Report

Mystic Festival’s Warm-Up Day Was More Than Just That, It Was Already Full Throttle

Band Photo: Exodus (?)

Do you find yourself wide awake in the middle of the night wondering what is the largest and best heavy metal festival is in Poland? Let me help you if you haven’t been reading all my hype leading up to this festival. The festival is called Mystic Festival and it takes place every June in a shipyard in the very scenic port city of Gdansk, located in the north of Poland. Warm Up Days in brief mean that there’s a reduced number of bands playing that day and a reduced number of stages. In summary, Mystic Festival’s 2025 Warm-Up Day had some heavy hitters in terms of bands, and a little bit of rain (you’ll be reading about the rain in every report, it was a constant nuisance) and a lot of excited metalheads. For full report, please continue to read on…

Mystic Festival Welcomes You!

The first band of the day and the entire festival for me was Alcest. I reviewed their latest album a few months ago, “Les Chants de l’aurore,” and even though I’m not their biggest fan, the album was really good. The same can be said for their set at Mystic Festival. They are competent musicians, they sounded great, but they were a tad boring to watch. There were a lot of Alcest shirts being worn throughout the festival grounds, so they were definitely one of the larger crowd draws on the day.

Alcest

The next band on my list was a band that’s been trending like a rocket during this past year, medieval heavy metallers, Castle Rat. I’ve heard and read the stories about their live show, and now I was about to see if it was just an exaggeration or something worth my time. The rain started to fall as they took the stage but I forgot about that right away because I was fully entertained throughout my 3-song allowance. Yeah, they’re gimmicky, but their show is unequivocally entertaining. At one point, a human sized rat came out of nowhere and joined the party onstage. I would have loved to stay and watch the whole set, but with my raincoat already soaked, I went to the indoor food court area to wait out the rain before the grunge guitar legend, Jerry Cantrell, began his set.

Castle Rat

Then rain finally subsided before the much-anticipated Jerry Cantrell set. He is obviously better known for his work in the grunge super-group, Alice in Chains, but that’s the magic of Mystic Festival, it’s not strictly a metal festival. The festival books punk, rock, and alternative, and EDM acts as well. This year was no exception and you’ll read about them later. As I made my way to the front of the stage, you could feel the excitement from the crowd that had already shown up early. For those that never got to see Alice in Chains while they were a live band, they were more than stoked when they played some favorites such as “Them Bones” and “Would.” Visually, the band wasn’t the most exciting to watch, but I enjoyed hearing those grunge hits live one more time.

Jerry Cantrell

From grunge to black metal, I was off to check out The Kovenant. I’m going to write it because it’s true. If The Nightmare Before Christmas was a black metal band, this might be the closest thing to it. There’s some history about this band, but I’m not going to get into that, you can Google it for yourself. I’m just going to say, they ranked pretty low as far as bands I liked at Mystic Festival 2025 was concerned. It was average black metal with corpse paint, blast beats and a lot of fog machine usage. At this point, I was looking forward to tonight’s headlining act, the original Bay Area thrash titans, Exodus.

The Kovenant

Queen’s “We Will Rock You” blared from the PA stacks before Exodus would take the stage. I don’t care if it’s not a “metal” song, it still fires up any crowd, anywhere and at any time. Mystic Festival was no exception. The recently returned Rob Dukes immediately went to the front of the stage and motioned the crowd to start a circle pit as the first notes of “Bonded by Blood” slammed into the crowd’s auditory canals. I thought Exodus’ energy level was really high compared to the last couple of times I’ve seen them (I think it was their first show of their summer festival circuit, but I’ll side with Rob Dukes return for the sake of the report). Rob Dukes is a spark plug for this band, you’re crazy if you think otherwise. I thought Gary Holt’s neck was going to snap off his torso at some point because he was headbanging continuously throughout their set. The set-list covered every era of the band’s existence minus their mid-90’s slump and ended with “Strike of the Beast.” The classic Wall of Death made an appearance and the set ended with bringing a teenager onstage to hit the outro chords on Lee Altus’ guitar. Hopefully, they’ll start on a new album after they return stateside.

Exodus!

The Warm Up Day had come to an end and tomorrow was penciled in to be the busiest day for reporting. I was hopeful that the weather would cooperate a little bit more, but that would not be the case…

Check out the Photo Gallery from the Warm Up Day HERE!

Metal isn’t just a type of music, it’s a lifestyle for Nikos Mixas. In addition to playing guitar for the Phoenix’s own Mosara, he’s a contributing writer for V13 and The Sludgelord. And when he’s taking a break from it all and on vacation, you can almost be certain he’s banging his head at a metal festival somewhere interesting.