SBÄM Fest 2023: Great Bands, Questionable Everything Else.

Two days. Punk rock legends. And a currency that isn't actual currency.

That's the SBÄM Fest 2023 in a nutshell, held on June 3rd and 4th at the Pichlingersee in Linz. If you're here for the music, good news: the bands were excellent. If you're here for the festival experience, buckle up.

The Lineup Was Excellent

Saturday started strong and only got better. We caught The Von Tramps, Zebrahead, Less Than Jake, Anti Flag, Turbobier, and Flogging Molly. Every single set was worth standing in the sun for. Flogging Molly in particular had the crowd going, right up until we had to bail mid-set to catch the last train home. More on the transport disaster later.

Sunday was no slouch either: Victory Kid, The Menzingers, Bowling For Soup, and Rancid. A solid close to the weekend. No complaints on the music front, full stop.

The "Cashless System" That Isn't

Here's where things go sideways.

Before you could buy a single drink, you had to exchange your real money for SBÄM Dollars: a festival-specific monopoly currency that, once purchased, cannot be converted back to euros.

You hand over actual legal tender. You get back paper tokens. The tokens expire at the end of the festival. Anything unspent is gone. Forever. Into SBÄM's pocket.

Calling this a "cashless system" is a stretch. A cashless system means you pay by card and don't carry coins. What SBÄM built is a forced currency exchange with no return policy.

To their credit, they eventually designated one bar to accept real money. One. Out of however many. Punk rock? Not exactly.

You could only use SBÄM Dollars at the drink stands. Food required real euros. So you had to manage two separate payment systems at the same time. At a festival. After several drinks.

The Prices

A beer or wine cost €5 in SBÄM Dollars. Fine, festival pricing, par for the course.

A burger (no fries, nothing on the side) cost €11 on Saturday. By Sunday, the same burger had gone up to €12.

A burger that increased in price between Saturday and Sunday of the same festival weekend. That's not inflation, that's a stress test.

Getting Home Is Your Problem

The Pichlingersee is near Linz, but "near" is doing a lot of work there. After Sunday's shows ended, public transport had already wrapped up for the night. No shuttle. No extended service. No mention of this in any communication we saw beforehand.

We ended up splitting a cab back into the city. The driver also tried to overcharge us. At that point it felt thematic.

On Saturday we caught the last train, but only by leaving Flogging Molly early. Not how anyone wants to end their evening.

The Atmosphere

There was a heavy police presence on site throughout both days. Not in an aggressive way, just a lot of cops for what's supposed to be a friendly punk festival. Towards the end of Saturday, a significant chunk of them had to leave to deal with soccer riots in the city center. Make of that what you will.

The site itself, right by the lake, is genuinely nice. The areas were well laid out, it didn't feel overcrowded, and wait times at drink stands were manageable. The staff were fine for the most part, though you occasionally had to remind someone to actually fill your cup rather than hand you a €5 half-pour.

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The SBÄM Fest 2023 was a festival with an incredible lineup wrapped in an experience designed to extract as much money from you as possible, as opaquely as possible.

The bands showed up. The organisation didn't. If you were a fan of the artists playing, it was a good time. The lesson learned: go in with your eyes open. Bring more cash than you think you'll need. Don't count on public transport to get you home afterwards.

Just because the lineup is full of punk bands doesn't make it a punk festival.

It was a SCÄM.