Recykl Club & Subzero, Prague, Czech Republic26th to 27th September 2025
Audiotrauma Festival 2025 with Schloss Tegal, DJ Sylvain, Bunkerer, Bolehlav, M.A.C. Of Mad, Sonic Area, Moaan Exis, Statiqbloom
Audiotrauma has always been more than a label, more than a collective. It is a family - a word that came up again and again in interviews during the festival. “It’s about reunion, not just performance. We share history, we share visions, we share scars,” one of the artists told me. And in Prague this year, that reunion felt almost sacred.
The city pulsed with it: two nights in two different clubs, each with its own energy, audience, and atmosphere. Recykl Club opened the weekend with deep experimental explorations, while Subzero offered rawer, raging power. Each night ended with the feeling that this was more than concerts - it was an exchange of energy, memory, and defiance, a stunning manifestation of the Audiotrauma spirit.
Friday, 26th September 2025
Schloss Tegal
The festival began with SCHLOSS TEGAL, a name synonymous with experimental sound as psychological excavation. Their performance was not a set in the usual sense but a descent into dark sonic archaeology: noises unearthed like buried memories, fragments of voices and atmospheres conjuring states both unsettling and profound. It was less about rhythm, more about texture - sound as a medium of tension, silence as much a player as noise. The audience at Recykl stood transfixed, caught in this unsettling but fascinating ritual.
DJ Sylvain
Closing the night was DJ SYLVAIN, who brought people back from abstraction to body. His set threaded Industrial roots with beats that demanded movement, the perfect way to transform the cerebral atmosphere into a shared dance, a reminder that Audiotrauma has always balanced intellect with physicality.
Saturday, 27th September 2025
Bunkerer
The following night opened with BUNKERER, who delivered an experimental performance burning with anger and intensity. Their sound was jagged, like concrete walls breaking apart under pressure. It wasn’t designed to comfort or please - it was a challenge, a confrontation, a mirror held up to the fury simmering beneath our daily veneers.
Bolehlav
If BUNKERER struck like demolition, BOLEHLAV arrived like a storm. Their performance was a raging outburst, absolutely stunning in quality. Noise and rhythm locked into an unstoppable flow, heavy enough to suffocate yet precise enough to elevate. The energy onstage was feral, but it carried clarity, as if chaos itself had been disciplined into form. The crowd responded with total surrender, bodies colliding, voices shouting, energy ricocheting across the club. It was one of those shows where you don’t just watch - you live inside it, and afterward, you feel changed.
M.A.C. Of Mad
I had never seen M.A.C. OF MAD live until Audiotrauma Festival. I’d done an interview with them and listened to their album ‘Keep Music Evil’, but it wasn’t until I saw them onstage that I understood where their true force lies. Four band members, four completely different personalities and together, a collision that worked like alchemy.
On guitar and additional vocals, Danger brought mastery, grit, and a rock edge that carved into the noise. At the front, Jana was an untameable storm - Punk, Noise, Hardcore, you name it. She owned the stage with no pause, no restraint, pouring every ounce of heart and vocal cord into a raw outburst of emotion. Anger, fury, and truth, nothing filtered, everything transformed into voice.
Behind them, Narco Polo and Daniel Rodny handled the electronic backbone, one hooded in shadows, the other in flashing rainbow lights and a red jacket, like opposing forces fuelling the same fire. It looked like chaos, like a melting pot of clashing styles, yet it came together in perfect intensity.
What I thought might be noise for noise’s sake became something bigger: conviction, release, pure adrenaline. M.A.C. OF MAD convinced me to their artistic message. Thank you.
Setlist
01. Needle in the Head
02. Neurodiesel
03. Autodafe
04. Nothing to Hide
05. Signal
06. Zero Karma
07. Unadmin
08. Young & Beautiful
Sonic Area
In a sea of heart-wrenching, ear-drilling intensity, SONIC AREA emerged like a sanctuary. Hypnotic and trance-like, the performance was a breath of music that neither burned nor bludgeoned, but shimmered with elegance and balance. Dreamy and cinematic, it guided the audience along a path where the cosmic brushed against the tangible.
The soundscape expanded like a living canvas; at times delicate as gossamer threads, at others sharp enough to jolt the senses - a precise interplay of restraint and release. It was less a concert than a story told without words, a layered sonic architecture inviting the mind to wander freely through its corridors.
Visually, the show was equally striking: star-lit projections bathed the stage in mystery, while the artist’s enigmatic presence amplified the sense of timeless ritual. SONIC AREA offered not just music, but a portal into imagination itself - brilliant, refined, and utterly absorbing.
Setlist
01. Sonic Area - Sout Spirit
02. Ez3kiel - Dead in Valhalla (Remix by Sonic Area)
03. Sonic Area - The Moonlight Express
04. Sonic Area - The Praying Mantis
05. Sonic Area - Lotus
06. Daidal - Skopos (Remix by Sonic Area)
07. Architect / Sonic Area / Hologram_ - Opening the Matter
08. Normotone - Abandon (feat. Sonic Area)
09. Sonic Area - Black Snow and Blue Mint
10. Nocto / Sonic Area - Game of Life Glider
11. Nocto / Sonic Area - Hackback (Club Version)
12. Sonic Area - Soul of a Robot
Moaan Exis
There were many brilliant acts at Audiotrauma Festival - some familiar, some new - but MOAAN EXIS made me lose my grip in particular. What they delivered was nothing short of a total assault on the senses: strobe flashes in blue and blood red, darkness slicing through vision, noise hammering with unforgiving force. The vocals rode this sonic beast like a frenzied Mohican warrior, and it hit me with a kick I hadn’t felt in a long time.
But this wasn’t just mindless aggression or some chaotic outburst. It was a vent - the vent I needed, and not only me, I suspect. This music is a release of energy and emotion, the perfect fit when anger and despair are too heavy to hold, when you want to scream your lungs out and tear the world apart. Thanks to MOAAN EXIS, you don’t need to add to the mayhem - the music illustrates it for you, becomes the storm itself, and then leaves behind that strange peace that comes when the adrenaline is gone.
Onstage, the band gave it all - vocals, drums, movement, raw physicality - like watching a thunderstorm unfold in front of my eyes. It was somniac, emotional, ferocious. How to describe it? Imagine a head-on collision with:
a) a speeding Alfa Romeo on full throttle,
b) a lightning strike,
c) the last second underwater before your lungs burst, and the first breath when you finally surface.
That’s about as close as words can get. A stunning show. Bravo.
Statiqbloom
The absolute highlight of the festival for me was STATIQBLOOM - an artist who slips past conventions and delivers music that doesn’t just reach you, it cuts straight to the knees and drills into the head, impossible to shake off. Experiment and precision collide here: raw venting of emotion channelled through a meticulously crafted performance.
It felt like a modern one-man orchestra of chaos and control, where every beat injects adrenaline like a shot to the veins. Fade Kainer doesn’t just play music; he embodies it, turning sound into an assault and a release all at once. The emotions onstage were palpable, each track a rush of catharsis that kept bodies moving as if resistance wasn’t an option.
To step into STATIQBLOOM’s world, you have to let your guard down, surrender your defences and simply listen, feel, move. He demands nothing more than your presence, but he takes everything: ears, heart, body. The Prague show proved it without question - Fade Kainer has honed his performance into something damn near perfect.
Setlist
01. Untitled
02. Knife From Above
03. Desolate
04. Fire of the Heart
05. Spectral Dimension
06. The Earth Drank Blood
07. Untitled
08. Thin Hidden Hand
09. Black Walks Eternal
10. Atrophy of Three
Two nights, many acts, one truth: Audiotrauma remains unmatched as a meeting point of minds, bodies, and sound. From SCHLOSS TEGAL’s experimental depths to BOLEHLAV’s raging storm, from SONIC AREA’s elegant sanctuary to STATIQBLOOM’s cathartic assault, the festival offered every shade of Industrial, Noise, and beyond.
But what lingered most was not just the music. It was the atmosphere: the audience’s unwavering focus, the sense of belonging, the reunion of artists who have walked together for decades. Audiotrauma Festival 2025 was not just a lineup, but a statement of survival, relevance, and family. Prague will not forget.
All Pictures by Karo Kratochwil
