It started with the smell of beer-soaked concrete and the sound of double kicks bleeding through the breeze. Vienna’s Arena, the kind of venue where the past lingers in decaying bricks and hand-painted signage, hosted yet another October gathering of the underground faithful. Two stages. One open to the fall sky, the other deep in the lungs of the old slaughterhouse. And a storm forecast that never came, just enough rain to keep the dust down and the vibes cool.
For a festival branded by the extreme side of the metal coin – black, death, and everything in between – Vienna Metal Meeting felt unexpectedly warm. You couldn’t walk three feet without locking eyes with someone in corpse paint and getting a beaming smile in return. There was a sort of familial energy humming beneath the blasts and shrieks. Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was the bands. Or maybe it was just the magic of seeing it all come together in a city that knows how to host a metal show without the frills.
The young guns in Warfield opened the day like they were shot from a cannon, full-throttle thrash with wide grins and zero hesitation. The crowd, surprisingly full for the early slot, gave back with a pit and plenty of devil horns.
Inside, Firtan followed with a set that felt more like a storm cloud than a show. Their violin-laced black metal blurred the line between fragility and fury, each note landing like ash from some far-off ritual fire.
Hypocrisy‘s turn on the outdoor stage marked one of the festival’s emotional high points. “Eraser” in particular felt transcendent, those intertwining guitars slicing through the air with the kind of clarity that pulls you out of your body. Peter Tägtgren, ever the machine, made it look effortless. You forget how tight they are until you’re five minutes deep into a track and realize you haven’t blinked once.
Then came W.A.S.P. And look, you can scoff all you want about the backtracks or the makeup or the sunset strip theatrics, but when Blackie Lawless steps on stage, something shifts. It’s not nostalgia; it’s possession.
Watching them play their debut album in full felt like sneaking into some forbidden ritual. A sleazy, bullet-belted séance from an era that shaped everything but gets credit for nothing. The blood-soaked bibles, the sexual menace, the gleeful blasphemy, it all predates the stage antics of half the bands now branded as “true” or “kvlt.”
And Blackie? The man looked sharper, moved better, and sang stronger than he did in 2019 when I last saw him. If this album really is his fountain of youth, let him drink from it forever. For me, this was the personal highlight of the entire festival, equal parts spectacle and time travel.
Over at the indoor stage, Thyrfing was a surprise, in the best kind of way. I hadn’t thought about them in years, but as soon as those riffs hit, I was back in my old room, tape trading and writing tracklists on CD-Rs. There’s something grounding about seeing a band like that live, like unearthing an artifact that somehow still works.
Opeth closed things out at the outdoor stage with their usual dose of transcendence. The set leaned heavily into The Last Will and Testament, but with enough of their discography peppered in to keep both new fans and long-haulers happy. It didn’t matter that the sky threatened us all day. The light drizzle only added to the atmosphere, like nature itself had been recruited into the lineup.
Inside, Anaal Nathrakh reminded us why absence makes the crowd grow denser. The room was bursting at the seams, bodies stacked and seething as the band tore through a career-spanning set. Endarkenment tracks landed especially hard—dense, violent, but unmistakably precise.
Batushka brought the night’s final spiritual inversion. Drenched in incense and liturgical chants, their blackened mass felt more like theater than music. Every detail was obsessive, robes, relics, candles, and the result was hypnotic. The line between performance and ritual dissolved, leaving behind only smoke and silence.
There are festivals that overwhelm, ones that exhaust, and ones that leave you half-deaf and overstimulated. Vienna Metal Meeting isn’t that. It’s compact, intentional, and perfectly unpretentious. You see legends, you discover new favorites, and you feel like you’re part of something, not just a bystander.
