Rock Monsters Romania

Growing up in a relatively small town in the east of the country, where the rock scene was pretty dull, I felt the need for concerts where all the teenage anger piling up inside me could finally have a place to break free. But since there were only two pubs that occasionally rose (barely) above the underground, my teenage fury demons stayed there, growing year by year, now cornered by much bigger problems such as inequality, failure, ignorance, corruption, injustice.

I needed a place where my little snowball of anger – one that, rolling around, had turned into a furious, petty snowman – could melt. I needed bands that could give me the same intense emotions I felt when I was 13/14, bands that could be the flames burning down my hatred, bands that could free me and make room, inevitably, for other outbursts. 

On October 3rd, I was accompanied by heavy rain, yet sheltered in a place where I finally felt liberated: Quantic. On its 5th day, QFest had some reliable help on stage, acts that not only warmed up the venue but made it resound: June Turns Black, Taking Back August, Give em Blood, and Luna Amară. I’ll be honest with you, I arrived at Quantic soaked from head to toe (spoiler alert: my jeans only dried at the end of the show). I already had a full week, full of small talk and, you know, crappy and boring university stuff, and to be honest, the raindrops filled my glass. I was ready to rage. As I already mentioned, after fighting through the heavy Friday rain, I got to Quantic and, to my surprise, the place wasn’t as packed as I expected.

There I was, together with a handful of people just as wet (more or less) as me, waiting for the band opening QFest’s fifth night: June Turns Black, an electronicore band – or as they call it on Insta, electronic noir screamo core – dare I say I was intrigued. I had listened to them a bit on YouTube, just enough to know what I was going to hear live. And oh boy, they did not disappoint, not even a bit. They came in with a pretty energetic, ironically even electric entry, because they captivated the crowd quickly. But my jaw was absolutely on the floor when Rach, the lead singer, started to perform. I was thinking to myself, “oh lord, she is a literal goddess.” It brought back the feeling I had at 14, running super excited to my mom to show her a band with a frontwoman, pretty sure it was Arch Enemy. My mom, super uninterested and confused, listened for five minutes while I told her about 15 times, “look how cool she is, I want to sing like her”; me? shocked that metal frontwomen could have that kind of vocal range. What I wanted to say is that Rach and June Turns Black filled me with pure nostalgia-maybe also because they covered “Can You Feel My Heart” by Bring Me the Horizon, a song that used to be on repeat for me about seven years ago. As for their music, I liked it more than I expected, and on stage they brought some very cool energy. I loved seeing how Dan, the guitarist, enjoyed every second he spent onstage. I’m sure they all felt the same, but I had to mention him because he waaaas really feeling it.

Next up was the Bucharest band Taking Back August. The guys put on a show, too bad the sound system didn’t help them much, because sometimes I could barely distinguish Alex’s voice. Even so, they brought that authentic metalcore vibe with their songs, and they had a super cool cover of “The Diary of Jane” by Breaking Benjamin. But what really blew me away was hearing a cover of “N-aud,” the song by Carla’s Dreams and EMAA, which they also performed on XFactor. Now, one thing you need to know about me is that I love when music genres that supposedly “don’t belong together” blend, so it was amazing to hear how such a radio song became, for me, something I now eagerly hope they’ll record in the studio-because be sure I’ll have it on repeat.

The raindrops were becoming fewer and fewer, barely noticeable from under the pub’s awning. Quantic had filled up, and after two hours of music, we moved on to something heavy- although heavy seems too small a word for what I heard. Coming all the way from Austria, the metalcore/hardcore band Give em Blood arrived overflowing with energy. The kind of energy that makes your blood boil, they resounded through the whole pub. Although they were not exactly my cup of tea, since I left hardcore behind a few years ago, what I appreciated about Give em Blood was that they knew exactly how to keep the crowd alive. At the end of their set, after the series of hardcore shoves, the guys in the moshpit were screaming with their last bit of voice: “One more song, please one more song.” And, well, give Caesar what belongs to Caesar, they got one more round of moshing.

Now, the moment I’ve been waiting for, shared by the hundreds of souls surrounding me: Luna Amară. Coming all the way from Cluj-Napoca, the alternative rock band was ready to melt my furious snowman. I was filled with excitement, remembering how fast my heart was beating, making me forget the sea of people around me, the metal rail I was clinging to so I wouldn’t lose my spot in front of the stage, the voices calling for them to come up, which grew more and more distant… I loved the band since I was a teenager, only now everything felt different because I was so much more aware of their messages. I had suddenly slammed into the wall of injustice on which their lyrics – and those of others who dared to speak up –  were painted like graffiti. Mihnea’s trumpet set the tone for “Gri Dorian,” and the lyrics  „O noapte în nori mă aruncă în noroi/ Sunt ura și greața și furia ce mă trag înapoi” made me feel empty but alive at the same time. I broke during “Focuri.” That was the moment when, guided by the desperation and fury in Mihnea’s voice, I felt like I could do the same: let the emotions buried within me rise to the surface. To stop being afraid to demand my justice-not by screaming in the faces of those I should, but by doing it in front of the people who mattered. The furious chaos created by Mihnea was, at times, cut through by Nick’s voice, which brought me back to earth just long enough to look back at myself. I kept shaping the clay of my body, yet my blood remained the same. In the end, I was still me.

I left Quantic with the riff of “Dizident” stuck in my head and with a chorus of angry voices waiting for the Romanian dream: a change that’s been kept waiting far too long. My anger toward the injustices that surrounded me deserted, staying there alongside the water droplets of the melted snowman and the last drops of rain, which had almost stopped anyway.

Review by Beatrice Ghidarcă