After seeing Our Mirage at Rocken hilft last year, I was hooked. When I heard of their Farewell-tour, it was obvious for me that I needed to go to at least one show – and when Oceans were revealed as support, I was even more invested. And while I’ve been waiting for those two bands in anticipation, I also found a new love with Maelføy.
The Venue
This concert took place at Café Sputnik in Münster, which is the smaller room of the Sputnikhalle. This is one of my favourite venues in Germany. Maybe that’s because the concerts I’ve been to there were great shows with great bands, but I generally like this venue a lot.
It’s located in the outskirts of Münster, right next to Halle Münsterland. Parking is usually possible for free at the sides of the street. I think there’s also a tram stop in walking distance. The entrance at the venue is interesting because your tickets get checked in a small building that you leave again to cross a tiny yard to then enter the actual venue, where you walk right into the merch table. That’s one downside of the venue – limited space around the merch, which often results in a crowded entrance/exit area after the show (and the access to the toilets is in the same spot).
If you go to the right, you get into the Sputnikhalle. If you go left, you get into Café Sputnik. Walk straight on (next to the merch) and you’ll enter the toilets (club toilets with a few broken locks, but mostly clean and kinda big). Café Sputnik is tiny, there’s no gap between crowd and stage and the stage isn’t that big.
While there’s some kind of weird platform in the Sputnikhalle that might be a potential danger for moshpits, there’s no such thing in the café.
The sound is good and the drinks are affordable. Also you could get pizza at the café and while I didn’t try it I’d say it looked very delicious.
I didn’t use the coat room, so I don’t know how much it costs.
Maelføy
The opener that night was Maelføy, a German band from around Osnabrück/Bremen. I had checked them out on Spotify before the show and thought they were nice, but when you listen to their songs on Spotify they don’t stand out that much. That changed a lot when I saw them live because thankfully they’re a really good live band.
I loved their stage presence, the sound was great and they all seemed very sympathetic. Also while I’m not that much into rap music, one of their songs that includes some German rap part is much fun when you hear it live. They also included an acoustic song that’s very beautiful and has a nice sing-along part. After their set I was hyped enough to go to their merch and buy two t-shirts and their latest album. And I was very excited to see them again a week later.
Oceans
They were the main argument why we bought tickets for two shows instead of only one. Oceans is one of those bands I don’t listen to that much at home, but they’re on my car’s USB stick and some of their songs hit very close to home. I discovered them as support act for Blind Channel in 2022 and was hooked. And although I don’t listen to them that much in between, I’m always blown away when I see them live.
They opened their set with a more or less solo performance of Timo singing Slaves to the Feed and while I didn’t really like this song when I heard it as a recording after release, my opinion changed when I heard it live. It was a great opener and Timo’s performance left quite an impression. This song lives rent-free in my head ever since.
There were two main points of confusion though for me: first of all the absence of bassist Thomas (after the show we learned via Instagram that he was on holiday) and the fact that Timo was not playing the guitar. Instead, they were joined by Christian Rockstedt. I still couldn’t find out if that’s a temporary or permanent thing, but while I love seeing Timo on the guitar, I gotta say seeing him without it hits different. His stage energy was at level 9000.
Generally, it was a fun night because Timo seemed a little off and talked so much shit, it was beyond hilarious. Like … it was not in a bad way, rather really entertaining. The whole thing was crowned by a little power outage during Home, which the band handled really well. The issue was also solved quickly, so we got The Awakening afterwards, but damn, I love Home and I was pissed that they couldn’t finish it 😅
All in all. Oceans was a 10/10.
Our Mirage
Now as I said, I discovered Our Mirage at Rocken Hilft last year and I’m a big fan of Timo’s voice and their overall sound. I don’t listen to them that much, but occasionally, so it was definitely worth getting the tickets.
I wasn’t disappointed. They played for about 1h20 with a great mix of newer and older stuff. Towards the end, there was a medley of some particularly old songs. The set was opened with their latest single Farewell, followed by Black Hole and for me, those two are already favourites, so I was exhausted very quickly. I partied so hard during their set that at the end I just couldn’t move anymore. The entire concert was a hardcore workout. They’re great at hyping up the crowd and their live sound is amazing. If you have the chance to see them, you should definitely check them out.
It was a little weird though to be as close to the stage as we were because I more or less had Timo right in my face the entire time. Big fun!
The merch
I gotta add an extra paragraph on merch this time because we spent about 200€ there (yeah, you’ve read that right… but there were THREE BANDS!!!) and it’s worth mentioning a few things:
– Maelføy have some very great shirt designs that I loved, so I bought two shirts. Be aware though that the older shirts are by Fruits of the Loom. Normally I try to avoid this brand, but duh, the shirt was really pretty 😀
– the Oceans hoodie is one of my new favourites. Super cozy, great quality, soft fluff. We also got a vinyl that was then signed by the band. My only problem with Oceans merch is that I’m not a fan of the tie dye/bleach design they use for almost all their stuff, but in quite a few cases they have more or less two options – a bleached and a „normal“ one.
– Our Mirage broke my heart. I bought their hoodie because I loved the deep pink print – and it turned out that it’s also Fruit of the Loom 😢 I hate this brand even more for hoodies than for shirts. The shirts don’t touch very nice, but at least they fit somehow, but the hoodies do not only not feel very nice fabrics-wise, they also have a tendency to wander up my body because of the body trims. And the black looks a bit washed out in comparison to the Oceans hoodie for example. Yup, that was a bummer.
-> but all shirts and hoodies were reasonably priced. And when I asked Timo Rotten to sign my Oceans hoodie a week later, I got one of the most beautiful autographs I ever received 😂