Venues
Royal Arena: What Copenhagen Gained (and Lost) With a Proper Big Room
The city finally got an arena the big tours would stop for — and paid for it in intimacy
Encore
Encore
The lights drop, the first chord lands like a fist, and for two hours nothing else exists. Encore is vo.rs’s live-music desk: festivals, venues and the odd gloriously strange spectacle, covered by Rook — a Copenhagen music-head with a taste for loud rooms and a low tolerance for warm beer. Come for the bands, stay for the opinions on the sound, the crowd, and whether the whole thing was worth the trip.
Festivals
Roskilde: The Festival That Gives All Its Money Away
Eight days, 130,000 people, 32,000 volunteers, and a profit that vanishes into charity
Festivals
Copenhell 2026: The Maiden Voyage, Again
Iron Maiden back on top of the harbour, and a festival that has finally become an institution
Spectacles
Sankt Hans Aften: The Night Denmark Lights Bonfires on the Beach
Midsummer eve, a straw witch bound for Bloksbjerg, and a whole country singing the same 141-year-old song
Spectacles
Nordic LARP: The Weekend You Become Someone Else
How Denmark and Sweden turned live-action role-play into an art form, complete with theory, a conference, and a word for the feelings that follow you home
Scene
Norwegian Black Metal: Corpse Paint, Cold Forests, and a Very Dark Chapter
How a tiny scene in early-1990s Norway produced some of the most atmospheric extreme music ever made, and some genuine crimes that must be told honestly
Scene
The Gothenburg Sound: How a Swedish City Rewired Metal's Melody
Three bands from one rainy port on Sweden's west coast quietly redrew the map of heavy music, and half the world's metal still runs on their idea
Artists
Lamb of God: American Groove Metal's Angriest Engine
How a band from Richmond, Virginia turned precision, fury and one genuinely dark chapter into the standard-bearer of a whole American movement
Artists
Airbourne: AC/DC's Torch Carried at Full Sprint
The Australian hard-rock band who took one very old idea, refused to complicate it, and became one of the most physical live acts in the world
Artists
D-A-D: The Danish Cowboys Who Nearly Conquered America
How a Copenhagen band called Disneyland After Dark rode the western myth to the edge of US stardom — and why the door shut
Artists
Clutch: The Best Bar Band That Also Sells Out Theatres
Four men from Maryland who turned relentless touring and a preacher's cadence into one of rock's most durable live franchises
Scene
Little Country, Loud Export: How Denmark Became a Metal Heavyweight
Six million people, one corpse-painted king, and a state-funded conveyor belt for loud bands
Spectacles
Horsens Medieval Festival: When a Danish City Time-Travels 600 Years
A former state prison becomes a castle, and a whole Jutland town centre falls back into the late Middle Ages for a weekend
Spectacles
The Wife-Carrying World Championships: The Prize Is the Wife's Weight in Beer
How a Finnish village turned a robber legend into the world's most deadpan sport
Festivals
Roskilde 2025: Still Giving It All Away
Olivia Rodrigo, Charli XCX and Nine Inch Nails on the same bill — and the money still walks out the door to charity
Festivals
Hellfest: France's Cathedral to Loud
How a Muscadet wine town of 7,500 became the loudest place in France every June
Festivals
Copenhell 2025: Is It Still a Metal Festival?
Slipknot, Billy Idol and The Prodigy walk into a shipyard — and the genre argument follows them in
Spectacles
Aalborg Karneval: Northern Europe's Biggest Carnival Is in Jutland
How a northern Danish city borrowed samba from Rio, kept the beer, and built Scandinavia's largest street party
Scene
Why Every Festival Now Feels the Same
The vertically-integrated machine, the headliner carousel, and the wristband that watches you
Artists
Behemoth: Poland's Blackened-Death Provocateurs
How a black-metal band from Gdańsk became the loudest argument against blasphemy law in Catholic Europe — and made their best record after their frontman nearly died
Spectacles
Walpurgis Night: How the North Burns Winter on the Last of April
Bonfires, student choirs and a borrowed English saint — the Nordic evening that shoves winter off the calendar and sings the spring in
Artists
Gojira: The French Band That Made Metal Care About Whales
How four musicians from the Basque coast turned ecological grief into the most physically overwhelming metal on earth — then played the Olympics
Venues
SO36: Kreuzberg's Punk Cathedral
The Oranienstraße room where West Berlin punk was born, and where it still lives
Artists
Volbeat: How a Rockabilly-Metal Hybrid Became Denmark's Biggest Export
The Copenhagen band that welded Elvis to groove metal and somehow filled arenas
Artists
Mastodon: Atlanta's Prog-Sludge Shape-Shifters
Four Southerners who started out as pure sludge and slowly turned into one of the most ambitious rock bands America has
Venues
Docks and Markthalle: Hamburg's Reeperbahn Rock Rooms
A cinema on the Reeperbahn and a market hall by the station — two of Hamburg's essential mid-size stages
Artists
Lordi: The Monsters Who Won Eurovision for Finland
How a horror-obsessed frontman from Lapland smuggled full latex monster suits onto Europe's most respectable stage — and won the whole thing
Venues
Loppen: Christiania's Sweatbox Where the Sound Still Wins
A few hundred bodies, one low attic room, and a PA that refuses to lose
Artists
Cult of Luna: Post-Metal as a Slow-Moving Storm
How seven men from a frozen university town in northern Sweden turned patience into the heaviest thing in the room
Venues
Rockefeller: Oslo Rock in an Old Bathhouse
How a 1930s public baths on Torggata became the anchor of Norwegian live music
Spectacles
The Krampus Runs: The Alpine Night the Devils Take the Street
On the eve of St Nicholas, the Alps hand the dark half of Christmas a set of horns and a licence to charge
Venues
Debaser: Stockholm's Waterside Rock Institution
Named after a Pixies song, marooned under a bridge on Södermalm, and still swinging
Artists
Metallica's Danish Accent: Lars Ulrich and the Band That Keeps Coming Home
How a tennis prodigy from Gentofte carried European metal to California and never quite let Denmark go
Festivals
With Full Force: East Germany's Extreme-Metal Institution
How a 2,500-strong gig in Saxony became eastern Germany's trendsetting scene festival
Artists
Satyricon: Norwegian Black Metal Goes to the Opera House
The night a genre born in freezing basements filled the Oslo Opera House with a 55-strong national chorus
Venues
Den Grå Hal: Christiania's Cathedral of Noise
The biggest room in the Freetown, an 1891 riding hall that swallows sound whole
Artists
Enslaved: Black Metal That Kept Growing Up
How two Norwegian teenagers started in the coldest corner of extreme metal and spent thirty years turning it into something vast and exploratory
Venues
Tavastia: Helsinki's Legendary Rock Club
Fifty-odd years of Finnish noise in a stubborn old house off Urho Kekkosen katu
Festivals
Alcatraz: Belgium's Hardcore-and-Metal Prison Break
How an indoor one-dayer in Deinze became a four-day prison-themed metal fortress
Spectacles
Kubb: The Viking Lawn Game With a World Championship on Gotland
Wooden batons, a wooden king, and a small Swedish island that crowns the world champions of throwing sticks at other sticks
Spectacles
The Borderland: Denmark's Participatory Burn, Where There Are No Spectators
The Nordic regional burn runs on gifting, consent and a hard rule — everyone works, nobody watches
Spectacles
The Roskilde Naked Run: The Festival's Oldest, Barest Tradition
Every year, on the Saturday, a few dozen people sprint a lap of the Roskilde campsite wearing nothing but a smile and a running number
Festivals
Copenhell 2024: Bigger, Broader, Louder
The year the harbour festival grew a hundred-band lineup and a wider church
Festivals
Copenhell: Building Hell on a Harbour
How a rusted shipyard became the loudest week in Denmark
Venues
Posten: Odense's Loyal Little Rock Room
A converted postal package house by the station has been Odense's rock stronghold for nearly forty years — the third pillar of provincial Danish live music
Festivals
Distortion: The Week Copenhagen's Streets Become the Venue
How a Frenchman's club night turned into a five-day mobile street party
Artists
Rammstein and the Art of the Flamethrower: Pyro as Narrative
How six men from East Berlin turned stadium fire into a language
Festivals
Roadburn: The Doom Pilgrimage Where the Lineup Is a Dare
How a stoner-rock blog became the heavy underground's most trusted curator
Artists
Kvelertak: Six Norwegians and a Very Loud Owl
How a Stavanger sextet welded black metal, punk and classic rock into one enormous, gleefully unserious sound
Festivals
Smukfest: Denmark's Beautiful Festival in the Beech Woods
How a one-day gig under a tarpaulin became a forest city of 60,000
Scene
The Wall of Death: A Short History of Pop's Daftest, Best Ritual
How a fairground sideshow name ended up describing 20,000 strangers charging each other on cue
Venues
VEGA: The Union Hall That Became Denmark's Best-Sounding Room
Inside Vilhelm Lauritzen's listed functionalist temple on Enghavevej
Venues
Voxhall and Train: Aarhus Rock, Where I Started
The two central Aarhus clubs that raised a generation of Jutland gig-goers — including me — reviewed by someone who grew up in their sweat
Festivals
Rock am Ring: A Racetrack, a Storm, and the German Masses
Forty years of rock on a Formula One circuit in the Eifel hills
Artists
Turbonegro: Deathpunk, Denim, and Bad Taste as Art
How an Oslo band turned deliberate provocation, sailor caps and denim into one of Scandinavia's most beloved cult institutions
Spectacles
The Battle of the Oranges: Ivrea and the Carnival That Throws 500 Tonnes of Fruit
A Piedmontese town re-enacts a peasant revolt every February, and the ammunition is citrus
Spectacles
Up Helly Aa: A Thousand Torches and a Burning Galley
How a Victorian temperance stunt became Shetland's fire night
Artists
Refused: The Shape of Punk That Actually Came
How a broke Swedish hardcore band from Umeå made the most influential record of its genre, then quit before anyone noticed
Festivals
Desertfest: The Fuzz-Rock Church of the Riff
How a Camden weekend became the stoner-doom underground's spiritual home
Venues
Parken: What Happens When a Football Ground Becomes a Stage
Denmark's national stadium was built for football and drafted into stadium rock — what the pitch, the roof and 50,000 bodies do to a gig
Venues
Docken and Forum: Copenhagen's Big Utility Rooms
A raw salt warehouse in Nordhavn and a functionalist exhibition hall from 1926 — the city's two flexible mid-big rooms, and how to survive them
Artists
Opeth: Mikael Åkerfeldt's Long Goodbye to Growling
How a Stockholm death metal band followed its leader into seventies prog
Venues
Pumpehuset: Rock in an Old Waterworks, With a Beer Garden Out Back
The yellow-brick sweatbox on Studiestræde, and the garden that saves you
Festivals
Resurrection Fest: A Galician Village That Becomes Metal's Capital
How a small hardcore scene turned a fishing town in northern Spain into one of Europe's biggest metal festivals
Scene
What the Mosh Pit Is Actually For
The physics, the etiquette and the strange trust of a room full of people colliding on purpose
Artists
Meshuggah: The Swedish Machine That Bent Metal's Rhythm
How four men from Umeå rewired the way heavy music counts
Festivals
Midgardsblot: Metal Among the Burial Mounds
A Viking and atmospheric-metal festival staged on the largest burial-mound site in northern Europe
Spectacles
The Air Guitar World Championships: Absurdity With a Peace-and-Love Manifesto
Every August in Oulu, grown adults play instruments that aren't there — and mean it
Venues
KB Hallen: The Hall That Burned and Came Back
Frederiksberg's functionalist arena died in a 2011 fire and was rebuilt as a near-copy of itself — here's what that costs and what it keeps
Festivals
Wacken: How a Village of 1,800 Hosts 85,000 Metalheads
A farming hamlet in Schleswig-Holstein becomes the loudest town in Germany for one week a year
Spectacles
The World Bodypainting Festival: Skin as the Last Untaxed Canvas
Every July an Austrian lake town turns human beings into finished paintings, and hands out a world championship for it
Festivals
Roskilde 2023: Back to Full Strength
The year the orange canopy stopped apologising for the pandemic and simply ran at full size again
Festivals
Copenhell 2023: The Old Gods Return
The year Refshaleøen's metal harbour handed its main stage to the heritage-rock carousel
Artists
King Diamond & Mercyful Fate: The Corpse-Paint Originators the World Forgot Were Danish
How a Copenhagen falsetto in white face-paint quietly drew the blueprint half of extreme metal still works from
Venues
Hotel Cecil: The Copenhagen Club That Time Swallowed
One funkis building in the old town that has been a hotel, a theatre stage, and the city's great jazz house in turn
Spectacles
Cheese Rolling at Cooper's Hill: Chasing a Wheel Down a Cliff
A near-vertical Gloucestershire slope, a nine-pound Double Gloucester, and the maddest folk sport in Britain
Festivals
Roadburn 2023: Back in Tilburg, Six Years On
A curator-less edition finds Deafheaven playing Sunbather whole and Cave In back on the main stage
Artists
Amon Amarth: Viking Metal as a Stadium Sport
How a melodic death metal band from Tumba built the loudest longship in Europe
Festivals
Beyond the Gates: Bergen, Black Metal's Home Ground
A curated extreme-metal festival in the rainy west-coast city where the sound was recorded
Venues
Ideal Bar and Lille VEGA: The Small Rooms Where Careers Start
The two intimate stages hiding inside Vesterbro's VEGA complex, where tomorrow's headliners play tonight
Spectacles
Las Fallas: Valencia Builds Giants for a Year, Then Burns Them in a Night
A whole city sculpts satirical giants for twelve months, parks them at the crossroads, and sets the lot alight on 19 March
Artists
Sabaton: History Lessons at Maximum Volume
How a band from Falun turned the twentieth century into stadium metal
Festivals
Inferno: Oslo's Easter Weekend in the Dark
How a black-metal festival colonised the Easter holiday in the city that birthed the genre
Festivals
Tons of Rock: How Oslo Learned to Throw a Proper Metal Party
From a Halden fortress to Norway's biggest festival on the Ekeberg plateau above the fjord
Artists
Ghost: Sweden's Theatre Kids Who Conquered Metal
How a masked Linköping band turned corpse paint into arena spectacle
Artists
Pretty Maids: Denmark's Melodic-Metal Lifers
Forty years of hard rock from Horsens, a huge run in Japan, and a frontman who kept singing through cancer
Venues
Rust: Where Nørrebro Goes to Lose the Plot
The three-floor Guldbergsgade institution that turns from live room to nightclub as the hour gets late
Festivals
Summer Breeze: Germany's Well-Oiled Metal Machine
How a medieval Bavarian town became one of Europe's most efficient metal festivals
Spectacles
Ottery St Mary's Tar Barrels: Devon Runs Flaming Casks Through the Crowd
On Bonfire Night a Devon town coats barrels in tar, sets them alight, hoists them onto bare shoulders and sprints them through streets packed shoulder to shoulder
Artists
Iceage: The Copenhagen Kids Who Grew Into a Great Band
From teenage punk chaos to one of the most interesting rock bands Denmark has produced
Festivals
Tuska: Helsinki's Midsummer Metal Ritual
How the most metal nation on earth throws a party in a former power plant
Artists
Myrkur: Amalie Bruun and the Fight to Be Taken Seriously
How a Danish musician made black metal on her own terms and survived the backlash that came for it
Venues
Stengade: Nørrebro's Sweatbox for the Underground
The squat-born Nørrebro club that has carried Copenhagen's loud fringe since 1972
Spectacles
Bog Snorkelling: Wales's Great Peat-Trench World Championship
A 60-yard ditch of cold brown water, flippers only, and a Welsh town that turned daftness into a sport
Spectacles
Mobile Phone Throwing: Finland's Sport of Hurling Your Nokia
How a Finnish translation firm turned dead handsets into a world championship of catharsis
Festivals
Brutal Assault 2022: Metal in a Fortress
Deep in a Czech baroque fortress, extreme metal takes over the tunnels, ramparts and moats of Josefov
Spectacles
Viking Markets: Denmark's Living Iron Age, Every Summer
On the beaches at Moesgård and the old streets of Ribe, thousands of re-enactors rebuild the Viking Age from the ground up — forge, longship and shield wall
Festivals
Copenhell 2022: The Return
Two silent summers ended on a Copenhagen shipyard, and the noise came back all at once
Artists
Baest: Aarhus Death Metal With a Butcher's Confidence
The hometown five-piece who turned old-school death metal into a Century Media export
Venues
Amager Bio: Copenhagen's Perfect Mid-Size Room
The Amager cinema that traded film reels for a 1,300-capacity live floor
Artists
Tool at Royal Arena: Patience, Geometry, and 10,000 Held Breaths
The most demanding band in mainstream rock brought Fear Inoculum to Copenhagen — phones down, eyes up, and a drummer doing arithmetic at the speed of light
Spectacles
Beltane Fire Festival: Edinburgh Wakes the Summer on Calton Hill
A 1980s art-punk revival of a Celtic fire rite, drumming a May Queen and a Green Man around a floodlit hilltop on the last night of April
Festivals
Bloodstock: The Fan-Built Festival That Refused to Sell Out
How a fantasy painter's family built Britain's biggest independent metal festival
Artists
Hatesphere and Illdisposed: Danish Death Metal's Workhorses
Two Aarhus institutions who never went stadium-sized and never stopped, and the scene they held up
Festivals
Download: The Spiritual Home of British Metal at Donington
How a motor-racing circuit became the sacred ground of UK rock, twice
Festivals
Graspop Metal Meeting: Belgium's Cathedral of the Loud
How a Sunday family gig in a Kempen village grew into a four-day metal city
Festivals
The Two Years Hell Stood Empty: Copenhell 2020–2021
Two cancelled Junes, a silent shipyard, and what happens to a scene when the noise just stops
Artists
Rammstein at Parken: Fire as a Civic Event
The Europe Stadium Tour brought its own cargo operation to a Copenhagen football ground in June 2019 — a whole city sanctioning a spectacle of controlled flame
Festivals
Wacken 2019: The Rain Year
The 30th-anniversary edition turns the fields to soup, and Slayer say goodbye in the wet
Artists
Metallica at Parken: When the Biggest Band Alive Plays a Football Ground
The WorldWired tour filled Copenhagen's national stadium in July 2019 — a homecoming for the Gentofte boy who built the biggest metal band on earth
Festivals
Roskilde 2019: The Last Summer Before the Silence
The Cure, Bob Dylan, Cardi B and Travis Scott — the final normal Roskilde before two years of nothing
Festivals
Copenhell 2019: The Last One Before the Silence
Slipknot, Tool and Scorpions on the tenth edition — the last full Copenhell before two summers vanished
Artists
Slayer's Farewell: When the Riffs Meant Goodbye
The most uncompromising band in metal announced its own ending — and the farewell tour rolled toward Copenhagen with the weight of a genre behind it
Artists
Judas Priest in Copenhagen: Leather, Chrome, and the Metal God
The band that gave heavy metal its uniform, its twin-guitar attack and its operatic scream brought the Firepower tour to the Royal Arena — a Harley, a leather army, and one quietly heroic absence
Festivals
Copenhell 2018: Long Days on the Harbour
Ozzy on his farewell lap, a stacked undercard, and a festival growing into its own crowd
Festivals
Sweden Rock 2018: My One Year in the Sölvesborg Forest
Iron Maiden, Ozzy, Judas Priest and a Helloween reunion in a Blekinge pine forest — the heritage-metal pilgrimage across the bridge
Artists
Iron Maiden at Royal Arena: The Circus Comes to Copenhagen
Spitfires, flamethrowers and a fighter-pilot frontman — how the Legacy of the Beast tour turned Amager into a war theatre
Festivals
Roskilde 2017: The Year the Mud Won
Foo Fighters and Arcade Fire on the Orange Stage, a campsite turned to soup, and the Orange Feeling holding on anyway
Festivals
Copenhell 2017: The One That Got Serious
System of a Down back on a stage, Prophets of Rage dragging politics onto the shipyard, and a festival that had clearly decided it was a big deal now
Festivals
Roadburn 2017: The Doom Pilgrimage, First Steps
A first descent into Tilburg, where Baroness curated, Coven crossed the Atlantic, and My Dying Bride played the album whole
Artists
Black Sabbath, The End: Watching Metal's First Family Bow Out
The band that invented the whole genre in a Birmingham factory town spent 2016 and 2017 saying a long, deliberate goodbye — and it passed through a Copenhagen harbour on the way
Festivals
Wacken 2016: First Time in the Holy Mud
A Copenhagen punter finally makes the pilgrimage south, and watches Iron Maiden close a world tour in a cow field
Festivals
Copenhell 2016: Refshaleøen Settles In
Black Sabbath came to the shipyard on their farewell tour, King Diamond came home, and the festival stopped feeling like a scrappy upstart
Artists
Motörhead in Copenhagen, 2015: The Last Time Lemmy Came North
The fortieth-anniversary tour crossed Scandinavia at the end of 2015 and skipped Denmark — an elegy from Copenhagen, weeks before the end
Festivals
Roskilde 2015: Orange Feeling in the Rain
McCartney closed it, Muse and Kendrick carried it, and the rain never quite managed to spoil it
Festivals
Copenhell 2015: The Year I Finally Went
Four years in Copenhagen before I walked onto the shipyard, and Slipknot closing the harbour made me feel like an idiot for waiting
No dispatches in this topic.