Blackdoor Music Fest 2023, day #1, 06-29-2023
A festival is like a supermarket: it takes time to get what you want. And you don't need or want 90% of what's on offer. At the Blackdoor Music Fest (BMF), you get things you didn't expect: a beautifully situated festival site with a 360° panoramic view of the Großer Arber, almost 70km away, the Stadl with its incredibly good acoustics and a staff that knows its guests. The whole unexpected is rounded off by musical delicacies from an ever-growing range, which one as a visitor did not necessarily expect. We drove 425km from Walddorfhäslach, where we visited my mother, possibly for the last time. After we lost our house on La Palma in the course of the volcanic eruption in 2021, we live in the mobile home and take turns visiting our parents, our grandchild and our favorite festivals. Blackdoor Music Fest has been part of it since 2023.
Ambiance & surrounding
Ultima Radio are blessed with excellent musicians and an extraordinary voice, which puts the well-deserved crown on the mix of space rock, prog rock and heavy psych. What the four Austrians put together musically was almost surpassed by the sensational stage and hall sound in the Stadl. The almost one hour playing time flew by because none of the songs were predictable in any way.
Blackdoor Music Fest 2023, day #2, 06-30-2023
The second day was clearly characterized by relaxed, blues-heavy stoners by Caged Wolves, ambitious crossovers of dark and psychedelic rock by the Viennese band The Great Gray Funk, who stepped in at short notice for the ailing Intra, heavy and psychedelic blues by Mount Hush, through to to the heavy riffs of the Polish band Weedpecker, located in the intersection between doom, blues and stoner. The three front ladies from Velvet Two Stripes then provided plenty of movement and dancing in front of the stage. DYSE then sent the audience on a journey through noise, punk, stoner, spiced up with German lyrics and lots of animation. According to some residents, the two musicians could be heard up to 1.5km away. We were pretty exhausted after we had an accident one kilometer before the festival yesterday and our mobile home - actually our house - was pretty badly damaged. So we fell into bed dead tired without having seen Cone.
Blackdoor Music Fest 2023, day #3, 07-01-2023
marek
Marek celebrated their bass player's bachelor party. And with their music you can generally party, pog and drink beer. Very melodic punk rock somewhere between mid-tempo and Ramones, polyphonic singing and intelligent lyrics were a great start to the third day.
stonetree
I love people who pursue their passion for music as self-sufficiently and independently as possible. Stonetree from Linz drove up with a converted VW T3 Syncro, under the back seat of which 3 batteries and an inverter were slumbering, in order to easily blow the finest, very riff-oriented Stoner Rock into the enthusiastic spectators for an hour, in the spirit of generator parties in the Californian desert .
minus green
The four-piece band from Vienna touched the proverbial reinforced concrete of hypnotic, repetitive riffs, which transported a slight Arabian touch through the alternation between the individual semitones. The 10-minute symphonies of riffs, dynamics and breaks didn't allow boredom to arise and carried the audience to distant stars quite early in the day. Despite all the heaviness of the riffs and the density of the sound, all tracks seemed to float.
the heavy minds
A very aromatic mixture of krautrock, psychedelic and blues, but I was actually already at the Stadl to say hello to The Necromancers.
marek
stonetree
minus green
the heavy minds
The Necromancers
The debut "Servants of the Salem Girl" was one of the first albums that I reviewed for Heavystoned. The last sentence "See you at the Valley in 2019" was to come true shortly after the release of "Of Blood and Wine". Unfortunately we didn't get any tickets for Hellfest 2019. So actually since 2017 we've been trying to see the band live somewhere, talk to them and have a nice time. I like the balance in their music; per song one discovers 5.6 musical directions, all of which balance each other out. Each direction gets its 1-2 minute playing time, so it's not surprising that "Black Marble House" is the shortest song at just under 6 minutes. So there we go and even an accident couldn't stop us from joining this band.
The band bus of "The Necromancers" collapsed near Nuremberg and the band had to hire a car, which then took them to the festival. The organization let the band play in the city because the headliner "The Ocean Collective" will need between 1-2 hours to clear all the equipment onto the big stage.
Matthias (right) was supposed to mix the band, both the stage and the hall sound. And the result was a memorable concert for all involved band, organizer, mixer and audience. From the first to the last minute, there was positive tension on the part of the band and the audience, because the complex songs depend on a perfect sound. At the time, no one suspected that this crooked, wood-panelled barn with its wooden-roofed stage and its rough, unplastered walls and floor, with Matthias at the mixing console, conjured up such a clear and powerful sound both on stage and in the room. After a short time the band was in a relaxed mood to play, the songs went by in a matter of seconds, the audience recognized what gifted musicians were on stage and both sides pushed themselves from the opener "Salem Girl" to the last song "Black Marble House". storms of enthusiasm. The fact that all the merch was sold out afterwards was only a logical consequence of this fantastic concert. The band also confirmed to us after the concert that the structural disadvantages of the Stadl were actually advantages in terms of sound.
The Great Machine
After the 3 Israelis were already on the bill in 2020, they made up for the unusual appearance 3 years later. And now at the latest you know that this band should actually always be the headliner, because you can't top their show and power. And if this band manages to put half their equipment in the audience and to celebrate a musical and spiritual fraternization together and to dance and bang, then there is no need for a band anymore, because you like to follow along with so much positive energy and joy a festival day home. Or have you ever experienced a "Wall of Love" by running at each other and cuddling?
Or that the announcements for the songs, which consist of the ingredients hardcore, sludge, punk and psychedelic and are whipped forward by Michail's tight and groovy drumming, are only: "This next song is a good song?"
Then we listened to two songs from "The Ocean Collective" and went into the night with endless gratitude for the day.