- Why Club Japan -
feat. CHAT PILE, DEEPSKY, HAATDRAGER, KUUNATIC, ONE LEG ONE EYE, ORA COGAN, SUMAC & MOOR MOTHER and WITCH CLUB SATAN
Good morning, let's enjoy the weather getting a little bit nicer and warmer every day, take a deep breath...
... confuse a cat during breakfast...
... and then... just step out of the sunlight right into a special corner of hell!
Yeah, right. So shortly after noon there's just no smooth transition into this. But I had been extremely happy when I saw that
Witch Club Satan would be playing at the clash-free first spot in
The Engine Room, because last year in Copenhagen, when I pulled the stunt of leaving
A Colossol Weekend for several hours
to see a Laibach show, the price had been to miss out on
Wiegedood and this Norwegian feminist Black Metal trio at the great "Mini
Roadburn" festival. Of course I had to take this chance to thank Madame Karma for giving me the opportunity to catch up on their show now.
But
"showing your tits doesn't make you a feminist" I overheard in a conversation later in the day. Ok, good that we cleared
that up, because how could some random male bro's opinion on the matter not be authoritative, right? No dude, seriously not your call.
Personally I didn't let the frontal presentation of undeniably presentable breasts distract me from the impression that
Witch Club Satan's very theatrical combination of rawest Black Metal and some
myrkurish atmospheric breaks with a clear artistic channeling of female rage was a very strong and accomplished concept, which also was executed with a healthy dose of fun without taking away from the seriousness of the core message.
Not even permanent technical issues with the bass dropping out could affect the success of this performance. In fact it lead to the unplanned moment of the bassist saying
fuck it! and taking a spooky journey through the crowd while letting the stage crew finally fix the problem for the final song.
The show also rewarded me for wearing my red
Dymna Lotva shirt today, because after I couldn't exactly see what one member of this coven was doing at the edge of the stage due to the hard backlight, I suddenly felt a big splash of fake blood being spat onto my face, which led to a nice temporary social media profile picture and a couple of actually worried inquiries, haha.
No, I couldn't have imagined the day starting any better than this.
After my shockingly only full Engine Room show of the festival I headed over to the Hall of Fame for my only show in there today, where Roadburn for the third year in a row presented a young group formed by students of the Eindhoven Metal Factory music education institute.
Fronted by a singer who displayed a different kind of female rage than I had just witnessed, rooted in angry and desperate Hip Hop, Haatdrager combined post-metallic Sludge with Electronic elements and delivered a very convincing debut show in a packed room, which most young bands can only dream about. Not everything was perfect to the tiniest detail and one could question if the same amount of textures and heaviness could maybe also be achieved by only five instead of seven members, but come on, this was sick stuff and already had a very independent identity. I certainly enjoyed it.
CLASHBURN:
Apart from a couple of immovable items I had revised my plan for this day several times, lastly this morning, when I realised that the order and showtimes of the inofficial free side programme performances I had taken over onto my printed schedule were all wrong. As thankful as I am for whoever entered the Roadburn data into clashfinder.com, that person was seemingly as unjustifiably dismissive of everything Offroad as my dear Veil of Sound peers, while I must say that the few Offroad shows I have made happen so far all have been valuable additions to the overall festival experience.
However this development meant goodbye to my ambituous yet not completely unrealistic plan to attend ten shows today, including Designer Violence at Kafee 't Buitenbeentje. And while I wouldn't be able to see Myriad's Veil, a Psychedelic Folk duo featuring a member of Temple Fang in the LOC Hal, which is Tilburg's public library housed in a huge former locomotive workshop hall, I could meet another duo from the 2024 Paradox line-up there again. So instead of picking up a beating by Gillian Carter as originally planned I opted for the complete opposite now. 
Set up in this quiet public space with a deliberately empty floor in front of the stage and most of the audience being seated on big stairs further away, this was easily the most atypical setting for a show I've ever seen in Tilburg, and since there were still the usual normal visitors reading and going on with their regular business this was not the place that would invite bands like
Primitive Man, but rather choose acoustic or Ambient acts.
Deepsky with their cosmically meandering improvisations on guitar, effects and drums fit right into the latter mold. The circumstances certainly didn't make it easy to assess the audience reaction, and the drummer had to deal with playing a very different, electronic kit, since his regular instrument just would have been way too loud for the acousticis of this vast room.
So the vibe was a little different from
last year's performance or from the sessions on the cassette I purchased directly off the stage afterwards, but it was what the attendees wanted: not a spectacular mindfuck or mental challenge, yet an instance to either drift away or center yourself and peacefully gather energy for the long rest of the day.
Roadburn sometimes feels as if you're transporting through portals between worlds, and this had been a strangely interesting resting stop on the inter-planetery journey. If the
LOC Hal hosts shows again in the future I can only recommend going there!
Among the positive consequences of me changing my plan in the morning was that I now suddely had the opportunity to witness a
Main Stage performance in full, which until then I thought I would only glimpse into for a while:
Sumac and
Moor Mother, both artistically driven entities known for deconstructing their respective genres to (and beyond) the limit.
Moor Mother's first Roadburn appearance with Zonal alongside
Justin Broadrick and
Kevin Martin had been a groundbreaking event in bending the festival's range towards Electronic Noise and Hip Hop, while the last time I had seen
Sumac in Tilburg was actually not
their 2019 performance with Peter Brötzmann right here, but when they played a much more intimate show at the
Little Devil Bar in October 2022.
They presented their collaborative album "The Film", which combines musical abstraction with ultra-heavy punch, direct aggressive and expressive narration with advanced yet never pretentious Avantgarde arrangements, just in the best way you could expect from both involved parties.
So of course it was hard to put this show into a box other than
That's Roadburn. Uneasy listening, but actually easy to appreciate. It was unconventional. Expressional. Crushing. A releasing of forces. I loved it from start to finish.
I directly continued next door with One Leg One Eye, a duo formed by Lankum member Ian Lynch, which took some of the motifs of his bigger band - like bag pipes, his occasional Folk vocals, but also just the mystical Irish atmosphere in field recordings and visuals - and in a long immerse Ambient and Drone performance set them into relation with primevil yet also civilizational noises.
Since I had only briefly touched on this project in my preparation, this was much more captivating and powerful than I had anticipated. It was one of those somehow vague yet deep experiences that just wants to linger a while after it has ended...
...and that effect influenced me when I returned to the Main Stage, where another Lankum member, Radie Peat, was involved as one of two amazing singers/keyboardist in Øxn. While their slow tales, dirges and murder ballads surely were brought to life in a beautifully haunting manner, my hunger for Irish darkness was just satiated at this point, so I couldn't follow the show for long.
CLASHBURN:
From now on I was really just staying inside the 013 venue, since three of the five upcoming shows on Main and Next Stage had such high priority for me that any attempt to go elsewhere to see only half of any other thing felt like wasting energy. Not attending Midwife with Thou as her backing band, nor all those secret shows I won't even look up now, or any Paradox show - even though I had covered the whole line-up of the venue in a hype text for VoS beforehand - were the hardest pills to swallow. Seriously: I don't have many wishes, but Roadburn really needs at least one more Paradox day! 
Asian representation was a strong throughline of the festival this year and the all-female Japanese Psychedelic trio Kuunatic drew a big exclamation mark behind it with a sound that was mainly performed on Rock/Pop instruments (keyboard, bass, drums), but through the choice of sounds, melodies and at times weirdly angular tribal grooves incorporated such a multitude of traditional ethnic influences that it created a completely unique musical world that was both earwormy and mystical, unpredictable and infectious. Especially the three-way harmony vocals bordered on utter magic. What a journey!
In absolutely unsolicited metabolic news I sadly had to leave during the last song due to urgent gastro-intestinal business, which really was the very first time this happened here in all those years, if I remember it correctly. For the next time - hopefully in ten years or so - I have learned that you should find someone to entrust redundant hoodies for this occasion, because cabins without any hooks or door handles provide an unnecessary shitty (bad pun intended) sidequest when it's least needed.
Since I had falsy assumed to be at another show due to my wrong Offroad timatable, I hadn't given too much thought about Altin Gün beforehand, yet now watched them from afar for a while. Their Anatolian Psychedelic Folk Rock was impressive and I surely would have loved their show under different circumstances. But just like with Øxn this was a case of my itch having been scratched enough, even if it had been in a far more Eastern variety. And also so far into Roadburn my head simply needs a break from all the sonic input every once in a while.
Luckily I was ready for more input when Canadian singer/songwriter Ora Cogan and her band hit the Next Stage with their dreamy yet dark-ish and energetic Psychedelic Americana. With guitars, violins, keys and masterful Folk/Country drumming providing a captivating background for Cogan's ethereal voice plus some stunning harmonies this show show was simply all around wonderful. A great artist and yet another brilliant addition to Roadburn's beautiful stylistic diversity!
I wish I would have seen the whole performance. Leaving it early is actually my only active running order decision during the whole festival, which I really regret in hindsight. Because the spot I ultimately got at the final show of the day afterwards clearly didn't justify it. Maybe I will change my general 013 policy in the future and generally prioritize complete Next Stage shows over the first row of the Main Stage. But then, also maybe not. Still got almost a year to consider after all...
Did you bring a video backdrop? Another picture of a crashed car? Maybe a band logo? - Nah, just keep it black and turn the lights on "extra blinding"!
Chat Pile kept it even simpler than during their European debut here
two years ago. And that included the banter between the songs.
Raygun Busch had listened to their brand new
"Live At Roadburn 2023" record before the show to avoid recycling his parade of cheap Netherlands puns - only to do exactly that. Hilarious!
But while the humour and his angry, desperate, fatalistic vocal performance between narration and feral screaming built a coherent fucked-up hole, which somehow tied everything together, you just couldn't dismiss the enormous potency of the music. Their mixture of Noise Rock, Sludge, Post Punk and whatever they deem fitting just kicks major ass. That tight brutal
godfleshy rhythm section alone deserves ten chef's kisses. Has bleak frustration ever been so fun?
Most of the setlist consisted of material from last year's album
"Cool World", so the music thankfully didn't feature as many throwbacks to 2023 as the sspoken words. But of course they played the song become
Roadburn meme
"Why" - and damn, how the crowd erupted during that one!
Chat Pile, what a band! Fuck yeah, it was a blast!
And that was my Saturday. What a film! And still one more day to go...
reviews of the other festival days:
- Rodents in thy Holy Place -
- Isn't it funny how the Body Machine burns? - - Please stay close to me now
Weave the orb, Spin the dress
Don't you ever leave
me undead undead anymore - - Diabolical Spite & Divine Healing -
