XIX. AMPHI FESTIVAL 2025
Tanzbrunnen, Cologne, Germany
19–20 July 2025
Festival Review ELECTROWELT.COM
by Malice F.
There are festivals one attends, and then there are festivals one returns to — almost instinctively, almost ritually. Amphi Festival belongs to the second category. Every July, as the beautiful city of Cologne with my favorite Dom slowly turns black around the Tanzbrunnen and the Rhine carries the familiar silhouettes of the dark scene, it feels less like entering a festival ground and more like coming back to a yearly appointment with memory, music, friends, and all those beloved shadows we keep following around Europe.
The 19th edition of Amphi Festival took place on 19 and 20 July 2025 at Tanzbrunnen, once again gathering an impressive spectrum of gothic rock, darkwave, synthpop, EBM, industrial, post-punk, neofolk and darker electronic sounds with over 12.500 devoted visitors. The wonderful amphitheater of Tanzbrunnen is once more our location, great festival organization as always, offering a beer garden at the festival grounds, a beach club and with the breathtaking view of the Cologne Cathedral, what else could a goth ask for! the line-up included Anne Clark, Camouflage, Klangstabil, Rome, Spiritual Front, Suicide Commando, She Past Away, Psyclon Nine, The Nosferatu, TRAITRS, DUCTAPE, Ashbury Heights, Lord of the Lost and many more.
This year also came with last-minute changes. VNV Nation, originally announced as Saturday headliner, had to cancel shortly before the festival due to Ronan Harris’ hospitalization, with Project Pitchfork stepping in for the slot. Zanias also cancelled, with Sixth June joining the line-up instead. It is always strange when anticipation has to rearrange itself at the last minute, but Amphi has always been about movement: from stage to stage, from sunlight to indoor darkness, from disappointment to discovery.
The Orbit Stage on the MS RheinMagie also had a particular role in the weekend. Due to the relocation of the Orbit Stage across the Rhine, festival-goers had to plan extra walking or use the very conveniently offered free shuttle service, something that inevitably affected choices and clashes. Still, there was a strange charm in it: boarding a boat for a gothic rock or industrial show by the Rhine feels wonderfully intense and absolutely Amphi at the same time.
Saturday, 19 July 2025
Our Saturday started with the familiar black current of people moving through Tanzbrunnen: parasols, boots, lace, leather, sunglasses, cold drinks, hugs, and the quiet joy of recognizing the same annual tribe. Amphi gathers the scene more tightly, almost like a dark summer family reunion by the river. That concentration is both its charm but at times comes with a bit of nag by some visitors too: sometimes everything feels wonderfully close, and sometimes every venue is simply packed.
Our day started at the Orbit stage with DUCTAPE, performing for the first time at Amphi, were one of the names we were curious to check out. The Turkish darkwave/post-punk duo have been steadily gaining attention in the European dark scene, bringing a sound that is minimal, cold, tense and immediate — the kind of sound that does not need many elements to create pressure. Even when watched briefly, they carried that stark Istanbul-born darkness that feels both familiar to post-punk ears and very much their own, and as a result, the band has found a very devoted audience across Europe.
Around 15:00 pm both band members appeared on the Orbit Stage of MS RheinMagie and delivered a great show, although early, the venue was almost full with their fans. We listened to “Sinners”, “The Unknown”, “Fire” and “Red Sky” among others. Great festival energy and concert start for Saturday!
At about 16:30 pm it was time for one of my all-time goth classic and favorite bands: The Nosferatu. The band is one of the classic names of British gothic rock, keeping alive the dramatic, guitar-driven, vampiric side of the genre. They were as expected one of Saturday’s absolute highlights. Performing on the Orbit Stage aboard the boat, they did not just play — they ruled. There was something perfect about seeing a classic gothic rock act in that setting: the Rhine outside, the contained darkness inside, and the feeling that the old school still has sharp teeth.
Their performance reminded us that gothic rock, when delivered with conviction, does not age — it deepens. The energy was strong, the atmosphere was exactly what one wants from this kind of band, and the Orbit Stage setting gave them an extra cinematic quality. The boat became less a venue and more a floating crypt for a while, and sometimes that is exactly what one needs from Amphi. We danced to the “Dark Angel”, “Rise”, “Siren”, “Inside the Devil” and of course “Lucy is Red”. What a superb goth performance!
We hang out at the Orbit stage for one more powerful gig, TRAITRS. It was another essential Amphi moment for us. The Canadian post-punk/darkwave duo from Toronto duo have mastered a specific language of modern post-punk: urgent basslines, wounded melodies, sharp guitars, and vocals that sound haunted without becoming theatrical. Their sound is not nostalgic in a decorative way; it feels alive, nervous and genuinely emotional.
Their appearance on the Orbit Stage had that perfect late-afternoon gloom, even in the middle of summer. TRAITRS are one of those bands that can make a relatively small stage feel like an intimate crisis. The songs do not explode so much as burn from the inside, and the audience reaction confirmed that their following has grown far beyond cult curiosity. Our highlights were “
It was time for us to head to the main Amphi stage and check out what we would have time to do at the indoor Theater stage too. Ashbury Heights, the Swedish electro act were one of those cases. We only managed to catch very little of their show, as the Theater was already full and almost impossible to enter properly. Still, even those few moments were enough to understand the attraction. The Swedish act has always carried that bright, bittersweet synthpop/electropop melancholy that works particularly well in a dark festival environment: catchy, polished, emotional, but never empty.
The atmosphere inside the Theater was intense, hot and overcrowded. By the end, songs like “Wild Eyes,” “Smaller” and “Anti Ordinary” seem to have worked much better with the crowd.
Setlist: “Phantasmagoria”, “Headlights”, “Spectres from the Black Moss,” my absolute favorite “Spiders”, “Sleeping With a Knife”, “Is That Your Uniform”, “Christ”, “Waste of Love”, “Wild Eyes”, “Smaller”, “Anti Ordinary.”
Afterwards it was time to exit the Theater stage for the main stage for Camouflage, one of Germany’s most beloved synthpop bands, often associated with the late-80s wave of electronic pop, but with a career that extends far beyond nostalgia. We saw them live at the Agra stage of WGT 2025, it was packed so we kind of new it would be great. They brought exactly what one would expect from them: elegance, experience and a catalogue full of songs that still glow decades later. After so many darker, rougher, more theatrical performances, their synthpop clarity felt almost refreshing. There is a reason why songs like “The Great Commandment” and “Love Is a Shield” still work so effortlessly in a festival crowd: they carry memory, melody and dancefloor DNA in equal measure.
It was a show of recognition. The crowd knew where it was going and happily followed. The band delivered a hit-heavy set with professional ease, and in the warm evening light of the Main Stage, Camouflage offered one of those moments where Amphi becomes pure communal singing.
Setlist: “That Smiling Face”, “Me and You”, “Suspicious Love”, “We Are Lovers” ,“Blue Monday” cover of New Order hit song, “Shine”, “Strangers’ Thoughts,” “Neighbours”. I don’t need to describe to you what happened at the Amphi main stage when “The Great Commandment” and “Love Is a Shield” first tunes echoed; we all went ballistic!
At 19:20 at the Theater stage, ROME began their set. The project of Luxembourgish singer-songwriter Jérôme Reuter, active since the mid-2000s and known for poetic neofolk, dark folk and historically charged lyrics, changed the emotional temperature completely. ROME has always occupied a special place between neofolk, chanson noire, martial melancholy and political-historical memory. At a festival full of volume and movement, ROME asks for a different kind of attention. One does not simply dance to ROME; one listens, absorbs, and lets the songs open their old wounds.
Their Theater set was one of our Saturday favorites. There is something deeply European in ROME’s melancholy — not in a geographic sense, but in the sense of ruins, language, ghosts and conflict. The performance felt sober, poetic and grave without losing its warmth. It was a necessary pause from the festival rush, a reminder that darkness is not only noise and beat, but also words, memory and silence. We listened to “Todo es Nada”, “Neue Erinnerung”,“Submission”, “Swords to Rust-Hearts to Dust”.
Next in line were Project Pitchfork, unfortunately simultaneously with Spiritual Front at the boat, so we divided our time. George P. (dj Darkpath) remained at the Amphi main festival grounds for Project Pitchfork, who remain one of the most important German dark electro / electro-industrial acts, with Peter Spilles as their unmistakable voice and creative force They were the unexpected Saturday headliners after VNV Nation’s last-minute cancellation, and what could have felt like a compromise turned into one of those Amphi moments that remind you how deep the history of this scene really goes.
And yes, they were awesome. Instead of trying to “replace” VNV Nation emotionally, they simply came as Project Pitchfork: confident, intense, experienced, and armed with songs that many people in the audience have carried with them for years. The set had the feeling of a dark-electronic greatest-hits ritual, with tracks such as “Revolution Now”, “Carnival”, “Alpha Omega”, “Souls”, “Rain”, “Steelrose” and “Existence v4.1” reminding everyone why this band still holds such a strong place in the scene.
It was not just a rescue slot. It became a celebration. The crowd accepted them immediately, and by the time the familiar choruses and heavy electronic pulse filled the Tanzbrunnen, the disappointment of the cancellation had transformed into something else: gratitude, recognition, and the simple pleasure of watching a band with nothing left to prove still delivering with force.
I rushed to the Orbit Stage again, we would definitely not miss our beloved Italians, Spiritual Front. Simone Salvatori and his companions have long described their own world in provocative, contradictory terms: neofolk, nihilist suicide pop, cabaret noir, acoustic decadence. Live, this translates into something sensual, ironic, melancholic and strangely dangerous.
We would be lucky enough to enjoy them again live among others, like Anne Clark too, at the Death Disco Open Air Festival in September in Athens at the Technopolis venue, but I definitely didn’t want to miss their grandiose performance as headliners at the Amphi too. They have built a distinctive identity between neofolk, dark cabaret, acoustic rock and decadent chanson, I follow them since their beginning and I am very proud of their artistic evolvement.
On the boat, their music had an almost filmic quality. Spiritual Front songs always feel like they are smiling at disaster from a velvet chair. The performance carried that familiar mixture of romance and poison, tenderness and blasphemy. By the time the night settled fully over Cologne, they gave the Orbit Stage a different shade of darkness — but equally magnetic. Wonderful setlist: “I walk the (Dead) Line”, “Jesus Died in Las Vegas”, “Slave”, Smiths’ cover of “There is a Light that Never Goes Out”, “Bastard Angel”. Absolutely fantastic, energetic and in close contact with the audience, so amazing!
Please check out our Amphi Festival 2025 Photo Gallery.