Report

Mystic Festival 2023 (Gdansk, Poland) - Day Two

I penciled in a ton of bands for the 2nd full day of Mystic Festival 2023. There were 8 in total but the question was, could I manage to pull it off along with bouncing back and forth between the photo pits? Something that I forgot to mention in my previous report was that the merch prices were higher this year than last. This isn’t a ding on the festival itself, but just the way it is nowadays. There were several bands this year that didn’t bring merchandise at all. Bands are coming to the consensus that it’s not worth passing the merch cuts that are paid to the festivals, onto the fans. Most of the T-shirts cost anywhere from $25 to $30 after you made the conversion from the Polish Zloty to U.S. dollars this year. This was up at least $5 from last year’s average shirt price.

Dismember Fans!

The first band of the day for me was Sweden’s death metal legends, Dismember. I’ve always liked Dismember better than Entombed, so the fact that they are an active band again is incredulous and much needed in the copy/paste death metal omniverse today. The front row was already raging by the time I made it to the photo pit. They started their set with “Overide Of The Overture” and never looked back. Their chainsaw death metal formula has never changed over the past 30 years and this is why their fans are so loyal. Matti Kärki’s smile is a pretty good indication that they aren’t going into hibernation again anytime soon.

Dismember

Next up was Planet of Zeus, Greece’s own version of the band Clutch. This was my first time seeing them and I loved the energy they put out. They were playing with so much vigor, you could have sworn they were on one of the larger stages. The smallish, outdoor Desert Stage area was full of onlookers, so I assume that they have a decent following in Poland. I’m hoping to catch a full set from them sometime on their home turf in Greece.

Planet of Zeus

I made my way to the larger indoor venue for the festival, the Shrine Stage. Even though this venue is about double the size of the Sabbath Stage, it was still cramped and steamy during Grave’s brutal set. Grave’s non-wavering formula of meat grinding stripped down death metal still appeals to today’s death metal crowd. Bassist Tobias Cristiansson didn’t need much effort to fire up the crowd during their set, but his spiked gauntlets and towering frame were sufficient fuel to keep the Grave death metal inferno going throughout their set.

Grave

Today was such a busy day for me, there were a few back-to-back sets I had to make happen. Electric Wizard and Carpathian Forest was one of these instances. I’ve seen Electric Wizard several times recently so I didn’t want to risk missing any of Carpathian Forest’s set since they never come stateside. Electric Wizard did their thing with their occult doom driven sound but the memory that stood out for me was…what gnarly drugs was their crowd on? There was some strange behavior in their huddled black mass of a crowd, but as long as no one got hurt or overdosed, more power to them!

Electric Wizard

Carpathian Forest was formed by Nattefrost in 1991 and has had an on and off existence for the past decade. They may be controversial at times, but there’s never a boring moment. This was exemplified during their set when Nattefrost started playing the harmonica randomly during “The Beast in Man: The Origin of Sin” and tossing Norwegian flags into the crowd. The band line-up seems to change often, but the randomness of their live shows never does.

Carpathian Forest

The headliner of the day was Danzig. Normally I wouldn’t be overly excited for a headlining Danzig set at a festival, but this was different. Tonight, he played his self-titled debut solo album from 1988, from start to finish. I loved this this album when I was in high school, and I still love it to this day, so I was really looking forward to this special set. After sticking around for the whole album, I would give Danzig an 8.5 out of 10 on the execution. There were a couple of fuckups, but he told the crowd at one point that some of the songs haven’t been played for almost 35 years! “Mother” was played at the end of the setlist instead of 6th track in the original track listing, but neither the crowd nor I gave it much thought. I couldn’t tell you what else was played after that because I was off to see my final band of the night, Watain.

Danzig (NO PROFESSIONAL PHOTOS ARE ALLOWED)

I have to say, I have seen Watain several times, and they ALWAYS put on a show. I don’t remember if there was a full moon that night or was an overload of caffeine involved, but I have never seen them play with so much explosiveness and fire. Speaking of fire, there was plenty of it, which is the norm at any Watain show, but there was also a game of catch between the crowd and the stage with a lit torch in the beginning of their set. They played a varied setlist with only three songs coming from their most recent album, “The Agony & Ecstasy of Watain.” As I wrote earlier, the band was explosive and lead vocalist Erik Danielsson was just on another plane of existence altogether. You can read between the lines on this or come to your own conclusions, but he wasn’t human that night.

Watain