If Copenhell 2022 was going all in on classic bands of the 80’s (either springing from there, or having great times of success in that decade), making a line-up that was nie impossible to beat for this reporter, Copenhell 2023 decided to go for a wider range in time - bear in mind that it is the headliners referred to here.
With Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, and Guns N’ Roses clearly clinging to that same 80’s era, we had Pantera representing the 90’s, Slipknot and Gojira for the 00’s, and Ghost for the 10’s - again, I’m not necessarily referring to when the bands actually started, but rather when they rose to fame.

As you can tell by the above, there’s a clear diversity in styles as well on the top levels, and when we delve below the surface, even more so! Copenhell presented a lot of hardcore and similar, but we also had black and death metal, folk and power metal, bluesy rock, nu and rap metal, and some clearly more electronic and avant garde creations.
As always with Copenhell, the diversity wasn’t just to be found in the musical scene either, which is one of the reasons we love this festival so much. If you like taking a break from the constant concerts, you could take a relaxing open air bath or invigorate yourself with a turn at Smadreland. You could grow your intellect by attending the many talks and symposiums at Copenhell Con, or you could blow that mind right out your ears by giving in to your basic Vikings needs with hammering nails and drinking mead in Udgård. Perhaps you’d like to live out your own dream of rock stardom by picking a song at the Metal Karaoke, or if you have stage fright and prefer screaming in the growl booth.
As you all well know by now, I could go on and on listing all the things that Copenhell has on offer, but really, you could also just check out the festival info for that - or better yet, show up and experience it for yourself!

Our festival began on a broiling hot and early Wednesday, where we came just in time to meet some pals from further south - of Denmark, not on a Dantean scale! - and hear Clutch deliver some sweaty southern rock on Helvíti. Was it all going south from here, I hear you ask, and well, the answer is - a bit of yes and no.
The highlight of the day for us came next, in heading to Hades to watch a surprisingly vigorous performance by Sick Of It All.
This being the first day and all, beer flowed in generous streams, as we were preparing ourselves for the headliners of the day, Mötley Crüe and Def Leppard, neither of which I personally have a great connection with. I had spotted that John 5 (Rob Zombie, ex-Marilyn Manson) filled in for Mick Mars in the former, and John 5 is always cool to watch, so I was looking forward to that, and later in the evening, Denmark’s pride, Iotunn, was closing the day at Gehenna.
To be perfectly honest, and I blame this solely on all the fresh air - definitely not alcohol or hanging out with friends - Wednesday proved to be a little much for us, and while more or less catching the headliners, and being suitably disappointed in them, we only managed a snippet of Iotunn before having to give up. They had a good deal of people supporting them however, and seemed to be delivering their usual high standard show, so I’m sure they managed just fine without us.

As you can imagine, Thursday was a bit more… Subdued. Musically, it was without comparison the musical highlight of the festival. Pantera was the headliner, and they delivered beyond all expectations, but it was still on the slightly smaller stages that things really took off. Testament kicked the day off for us, and they did that in a great way. Due to scheduling, we only managed to catch parts of Møl and new acquaintance Green Lung, but both were suitably positive experiences, as was Life Of Agony, which shouldn’t come as too big of a surprise. But really, it was the one and only Samael who topped not only the day, but the entire festival for this reporter, as they closed the day down at Pandæmonium - too bad most of the crowd was over at Hades listening to Meshuggah and missing out.
Going from high to low real quick, this was also the day the bars next to Helvíti ran out of beer! During Pantera, no less! I mean, come on! This was luckily not a problem in subsequent days, but that didn’t exactly help us in the moment, did it?

Slipknot day, aka. Friday, turned out to be a weird one. We knew it would open strong and end strong with Jakob Stegelmann and the Aarhus Symphony Orchestra repeating their devastating success of 2018 early in the day, this being counterbalanced by Saturnus repeating several successes over several years much, much later.
In between these Danish acts, there were of course some foreign bands that were interesting as well - Angra was delivering some power to Helvíti, and later Korpiklaani smashed the same stage with their brand of folky party tunes. Napalm Death was set to kill it at Pandæmonium, but we never managed to get there, because suddenly and out of the blue, Red Warszawa was stepping in for another band at Hades, and that was hard to pull away from.
This turned out to be for the best, as just as suddenly and unexpectedly as the arrival of Red Warszawa, something else blew in. Quite literally, in fact. The skies darkened, and the wind picked up - Copenhell was quick with precautions and had the hill emptied of people until further notice, as it threatened to be seriously bad weather!
Rain started falling, luckily not to a degree which we haven’t seen much, much worse of here before, but the wind, or should we say storm, was the real wrecker of dreams here. Red Warszawa, being suitably wasted and blank, kept playing on, but we later learned that things had not gone down so gently over at Pandæmonium, where Napalm Death had had to cut their set short after one of the large video screens blew down into the crowd. Thankfully, only equipment was harmed, as everyone had gotten out of the way, but it certainly put a damper on the rest of the day. More bands were cancelled, among them Architects, who had their second go at Copenhell this year, after having their 2017 show here cancelled because of bad weather as well - I wonder if Copenhell will ever get them back after this streak of misfortune..?

Really, Saturday already? Yep, that’s how it goes. Time at these events does seem to speed up. I’ve never had four days at a regular job go by this fast - but that’s another story for another day.
Saturday may have held some big names, but at the same time, it was very much a cooldown day, not being as exciting musically as the previous ones - well, not for us, anyway.
In a way, that’s a good thing though, as we finally had some actual time to explore the many other things this festival has on offer, which can be deviously hard with a packed musical programme.
Thus we entered a Lovecraft symposium in the Copenhell Con - which was packed to the brim with people having to stand and sit in the aisles, as there were no more seats to go round! The weather was picking up from Friday’s shenanigans as well, so now it was sweat, not rain, that was at an absolute downpour…
We had time to take a stroll around the booths as well, visiting my friends and favourite vendors at Fantask and Afkom.
Guns N’ Roses and Ghost were the big attractions of the day, as headliner goes, but for us, the really interesting stuff once again was to be found on the smaller stages. There were some old acquaintances, or at least artists and bands we knew of from before, some of them appearing in completely new guises however. I would be amiss if I didn’t mention the absolutely rockin’ set Idaslet delivered in the beer tent in Udgård - it was acoustic, it was with a slightly different than normal set of people, but it was full of energy, and it had all of the tent shouting and dancing! This was an actual hidden gem, as they didn’t appear on any programming, they just showed up and did their thing, and it was rad as all hell.
There was, like the first day, some bluesy rock being delivered, this time by Billy F. Gibbons of ZZ Top fame, there was power metal from Angus McSix of former Gloryhammer fame, and then we had Blackbraid, which was of no fame at all for us, but this Native American one-man project (with extra live musicians) rocked the Pandæmonium stage hard with its own brand of atmospheric black metal.
The day was rounded off with yet another black metal band, Afsky, killing the last remnants of the festival at Gehenna, viciously putting Copenhell 2023 to a final rest.

While grumpy voices may hold a different opinion, in my opinion Copenhell managed to deliver one of their most diverse programs as of yet this year. Sure, you do need to look below the obvious headliners to see this, but there’s so much good stuff hiding down there, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to? For us, all of the highlights came from the lower layers, many of them performing at the Pandæmonium stage, so just widen your horizons a bit - there are good things to be found for sure!

Good things were also to be found at the different food and beverage vendors. Also here a nice diversity was to be found. Our favourite of many years, the grilled pig and creamed potato place had a prominent place as always, and around the festival you could find pizzas, burgers, risotto, bagels - more or less whatever your blackened little charcoal heart could desire. If you had spent the extra cash for the R.I.P. experience, there was even as close to a fine dining experience as you can get at an open air festival, with fancy wine cards and the lot.
Me, I’m a much simpler man than that, and my favourite this year was a deep fried broccoli durum, which tasted absolutely heavenly. At 90 DKK it was a bit pricey for what you got, but no more so than everything else at Copenhell, which certainly is an expensive festival when it comes to food and drinks. One of the big topics of the year was that beer prices had been raised to 57 DKK a glass, which certainly does seem a bit high for an event such as this, but as there’s a refund on empty cups it wasn’t hard to bring this price down with very little effort on your own side.
On a positive note, water stations were plentiful and free, and in the heat of hell that was experienced for most of the festival, water was essential!

The infrastructure of the festival receives its little updates every year, with tweaks here and there which should ultimately, and hopefully, end in a better experience for all. One smart device built in this year, was the urinal posts on the fence on either side of the main stage - I mean, the fences have always been used as urinals anyway, so why not have the waste transported away properly, to avoid those nasty lakes of yesteryears?
Going from not so nice (but highly practical) to very highly nice, I will once again give a large shoutout to the decorators of the festival. You may or may not remember that a devastating warehouse fire lost Copenhell most of their classical stuff a couple of years ago, but it is indescribably impressive the way they’ve bounced back from this. If for nothing else, you could spend a whole day or more, walking around the festival area, looking through it as an art gallery! A dark and twisted art gallery, but isn’t that the way we like them? We here at Metalmoments bow our heads in deepest respect to all the artists who have made Copenhell the most visually intriguing and amazing place we visit each year - huzzah to you!
As always, a special bow of respect also goes to all the volunteers who dedicate their time at keeping the place as nice and clean as a festival like this can be, and to the men and women of the stage security, who are always up for letting us have any kind of party we choose, just making sure that we can do so safely. None of that silly moshpits and crowdsurfing are forbidden that certain other festivals serve up - here we can get as freaky as we like, and the people in blue are there to highfive us along the way!

So, looking back, we had some absolutely stunning highlights, and there were some overlookable lowpoints. For me, Samael and a broccoli roll - hell yes! Take from that what thou willst.
Lowpoints? Given the current space to operate in, it’s a bit hard to get to and from Gehenna, at least without pissing lots of people off by bumping into them. And yes, prices, especially so on food, ought to be able to get lower. The diversity is nice and high, now we just want it to be affordable as well.
Overall though, this was another heavenly season in the abyss, and we can’t wait to get back in the fire next year.