On Oct. 30, 2015, in a crowded club in midtown Bucharest, a local metal band performed as part of the launch of a new album. “We’re not numbers, we’re free, we’re so alive (so alive) / ’Cause the day we give in is the day we die (the day we die).” So went the lyrics of one of the band’s new songs, “The Day We Die.”
Soon, those words became a mantra for protesters. That concert would be the last for the relatively unknown band, Goodbye to Gravity. Four of the five bandmates, along with 60 other people, died in the fire that erupted at the club that night. It sparked a political and social crisis in Romania, one that is still reverberating today and that inspired the Oscar-nominated documentary Collective.
