Last year, when I was asked how many concerts we go to on average within a year, I excused the 14 concerts and 2 festivals as an exception because there were so many shows that had been postponed because of the pandemic.
Little did I know. I didn’t anticipate what would happen this year, after I quit 2 time-consuming hobbies, out of which one was fairly expensive as well. Things escalated. I went to concerts. I enjoyed it.
Join my concert recap of 2023 🙂
Total number: 34 (festivals included)
Total number of bands: 65 (low number for that amount of concerts? Yeah, that’s because I’ve seen multiple artists several times)
Amount of festivals: 5 (Merseburger Schlossfest 1 day, Full Force complete weekend, MPS Bückeburg II 1 day, Olgasrock 1 day, Rocken hilft)
Favourite concerts: Electric Callboy in Cologne, Merseburger Schlossfest, Annisokay in Dresden, Self Deception in Hanover
Artists I’ve seen most often: Annisokay (7x), Blind Channel (6x), Electric Callboy (5x)
Discoveries of the year: Oxymorrons, Future Palace, Tvinna, The Halo Effect, Fixation, Our Mirage
Favourite support acts (at shows I didn’t go to because of the support act): Future Palace for Electric Callboy, Fixation for Annisokay, Oxymorrons for Bad Omens
Concerts I’ve been to only because of the support act:
- Electric Callboy & Annisokay in Lille (I had tickets for several EC gigs in Germany already and only bought the tickets for Lille because I wanted to see Annisokay, too – and didn’t know back then that I’d see them 7 times this year)
- 2x I Prevail – Cologne and Oberhausen (I went there for Blind Channel – when they were announced, the shows were already sold out. Had to spend a lot of money on Kleinanzeigen for those tickets)
- Electric Callboy, Blind Channel & Future Palace in Esch-sur-Alzette (As I said, I had already tickets for several EC shows in Germany – but when BC were announced as replacement for Holding Absence for the last shows of that tour we figured we could just as well go to Luxembourg, too)
- Dead By April in Nijmegen (I went there only to see Self Deception and that was one of my highlights of the year. Big big regrets that I didn’t go to their show in Cologne, too)
- Annisokay in Dresden (We went there because of the Samurai Pizza Cats – otherwise I might’ve left out that show, although I was in the area at that time anyway)
- Amorphis in Cologne (I went there because of Lost Society, but also rediscovered my love for Amorphis)
- Saltatio Mortis (wanted to see SaMo as well, but mainly bought the tickets to finally see Alestorm)
Biggest disappointment as in „expectations not met“:
- I Prevail (short set and wasn’t a big fan of the setlist – trying to see them again next year)
- Smash Into Pieces (check out my concert review – they get a second chance though next year at Nexo Nerd Expo)
Coolest stage set up:
- Amon Amarth (epic shit – drumset placed on a huge viking helmet, set-up changed several times throughout the show and those absolutely ridiculous viking warriors show-fighting on stage made me giggle so hard, I had the time of my life)
- Fall Out Boy (stage looked definitely amazing, some of the backgrounds were beyond beautiful and there was a huuuge dog head?)
- Saltatio Mortis (just as epic shit as Amon Amarth, several changes, favourite part was a background with paintings that were glowing under black light – I think that was during God of War, which made the whole thing even more epic)
Longest trip: Full Force – about 440km to Gräfenhainichen; Electric Callboy in Leipzig – about 400 kilometres
Shortest trip: 2x PLWM – about 20km to Dortmund
Most spontaneous concert: Bad Omens in Wiesbaden (bought the tickets on Kleinanzeigen a few days before the concert, that was another fight for life and death – before that, we had been scammed with fake tickets for Cologne, so we basically bought FOUR tickets for Wiesbaden to make sure that any of them would be valid, resold two of them then); BMTH in Düsseldorf (bought the tickets on Kleinanzeigen about a week before the concert – lucky find and actually more of a joke because back then I wasn’t even listening to BMTH that much)
Most expensive: Ticket: BMTH – ca 80€; including travel expenses: Electric Callboy in Leipzig or Electric Callboy in Esch-sur-Alzette (especially the hotel in Luxembourg was expensive. Expensive and bad.)
Cheapest: Olgasrock (free); Dead By April / Self Deception / Awake The Dreamer in Nijmegen (17,50€ regular)
Longest queueing: either Bad Omens in Wiesbaden (about 6h?) or I Prevail / Trashboat / Blind Channel in Cologne (don’t remember when we started queueing but we were kinda early)
Best venue – festivals: Ferropolis Gräfenhainichen (Full Force) & Fredenbaumpark Dortmund (PLWM – most beautiful Christmas market ever)
Best venue – concerts: possibly Doornroosje in Nijmegen, Popodium 013 in Tilburg and Little Devil in Tilburg due to excellent organisation & communication – Dutch venues are much ahead of German venues
Worst venue – festivals: MPS Bückeburg (mainly because of the organisation & payment situation in the concert area if you didn’t have a market ticket – the website said that you could buy MPS coins and pay by card, but it turned out that the concert area didn’t have any stand – and we didn’t have any cash, so we walked about half an hour to the next Sparkasse in terrible heat 🙃)
Worst venue – concerts: Rockhal in Esch-sur-Alzette (they weren’t able to scan the German tickets from Eventim which cost us our places in the front row because we were put back in line as they suspected the tickets were fake. The staff either didn’t understand / speak English or pretended not to do so, so they wouldn’t understand our explanation and I was too stressed that day to unpack even the most basic French. Same for all the staff inside, everyone insisted on speaking French which was okay for me as I’m more or less fluent, but my company didn’t know a single word of French); Resonanzwerk in Oberhausen (poor communication and absolutely intransparent payment system, see my concert review of Smash Into Pieces) and all the venues that were unable to communicate their schedules and hence made us miss or almost miss a support act
Songs that were an absolute live highlight this year:
- Annisokay – Fully Automatic (favourite song)
- Annisokay – The Tragedy (live premiere in Essen)
- Bad Omens – IDWT$
- Bad Omens – What Do You Want From Me (the moment I fell for Nicholas Ruffilo 😂)
- FAUN – Gwydion (favourite song; unexpected live performance)
- I Prevail – Bad Things (favourite song)
- Lost Society – Awake (favourite song)
- Saltatio Mortis – God of War (epic performance)
- Self Deception – Hell and Back (got a personal note in Hanover)
- Self Deception – TicToc (first song I’ve ever heard of SD)
- Self Deception – Stockholm Hearts (first song I LOVED of SD)
- Versengold – Lautes Gedenken (made me cry my eyes out because of the losses I had this year)
Favourite concert photos of 2023:
It was damn difficult to pick my favourites. I took hundreds of photos and for myself I have a photobook and a calendar including some of my favourites. But yeah, here are … some that I absolutely love.
Almost all those photos were taken with a compact camera (Sony Cybershot RX-100 V) from out of the audience. The only exception are the photos of Self Deception in Hanover in November, because there I was allowed to use my rented Canon EOS R8 (with kit lense).
