My first festival of the year was a completely new one for me; ok, so I had heard about it previously, but this was my first visit to the Dark Mental Festival.
Also, apart from it being my first visit to it, the festival offered up some other unique experiences as well for me, such as it being the first festival I’ve visited to concentrate mainly on underground bands, it was the first festival I’ve visited to take place inside a café (PH Caféen, Copenhagen), and finally, to tickle my feeling of comfort, this was the first festival I’ve visited which lay within walking distance from my home!

Yes, the Dark Mental Festival surely had a lot of things going for it, and as Copenhagen at this very weekend in the middle of May was subject to a full-blown summer weather attack, things truly looked well from the get-go.
So, after a quick check in and having a look around the festival room where people were working frantically to get the last things in order before the music would begin, we installed ourselves with a cold beer in the warmth outside while waiting for the first band to go on.
The schedule had six bands announced for today, and the first two were countrymen of mine, as they came from Sweden. First up was Perception Of Darkness, who surprised me with a confusing clash of appearance and style. After getting over the initial confusion however, I had to admit that they were doing quite a good job opening the ball with their industrial/techno sounding metal. The second band, Lapis Lazuli, did not fare as well with their clearly Nightwish inspired music, but they had some good sides as well, I’ll admit to that.
Now, I’m not going to bore you with details of every single band (you can read the concert reviews for that), but simply stick to saying that the rest of the running order for the day of folk metal from Huldre, thrashy death from Satanic Stormtroopers, 80ies old-school death by Bone, and finally the day was (musically at least) rounded off by Corpus Mortale, a Danish death metal band which has been around for quite some time now. Due to other contractual agreements, I couldn’t stick around until the end though, and Bone was the final band for me this day.

Now, if you’ve gotten the impression that the day was all about music, you were sadly mistaken though; even though I was impressed with the fast changes between bands, seeing as there was only one stage (15 minutes were scheduled, but they couldn’t completely keep that promise), there was still plenty of room between the metal bashing to go and have a beer, preferably outside in the wonderful weather. Here bands and guests hung out side by side or grouped together as they saw fit, and as I was on my home-turf this also meant that I saw a lot of familiar faces, which of course in turn led to a lot skoaling, which then in turn quickly killed my promise to myself about not drinking too much this first day as I had an early day of work awaiting on the other end...

Day two at the Dark Mental Festival went down quite like the first one (as did the third and final day actually) with the exception of me now knowing I was free the day after, thus didn’t have to hold back the way I was supposed to have done the day before.
The music was as diverse within the metal genre as the day before had been, starting out with pure death by the hands of Archain, moving to some kind of screamy core by Third Parade, back to the traditional side of death by the youngsters in Roarback, getting a slab of heavy thrash from Rapid Dominance, then some more modern core’ish sound by The Columbian Necktie (a term I was not familiar with until I saw their image of a man with a slit throat which his tongue was hanging out from), and then in the cover of darkness finishing off the day with Angantyr who plays true Norwegian black metal. But from Denmark.
This was actually one of the red threads of the day; unlike day one and three, day two of the festival held only Danish bands (even though Rapid Dominance’s vocalist/guitarist Adel M. Haley spoke English and looked more like a South American than a pale Northman).
The other, less happy, red thread was that it seemed like the quality of the performers as a rule had sunk compared to those who had held the stage before. As a whole this felt more like a presentation of music than a live show, varying from something that reminded me mostly of a sloppy evening in the rehearsal room to some ok performances which didn’t completely grab a hold of me.
When it came to the bands, the highlights of the day were Roarback and Rapid Dominance, whereas the low point was when Angantyr asked the technicians to kill the lights as it was too bright for them... The real winner of the day was definitely the party in the yard though, and even though it started out a bit slow it only took a concert or two before it was up and running again!

Day three we were all slightly hung over I think, some more some less, and Swedish thrash band Bulletsize couldn’t really wake up the crowd even though guitarist Kjell Berg gave it a good try. Next up was the festivals first power metal band, Flaming Fury; I’m ashamed (well, maybe not so much after trying them on for size for about half a song) to reveal that the evening sun and the cold beers had more of a pull on me than these Norwegian youngsters.
Maybe next band would make my day then? These guys had travelled all the way from Israel to be with us here today (and of course tour Europe at the same time); their name was TamutAmen, and their game was something they chose to call blackened hardcore. Primitive and angry I would say, and a bit out of the ordinary as they all wore long black cloaks with hoods covering their faces, and their vocalist standing with his back or side towards the crowd for most of the time.
All oddness aside, the next band was none other than the Danish Metal Battle participant Caro, a band which finally began to throw in some well needed performance into the day!
After this, only two bands remained; black metal evil-doers Blodarv and Iron Fire, who delivered the grand finale of the festival, or at least its musical side.
The party however, was far from finished, and out in the yard people were hanging out and drinking at, oh, was it around four in the morning when some of the guys from Bulletsize and a few festival visitors decided it would be a good idea to hit the town for an after-party...

Being my first festival of the year, I’d say we’re off to a good start!
Sure, the quality of the bands were inconsistent to say the least, and sadly the audience side wasn’t exactly crowded, but that is to be expected I suppose, from a festival dedicated to make room for the un-signed and up-and-coming bands of our age, a respectable goal if ever I heard one.
One all-important thing though, a thing which can overshadow any possible short-comings in other areas; did I have fun?
To this, I fear I must reply that yes, yes I had a lot of fun! The atmosphere was cosy and familiar, everyone was open to conversation and joking, and as far as I could tell there wasn’t any trouble with anyone.
So, if you’re open for something new, or just want to hang out in a nice metal environment, I’d say; “Why not give Dark Mental Festival a try?”
And the rest, as they say, is silence...