him dropping an entire bottle of beer across the stage floor.
Naturally, he did not clean it up.
He simply walked off and left the crew to deal with it.
At that point I felt the atmosphere between artist and technicians had become very spiritually rich.
Reflections Of A Tired Soul
By now it was past 10 pm and exhaustion had fully settled into my bones. A ten-band festival is a lot. Technically I’d seen around 7.2 of them if we generously discount A Symphony To The Void.
Still, the band I had looked forward to all day was Nocturnal Depression. Seeing them live genuinely felt like crossing something off a bucket list. They were the first depressive black metal band I ever truly connected with. Reflections of a Sad Soul opened a door for me back in 2023 and I honestly don’t think I’d be where I am musically now without that album.
Were they exactly what I’d hoped for?
Of course not.
Two emotionally devastating sets in one day would have been greedy.
They sounded good. Tight. Professional. Vocals exactly as croaking and foul as they should be. Soundcheck happened quickly and without catastrophe, which by this point already felt refreshing.
But naturally they focused mostly on the harsher material. Which makes sense. Nobody except me wants to hear an eleven-minute melodic sadness spiral like Her Ghost Haunts These Walls while standing shoulder-to-shoulder with 400 sweaty people. Still, some selfish little part of me wanted the introverted songs. The fragile ones. The music for staring dramatically out of windows while reconsidering your entire existence.
Well. Can’t have everything.
Also—the enthusiastic crowd interactions between songs felt deeply surreal somehow. Enthusiastic in a way that sat slightly oddly with the music. Lord Lokhraed, the Hansi Kürsch of depressive black metal. You heard it here first.
Eventually exhaustion won.
I skipped Vinterland entirely since I’ll be seeing them again at Fortress Festival in a few weeks anyway.
So we headed out into the night instead, accompanied by a very cheerful farewell from the security staff:
'Kummd gud hoam, gell!'
So Then
Daniel, if you took the time to read this far—thank you for the invite. Genuinely. I had a proper good day.
Potato-heavy and occasionally baffling, but good. This is just what a good day looks like through my eyes. No kidding.
That said: signs are important.
People like signs.
Use them for parking. Use them for drink vouchers. Use them for whatever mysterious system governs entry into black metal festivals during Brazzeltag weekends. A food option with at least one vegetable would have been revolutionary. And maybe a cleaning rota for the loos after six hours.
The venue sounded genuinely excellent all day long, but for roughly 500 people it felt just slightly too large, which meant the crowd often appeared strangely dispersed. Outside, the courtyard consisted mostly of concrete and direct sunlight with almost no shade anywhere.
And I think that was ultimately my issue with Atmospheric Arts.
Not musically.
Musically the festival was completely solid.
But for a festival built around atmosphere, I occasionally found myself missing exactly that. The location never fully settled into itself somehow.
Then again, this may simply be age speaking.
Or dehydration.
Or twelve consecutive hours fuelled primarily by Schorle and fried potatoes.
Never mind me.