Dark Easter Metal Meeting

From Insider Gathering to Sold-Out Festival

The Dark Easter Metal Meeting (DEMM) started in 2012 as a small festival with six bands and 400 visitors at Backstage. Today, 14 years and a dozen sold-out editions later, it is one of Germany's most concentrated extreme metal festivals: two days, three stages, over 30 bands, 1,600 visitors per year – sold out weeks in advance without exception since 2018. The organizer is the Munich-based agency MRW Concerts, which programs the festival with curatorial ambition and an eye for the Black/Death/Doom scene.

Backstage as Home

Backstage Munich in Reitknechtstraße is an urban club complex with several halls and an open-air area – one of the most important indoor rock/metal venues in Bavaria. The DEMM stages are spread across the three halls (Werk, Halle, Club), with a continuously intertwined program: while a headliner is playing in the Werk, a newcomer slot is running in the Halle. This program structure allows the 1,600 visitors to move seamlessly between sets.

Headliners 2026

The 2026 lineup is international and stylistically diverse:

• Blackbraid (USA) – Native American Black Metal, a global sensation in recent years.
• Triptykon (Switzerland) – Tom Gabriel Fischer (ex-Celtic Frost, Hellhammer) and his blackened doom metal vehicle, one of the central acts in Europe's extreme metal scene.
• Grave (Sweden) – Old-school death metal pioneers, active since the late 1980s.
• Unleashed (Sweden) – Viking Death Metal with over 30 years of history.
• Firespawn (Sweden) – Swedish Death Metal with active members from Entombed AD and Necrophobic.
• 1914 (Ukraine) – Death/Black Metal about World War I, one of the most political voices in the scene.

The Format and Its Audience

What distinguishes the DEMM from larger open-air festivals is its intimate character: 1,600 fans, three halls, no long distances, plenty of interaction between bands and audience after the sets. The programming allows for subgenre diversity from atmospheric Black Metal to Old-School Death Metal, from blackened Doom to Viking. The festival takes place on Easter weekend – a metallically ironic counterpoint to the Christian holiday, which is part of the DEMM's DNA.