Next Halloween weekend, as Chicago dons its autumnal shroud, a particular kind of pilgrimage will culminate in the heart of the Pilsen neighborhood. The destination is Thalia Hall, a designated city landmark that stands on the corner of 18th and Allport like a Gilded Age ghost. Built in 1892 by a Bohemian immigrant named John Dusek, its grand proscenium and ornate balconies were modeled after the Prague opera house, a palace of high culture for the working-class community it was built to serve.

But on the nights of October 31 and November 1, 2025, this historic cathedral of community will host a different kind of congregation. A sea of black, leather, and lace is expected to pass through its doors, drawn by the promise of a festival whose official theme will be, pointedly, “Blasphemy.” This will be Sanctum Fest—an event that, in its third year, is poised to be far more than a concert. It will serve as an immersive, fiercely independent gathering dedicated to the shadowy, melancholic, and deeply romantic sounds of darkwave, post-punk, and industrial music.

From its outset, Sanctum Fest has been defined by a radical ethos, one telegraphed most clearly by its “ALL VIP” ticketing policy. “We firmly believe that the size of ones’ wallet should never dictate the quality of their music experience,” the festival’s organizers declare. “No class separation. Enter the space, and flourish.”

When access itself has become a commodity, this egalitarian approach feels like its own form of sacrilege. The “Blasphemy” theme, which includes a “Queen of Blasphemy” costume contest and a photobooth featuring a large crucifix, is not merely a gothic provocation contest and a “Crucify Yourself” photobooth, is not merely a gothic provocation; it is an ideological extension of this principle. Sanctum’s rejection of the sacred orthodoxy of market-driven hierarchy is a kind of commercial blasphemy, suggesting that its rebellion against established norms is both spiritual and economic.

Sanctum Fest, then, is not just a local event but a meticulously curated pilgrimage site for a thriving global subculture. It represents a potent confluence of the international post-punk revival and Chicago’s own deep, gritty history with industrial and underground music. Over two nights, it will create a temporary autonomous zone where a shared sense of melancholy becomes a powerful form of communion, and where looking into the abyss is a collective, cathartic act.

This atmosphere of collective mourning and celebration unfolds not in isolation, but alongside one of Chicago’s most deeply rooted cultural traditions. Taking place in the predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood of Pilsen, Sanctum Fest will coincide with the area’s expansive Día de los Muertos celebrations—parades, altars, vigils, and community gatherings that span the same weekend.

The juxtaposition of darkwave’s subcultural catharsis with Día de los Muertos’ ancestral reverence reveals two parallel forms of ritual: one rooted in the aesthetics of romantic despair, the other in vibrant remembrance. Both enact public reckonings with loss, and both offer the living a way to commune with the dead, to find meaning through grief, and to reclaim space through shared symbolism.

Sanctum Fest: Charting the Post-Punk Revival

Sanctum Fest inhabits a specific musical landscape, one that defines its very essence. This is not the world of heavy metal, but a more spectral and atmospheric domain. The festival’s currency is darkwave, a genre that emerged in the late 1970s from the fertile ashes of punk rock. Alongside its stylistic cousins—cold wave, EBM (Electronic Body Music), and post-punk—it is music built on minor-key tonalities, introspective lyrics, and an atmosphere often described as romantic, bleak, and sorrowful.

Its lineage traces directly to the pioneering sounds of bands like Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Depeche Mode, artists who proved that the energy of punk could be channeled into something more complex, emotional, and atmospheric.

That these sounds are experiencing a powerful global resurgence in the 2020s is no accident. The original themes of post-punk—alienation in an increasingly technological world, a yearning for authentic connection, romantic despair, and political disillusionment—resonate with a startling clarity in the current moment. The revival, populated by acts like She Past Away, Drab Majesty, and Boy Harsher, is not simple nostalgia; it is a deeply relevant artistic response to contemporary anxieties. This dynamic is central to the ethos of many of the artists on Sanctum’s bill.

Headliners Lebanon Hanover, for instance, were formed after connecting on the music social media site Last.fm, a quintessentially modern beginning for a band whose music explicitly critiques digital detachment and the erosion of real-world bonds. This paradox sits at the heart of the contemporary scene: it is a global, digitally connected community built around a shared longing for a pre-digital, more tactile existence. The very tools of the “alienated world” are being used to build and sustain the subculture that opposes it.

Sanctum Fest is a key node in a growing international network of such gatherings. It stands alongside Germany’s Wave-Gotik-Treffen, a massive annual festival in Leipzig that draws tens of thousands and is considered one of the world’s largest celebrations of “dark” culture, and Los Angeles’ influential Substance festival, another multi-day event dedicated to post-punk and industrial sounds. The existence of these events proves that Sanctum Fest is not an isolated phenomenon but an integral part of a thriving, interconnected global movement.

The choice of Chicago as its home is profoundly significant. The city has a storied, almost sacred, history within this specific musical tradition. It was the home of Wax Trax! Records, the pioneering label founded by Jim Nash and Dannie Flesher that became the epicenter of American industrial music in the 1980s and ‘90s, launching the careers of seminal artists like Ministry, Front 242, and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult.

That legacy is being actively preserved today at the Museum of Post Punk & Industrial Music, founded in the city’s Bridgeport neighborhood in 2021 by Martin Atkins, a veteran of bands like Public Image Ltd, Ministry, and Pigface. Furthermore, Chicago is the birthplace of the Cold Waves festival, an annual industrial music event created in 2012 to honor the memory of musician and sound engineer Jamie Duffy, which raises funds for mental health and suicide prevention charities. Chicago is not merely a backdrop for Sanctum Fest; it is hallowed ground, a city whose cultural soil is uniquely fertile for this dark and cathartic music to take root.

The Headliners: Resurrected and Reigning

The lineup for Sanctum Fest reads less like a random collection of popular acts and more like a carefully constructed narrative of the darkwave genre itself. It is a story told in three parts: the foundational past, the reigning present, and the diverse, evolving future.

Lebanon Hanover: An Ice-Cold Reply to an Alienated World

At the center of the modern darkwave revival stand Lebanon Hanover, the Swiss-British duo of Larissa Iceglass and William Maybelline. Their music is the sound of the movement’s soul: minimal, cold, and profoundly melancholic, built upon Iceglass’s echoing, ethereal guitar lines and Maybelline’s deep, driving, and unforgettable bass melodies.

Their lyrics are a direct response to what they perceive as a contemporary world detached from genuine feeling. In a 2013 interview with the Lithuanian publication Secret Thirteen, Iceglass reflected, “Times are hard for romantics in this century. The world wants us to survive alone… We find this terribly sad for we have a very big longing for bond and true friendships.”

Their headlining performance at Sanctum is weighted with history. The duo has had a notoriously difficult relationship with touring the United States of America, having faced visa denials that forced the cancellation of a planned 2019 tour. Their return to American stages in October 2023 marked their first performances in the country in a decade, making any appearance a rare and coveted event.

For their dedicated fanbase, seeing them at Sanctum is not just another show; it is a hard-won, triumphant occasion. Adding another layer to their presence, William Maybelline will also perform as Qual, his solo project that explores a harsher, more aggressive EBM sound, showcasing the depth and versatility of the talent at the festival’s core.

Martin Dupont: The Unforeseen Resurrection

If Lebanon Hanover represents the genre’s present, Martin Dupont embodies its foundational myth. Formed in Marseille in 1980, the French band was a pioneer of the cold wave and synth-pop sound, releasing a string of critically acclaimed and influential albums like ‘Just Because’ and ‘Hot Paradox.’ Then, in 1988, they vanished. With no official breakup, the band simply went dormant as frontman and principal songwriter Alain Seghir focused on his demanding career as an ENT surgeon, selling his synthesizers “on a whim.”

For over three decades, Martin Dupont was a ghost, a cult legend whose influence persisted through word-of-mouth and, unexpectedly, through samples used by artists as prominent as Kanye West and Tricky. Their resurrection began in 2009 when they were contacted by Veronica Vasicka of the New York-based label Minimal Wave Records, which specializes in reissuing lost electronic gems.

This sparked a full-fledged reunion in 2022, followed by tours that left Seghir himself stunned. “I could not believe the reception we had,” he said of playing in New York. “Veronica Vasicka… said, ‘You must realize, you are a kind of legend in the United States (of America).’ I would never think about myself like that, never.”

Their performance at Sanctum Fest is therefore a rare opportunity to witness history, a foundational pillar of the genre brought back to life for a new generation that, to the band’s own surprise, never forgot them.

The Vanguard: The Genre’s Shifting Forms

Beyond these two pillars, the Sanctum Fest lineup maps out the exciting and divergent paths the genre is currently forging. Zanias, the project of Australian-born, Berlin-based artist Alison Lewis, represents the intellectual and experimental edge. Her work is a study in metamorphosis, exploring themes of psychological trauma and renewal while using her voice as a primal instrument that often transcends the limitations of language. Drawing inspiration from the Australian rainforest and the industrial pulse of techno, her sound is both otherworldly and visceral.

From Los Angeles, the quartet Male Tears brings a vibrant, flamboyant energy to the festival. Coining their sound “Dark Rave,” frontman James Edward and his bandmates blend darkwave, EBM, and Italo disco into a sound that is both haunting and intensely danceable. With a strong visual aesthetic meant to create an immersive “world” and an outspoken, unapologetically queer identity, Male Tears represents the genre’s capacity for theatrical, pop-inflected joy.

Finally, the Portland-based duo Puerta Negra injects a vital political and cultural dimension into the lineup. An EBM and synth-punk act, their name is taken from a song by the Norteño band Los Tigres del Norte, reflecting vocalist Maria’s upbringing on the Texas-Mexico border.

Singing in Spanish, her lyrics confront themes of immigration, colonization, and United States of America imperialism, using the genre’s aggressive pulse as a platform to uplift queer and non-white voices within a scene where they have been historically underrepresented.

Together, these artists demonstrate that the future of darkwave is not monolithic, but a rich tapestry of experimental, political, and celebratory forms.

The Sanctum: A Festival’s Soul and Its City

The selection of Thalia Hall—a site already rich with history and mentioned earlier in this piece—serves not only as a physical stage, but as a symbolic one. Its legacy of community gathering and dissent mirrors Sanctum’s own ambitions, reframing the space for a new generation of cultural outsiders.

For decades, it was a civic hub where, in 1915, the very bill that paved the way for the birth of Czechoslovakia was drafted within its walls. To host a “Blasphemy”-themed darkwave festival in this historic hall, once a cultural haven for those original Bohemian immigrants, creates a powerful ironic resonance.

A new generation of “bohemians,” united by a shared artistic sensibility, is claiming this opulent space for their own rites. The building’s deep history of fostering community and even political change lends a historical weight to the proceedings, suggesting that this gathering, too, is more than mere entertainment.

Its inclusion grounds the festival in an ethos of raw, do-it-yourself authenticity. This duality is not a contradiction but a reflection of the subculture itself—a scene that simultaneously cherishes romantic, theatrical grandeur and demands unpretentious, street-level grit. By utilizing both the cathedral of Thalia Hall and the crypt of the Empty Bottle, Sanctum’s organizers have created a physical experience that validates the entire spectrum of their community’s aesthetic and historical identity.

This immersive world is further enriched by curated installations like the “VHS Dungeon Room” and the “VHS Confession Booth,” along with live visuals by the artist Videowaste. These elements are not afterthoughts but integral components of a holistic experience, designed to pull attendees out of the mundane and into the specific, thematic universe of the festival.

Conclusion

Against a backdrop of modern isolation, where connections are often fleeting and filtered through screens, Sanctum Fest offers a vital, tangible point of convergence. For a weekend, it provides a real-world anchor for a scattered international scene, transforming the private devotion of listening to melancholic music into a powerful, shared ceremony. It is a rare chance for a community, bound by a common artistic and emotional wavelength, to assemble in person, validating their shared identity and the art that defines it.

Herein lies the beautiful paradox at the heart of the darkwave genre and of Sanctum Fest itself. This is music steeped in themes of sorrow, alienation, loss, and dread. Yet, the experience it produces in a live setting is one of connection, euphoria, and profound catharsis. To dance with hundreds of others to a song about existential despair is not a contradiction; it is a transformative act of solidarity. It is an acknowledgment that the darkness is real, but that one does not have to face it alone.

As the lights of Thalia Hall glow against the cold Chicago Halloween sky, and the sound of a synthesized beat and a mournful vocal spills out onto 18th Street, it will be the sound of a community finding strength not in spite of the darkness, but because of it. Sanctum Fest is a vital, living testament to a subculture that understands that looking into the abyss is not an act of surrender. It is an affirmation of the beauty, complexity, and resilience of the human heart. It is a way of saying, “We see the shadows, and we will dance in them together.”