Today we are announcing the long list of bands that will perform in Gdańsk in June – among them legends and newcomers, Polish artists and pilgrims from afar. You will also learn on which day they will perform and which stage they will take. We are also starting the pre-sale of single- and two-day tickets.
The Mystic Festival 2025 lineup is shrouded in less and less mystery. The growing clarity about what you can expect should make it easier for you to plan your attendance at the festival. Of course, we hope you decide to spend all four days with us – the current price for the full pass is PLN 849. One-day tickets are also already on sale, going at the price of PLN 359, as well as two-day tickets (PLN 569).
Sounds that are new, daring, exploratory? There are a few up our sleeves. The Swedes from Imminence need no promotion among fans of such soundscapes, their visionary take on metalcore speaks for itself. SiM – aka Silence iz Mine – are coming to us from Japan, where, for the last two decades, they have been creating their own musical world that marries metal with hip-hop and even… ska. The fans of the Attack on Titan anime will need no introduction to the band. Progressive rock is mostly associated with the genre’s golden era which bloomed half a century ago, but Port Noir are bringing it into the 21st century. Unprocessed are also offering progressive, virtuoso playing, but it is altogether more aggressive, with the metalcore nerve. The Brits have recently taken the lead in setting the new course in heavy music and Split Chain is another one in the list of pioneers – although in their music you will hear the familiar sounds of the turn of the 21st century, from shoegaze to nu-metal, but has anyone ever combined them in such a way as they did? Graphic Nature is nu-metalcore buttressed with cold-as-ice electronics, a music both hostile and hypnotizing. The progressive vision of post-metal is spread by Blindead 23, who enter a new stage of their odyssey with the enthralling mini-album Vanishing. Heave Blood & Die scoff at genre lines, colliding post-punk with hardcore, to then swerve in the direction of prog rock. The guys from the deathcore band Paleface Swiss are said to have met at a Slipknot concert and you can hear that in their blood-thirsty music – though, as any predatory, they walk their own paths. HÉR is a local, Gdańsk band, but their setting their sail and taking the sea. “Their minimalist, violin and sax-laced rites gradually tilt the world further off its axis” is what the British Metal Hammer had to say about the band, and it is hard not to agree. The Finnish band Luna Kills, with the charismatic Lotta behind the mic, combines nu-metal with video game soundtracks and makes something that works more than well. Then there’s the brooding and saturated with extreme emotions metalcore which is the domain of the Warsaw-based Last Penance.
You prefer a more traditional sound? During the show of the New York band Castle Rat, you can expect the following – the Rat Queen will behead swiftly and smoothly every poser with her sword. The rest will be able to enjoy a superb, classic heavy/doom metal. Their compatriots from Bewitcher will send your heart speeding with their devilish speed’n’roll, and so will the British Hellripper, which at full speed ahead goes neck and neck with the legacy of Venom, Motörhead and Sabbat. Inhuman Nature is a thrash/heavy metal band from London – no shortcuts, only riffs sharp enough to cut. Bad Touch will remind us what the origin of it all is – classic, blues-based hard rock, reminiscent of the greatest years of Led Zeppelin or Free.
Hatebreed, but of course, take no prisoners. Why would they if the construction of this weapon used the engine of Slayer and the armour of the American hardcore? The rumour has it that the Brits from Grove Street started out playing for fun, but you’d be remiss not to take their music seriously now – it’s crossover colliding forceful, hardcore riffs with thrash rampage.
Stoner, doom, sludge, desert storms and cellar apparitions? Always more than welcome at the Mystic Festival! The music of Elder draws from doom and heavy metal but comes into bloom with all the colours of the psychedelic rainbow – those who enter into this magic realm won’t find their way back. Sun Dont Shine is still a new name, not everyone knows it yet so let us introduce the members – Kenny Hickey (Type O Negative, Silvertomb), Kirk Windstein (Crowbar, Down), Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative, Silvertomb) and Todd Strange (Crowbar, Down). The sun really doesn’t shine in their music. “Life kills you” as Dopethrone warn us in the title of the opening track of their latest album Broke Sabbath. And if life fails to do the deed, the Canadians will finish you off with the mixture of everything in music that is heavy, vile and evil. Tundra rock is the response from the North to the desert, stoner sound from the States – Slomosa know what riffs are meant for and they’re not afraid to use them. We remain in Norway. Bokassa are sometimes compared with their fellow countrymen from Turbonegro and Gluecifer and not without cause – their music is a high-proof mixture of punk, metal and stoner rock. Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol is coming all the way from Texas to get you a boo-boo from the music they tried to summarize with the title of their new record, Big Dumb Riffs. You can expect an equally unforgettable adventure from the encounter with the doomgaze band Faetooth, hailing partly from California, partly from the netherworld.
We also have some good news for the darkness devotees. The cult Greek band Zemial, currently touring with Absu as part of their live band, will perform their original material, allowing us to glimpse into the abyss of Tartarus. The Dutch band Soulburn, led by Eric Daniels, the guitarist from Asphyx’s classic line-up, will present a perfectly nefarious marriage of black and death metal. Not only is the music of the Canadian band Thantifaxath of diabolical pedigree, but it is also devilishly complex as if King Crimson signed away their souls. It is hard to say in which category to put Thaw, who in 2024 recaptured our attention with their excellent album Fading Backwards. It is, without a doubt, the musical embodiment of pitch-black darkness, though their sound derives not only from black metal. “Black Metal is Krig” as proclaim the Norwegian witches of Witch Club Satan and we have no intention of arguing with them. Totenmesse is a black metal band with a Polish seal of approval but their own vision for the genre – their 2024 slot at our festival was interrupted by a thunderstorm; they are coming back to finish the destruction that they started. Martwa Aura (Polish for ‘dead aura’) perfectly encapsulates in its name the music that the band plays – a funereal black metal without even a trace of daylight.
Enjoy pain, don’t you? Well, we are happy to provide. Vader entered into the new century with perhaps the most uncompromising material under their belt – now, the time has come to bring back the full body of the wrathful Litany. Can you smell decay? Must mean Necrot from California are near, with their cemetery, putrid death metal. Similar ground is covered by the British four-piece Celestial Sanctuary, trekking through pure, living death. A lesson in brutal yet technical death metal will be presented by the Italians from Hideous Divinity.
