Festival report: Oelde Open Air – Friday: Annisokay, Any Given Day & Pentastone (22 August 2025)

Aaaand another summer festival, this time a smaller one. Oelde Open Air is a two-day „festival“ in Oelde, Northrhine-Westfalia. I put „festival“ in quotation marks because it’s rather two days of open air concerts, organised by a collective of music fans who really did a great job at putting this together. I only attended one of the two days and here’s how it was.

Location & general info

Oelde Open Air is held in the so-called Vierjahreszeitenpark in a relatively small town called Oelde in Northrhine-Westfalia. It’s somewhere between Hamm and Bielefeld and not far from Paderborn and Münster. The park has an open air stage. In front of the stage, there’s a sandy „infield“ and in the back there’s a hill with stairs leading up, so basically there’s „natural“ stands.  It’s a bit like an open air theatre.

The park itself looks quite nice. Normally it has an entrance fee which was included in the ticket price. We didn’t have much time to explore though as we were running late, since Friday was a normal work day. There is a small parking lot in front of the park where you can park for free, but it’s really small. I think it’s also possible to park next to the street though. From the entrance, you have a small walk through the park to get to the open air stage (which was a little dark after the show when we walked back). The park has public restrooms, so there’s access to water toilets, which is quite nice.

Oelde Open Air is a two-day-festival with three bands playing per day, so it’s more like two concerts in a row. The Friday line up had Pentastone as opener, Any Given Day as support and Annisokay as headliner. On Saturday, there were Friends Don’t Lie, Kapelle Petra and Madsen. The ticket price for each day was the same and there were no combined tickets for both days. For me, only Friday was interesting as the Saturday line up was not necessarily my taste in music. Oelde Open Air does not offer any camping space.

Once you arrived at the open air stage, you first had to exchange your ticket into a wristband. If you had Eventim tickets you were given an exclusive hard ticket as well.

Food & drink

Stalls were mostly outside of the concert area, right before you got in. I think there was another stall for drinks in the up on the hill. For drinks you first needed to buy tokens. One token = one drink. Each drink cost 4€, no matter if beer or non-alcoholic drinks. Unused tokens could be refunded or donated after the show.

Food had to be paid by cash. There were two food stalls, one offering pizza (with vegetarian options available) and a grill stand (I think they also had some vegetarian stuff on their menu, but it was mostly grilled sausage). The pizza was a little expensive (7€ for a rather small piece) but tasty. The queue was okay, you didn’t have to wait super long.

The merch tables were also outside of the concert area. I’m not sure if there was any kind of festival merch though, I only remember the band merch.

Pentastone

We arrived a bit late, so the opener was already on stage. I think Pentastone played a set of about 45 minutes, but it’s difficult to judge because I don’t know when they started. I needed a moment to get settled, but quickly vibed with the music. I hadn’t heard of them before, so this was my first impression.

It wasn’t super packed in front of the stage, there was still lots of room to move, but it seemed like those people who were there mostly enjoyed the show. I spotted a few people wearing Pentastone merch and there was a bunch of guys starting a mini moshpit of maybe 5 people. And I’d say that generally Pentastone know how to make a good show.

I personally wasn’t super convinced though. On the one hand, I wasn’t the biggest fan of the singers voice. Her vocals altogether were perfectly fine, nice range, powerful and full of emotions. It was just the sound of her voice that didn’t quite click with me. It’s a personal issue and nothing that is related to the quality of their music.

Performance-wise I was first super impressed when the singer left the stage and returned with some pretty big angel wings strapped to her arms. It looked impressive at first. In the end I gotta say I was a little disappointed because the performance with those wings was underwhelming. I expected a bit more than standing there, singing her part and then opening and closing her wings once or twice. I have no idea if it was somehow timed to the music/lyrics, but it didn’t quite meet my expectations.

Bonus points though because the music Pentastone makes is both power- and meaningful. Before one song, their singer used the feminist statement „Shame must switch sides“, which they had picked up in their song. She tried to get the crowd to shout these words with her and at least right in front of the stage I feel like quite some people joined the chant. So content-wise I’m all here for Pentastone.

Generally I see a lot of potential in their performance. Not 100% my jam, but I hope they get to spread their message even wider.

Any Given Day

My relationship to Any Given Day is difficult. I first saw them live in 2022 when they played at Electric Callboy’s first Escalation Fest and while their music somehow matches my taste, I remember getting a little bored throughout their one hour set back then. At some point it just felt like the songs didn’t differ that much.

They’ve kept popping up in my playlists and at some point I decided that they’re not really my taste. I’m not a big fan of the clear vocals, and somehow, I strongly associate them with slightly overdosed testosterone.

When I saw them in Oelde, I was surprised at first because I enjoyed their performance more than I had expected. In the end, their music is the kind of music I listen to, so in the beginning it was easy for me to vibe along.

Also they definitely know how to put on a good show. Amazing stage presence, awesome lights, pyros – fully in your face. Also I kinda think that they just seem … sympathetic. Guys that enjoy what they’re doing. It gave them a bonus point, for real.

And the crowd went wild. Moshpits, wall of death, doing push-ups in the pit … The overall energy was great. The mood was really damn good, the atmosphere was definitely boiling.

BUT … THE TESTOSTERONE!

I’ve mentioned the push ups. Honestly, for me there’s hardly anything more off-putting than a bunch of dudes showing off their muscles in an open moshpit (to be fair, there were women joining in as well). I was also definitely put off by the three dudes that hurried into the moshpit, coming from up the stairs, and on their way they REALLY made a point in pushing people out of the way. Men forgetting their manners at home 🙃 It was utterly unnecessary and just plain asshole level. Since we were standing on the stairs, they happily took the risk of injuring people because they really put an unnecessary amount of force into it. There was no need to do that and the sheer aggression was completely exaggerated.

Then their singer announced a song for the women in the audience and asked for only female crowdsurfers for this song. Unsurprisingly it took about 15sec for the first very manly man to crowdsurf because why not. Like … I get that maybe throughout the middle men join the fun, but 10-15 seconds after the song started? Okay then.

So yeah, the overall atmosphere was great and people were genuinely having fun, but I decided for myself that in the future I’d rather avoid their shows because of men. Nothing against the band itself, but men will be men and I’ve experienced a few too many who left their manners at home.

(I want to stress here that I didn’t feel unsafe at any point, there was no danger except for that one situation which was indeed a  risky as we were standing on the stairs and I had my camera gear on me. Yet, nobody was overstepping any other boundaries. I was just pissed a little because of the assholes that deemed it necessary to aggressively shove people around, and generally put off by the „display of manliness“ 🤭)

Musically and performance-wise, their show was good. Better than I had expected. I won’t become a fan, but most of the time I had a good time.

Annisokay

I can’t put my love for Annisokay into words. Obviously they were the reason why we decided to buy tickets for this festival. It was definitely worth it. They started a bit later than announced online, but the schedule generally hadn’t been set in stone, so that was fine. They opened their 1.5h set with Into the Abyss and Throne of the Sunset, followed by Never Enough, so already at the start the energy was high.

And damn, there was a lot of energy. The ground in front of the stage was quite sandy and after the show I had to wipe down my entire gear as it was all covered in dust. I don’t think I’ve seen an Annisokay set with pyros so far, which was extra impressive and added to their generally amazing stage light. I’m literally a big big fan of their light show. Also there were tons of crowdsurfers, some trying their luck on a huge unicorn pool floatie. The atmosphere was boiling.

One highlight of the set was their new single My Effigy, which hadn’t been released yet. The second big highlight which I had hoped for/been looking forward to was when Any Given Day joined them on stage for their collaboration H.A.T.E. (which is an absolute banger).

I was particularly happy that the length of the set meant that they could play Get Your Shit Together, which was the first encore and doesn’t always make it into the set, I guess because of its length. I also really enjoyed hearing Inner Sanctum again.

It’s kinda funny, I don’t really name them as my favourite band normally, but after every show of theirs I think that this is what they are. I’m incredibly happy to have discovered their music and I’m looking forward to their headline tour this fall.