AMPHI festival 2015 review

This year, the Amphi Festival was held in one of the biggest venues in Cologne, the Lanxess Arena, for the first time ever. It is one of the most modern and sophisticated music halls in Europe. The outside area, which includes the Arena surroundings, contains an open air stage with lots of additional facilities such as resting and merchandize areas. The decision to change the venue proved to be a good one since Cologne experienced a heavy storm on the first day of the festival, so many concerts from the open air stage had to be canceled that day and rescheduled. But even the storm could not break the spirit of Amphi and its numerous visitors.
Amphi started on the 24th of July with a boat warm up party called “Call the ships to port” on the river Rhein, that we sadly missed because of our late arrival to the city.
For us, Saturday started with Rabia Sorda that we had never seen live before! It was a pleasant surprise to see the band play as energetic as expected. Amongst other songs off of the playlist, we could hear “Out of Control”, “Deaf” and “Obey me”!
That day due to the storm our plans changed a little so we decided to catch two must see headliner bands in the evening.
Front 242 had an excellent performance, but surprisingly no “Headhunter” this time. The hits that always make us dance were “In Rhythmus Bleiben”, “Welcome to Paradise” and “Funkahdafi”.
After such a great cardio exercise we were fit enough to jump some more! Especially to And One who bought us with Steve’s charm as well as a brilliant setlist that included “Steine Sind Steine”, “Krieger”, a great Cure cover “The Walk”, “Deutschmaschine”, “Second Voice”, “Techno Man” and “Military Fashion Show”.
On Sunday we saw Diorama, Qntal and Zeraphine on the open air stage, then went inside for Oomph! who gave an excellent performance. We enjoyed their old all-time hits “Mein Herz” and “Der neue Gott” the most.
Then it was time for The Mission, reinforced by two young singers. They sounded very much like we remember them from previous shows with “Like A Hurricane”, “Garden Of Delight”, “Severina”, “Butterfly On A Wheel”, “Wasteland”, “Deliverance” and “Tower Of Strength”.
The change of pace came with VNV Nation and Ronan made the crowd wild while singing “Darkangel”, “Standing”, “Epicentre” and “Perpetual”.
After such a finale it was hard to leave, what made it easier was the fact that we will be back next year!

Review and photo: Marija Buljeta