HØSTSABBAT Festival 2025 – Day 2
- Posted on 31-10-2025
Full photo gallery here:
https://eternal-terror.com/2025/10/30/hostsabbat-2025-day-2
Photos by Jonathan Mazin
Text by Andrea Chirulescu
Saturday started ‘early’ – namely 3PM – for those with enough energy to attend a bingo session. I got in time just to see some happy faces at the end of the event and went straight down to the crypt to finally see RUUN live. The death metal trio made sure everyone is fully awake after their first song as they deliver their relatively young songs with plenty of style and intensity. They have had the chance to play often on various Scandinavia stages and that could be seen in their stage presence.
Another relatively young band – formed in 2014 – is the Danish sludge/heavy/dark atmospheric act LLNN, a band that doesn’t even stop at 11. I had to shove my earplugs well into my ears when they hit the stage and actually checked how far am I from the exit in case the church wouldn’t resist the sound. I’ve watched this act many years ago at Roadburn, in a tiny venue – Cul de Sac, not sure that that’s still in use at the festival. And I have noticed their evolution ever since, as they perform often, get invited to festivals and have really cool promo articles and new releases. The show at Høstsabbat proved how far they have come and how well they developed their shows together to offer a very high dose of aggression and discomfort, while having you admire their musical skills. And the extra lights/projections that covered the church added to the magnificence of the show.
Back to the crypt for the Norwegian metallers (with touches of post metal/hardcore) ARV and this was quite a nice surprise for me. Not that I knew too many of this year’s edition, but ARV really made an impression as I loved their melodies and how the compositions flew together. The vocal type is not among my top favorites, but it did work well for what they were trying to achieve and I really hope they get to perform on bigger stages where they can go as wild as they wished to. The stage size has surely limited them a lot.
I’ve watched the German doom act AHAB live before and really enjoyed the shows then, but some circumstances made it so that I only caught the beginning of their performance so I don’t feel like I should add any specific comments on it. Moving on, back to the crypt for the Swedish psychedelic doom metallers S:T ERIK – whom we have to ask, prior to the show, what’s the S:T pronounced like. It’s ‘Saint’, for those who still wonder. I’m glad that I got a place on the side of the stage, to see how a lot of their extra gloomy sound-effects are added by their ‘keyboardist’ (he had a micro Meltron I believe, a lot of organ like pedals and a board with many knobs). It was rather fascinating watching him, but the whole gang was having the time of their lives, given it has been 16 years since their last live appearance. I certainly hope there’s more of that to come.
Main stage was now taken by the JOHN CXNNOR dark industrial project, which represents half of LLNN and who was supposed to perform together with Witch Club Satan. The witches canceled their appearance as one of them has given birth only few days prior to the festival. So John Cxnnor delivered another LOUD show in the church, and had Selma Bahner from Feral Nature as guest appearance, doing crazy voice while literally walking over the crowd. It was a visually impressive show, but not something I audibly enjoy too much. Yet. It might change. It was nice to see so many people dancing though.
Back to the crypt where the ‘noise’ continued with another Danish act, New Money. But they were way more melodic and enjoyable and I found it witty when they declared they should be called Cryptocurrency for the evening. If I read the info on the web correctly, the band has one of the ex LLNN members, so they naturally continued the heaviness that was installed at the beginning of the day and made sure the final concert doesn’t lower the standards by any millimeter. Actually, I ended up telling some friends that I don’t think I’ve seen a single drummer that day bothering with a basic 4×4 rhythm on the durmkit in the crypt. Whatever they did, had to have a bit of extra something and it was all super cool.
Despite all the cool discoveries of the day, I have to grant the highest of praises to YOB’s second show. The soundguy has surely trained well the evening before and it was such a perfect experience. As the ATMA songs were performed the previous evening, YOB had to offer some surprises on the playlist, and thus they added “Pain of I” which hasn’t been played that often (I think they said it was never played live, but maybe I heard it wrong). They could just have played jingles at that stage I guess, I was in complete awe after the set has started. Even if I had mixed feelings for having the same headliner for two festival evenings, the happy feelings took over really quick and I must have smiled during the whole show. So I have to end up thanking the organizers for this choice. And for the rest of this fantastic weekend, which I think brought a lot of smiles to all the attendees. Long live the beautiful underground!