- Diabolical Spite & Divine Healing -
feat. GOTT, INSECT ARK, MICHEAL GIRA & KRISTOF HAHN, MONG TONG, PONTE DEL DIAVOLO, SUMAC and VUUR & ZIJDE
Good morning,
Roadburn Sunday! This is the part where I'm supposed to tell you how tired I was and how much of a physical toll the festival had already taken on me. But I actually felt pretty fine. No back pain, no blisters. I could feel my legs and my soles were a little sore, but nothing out of the ordinary. I had much much worse years.
Partly responsible for that is probably the fact that even though I had packed a bag with different film cameras, I just didn't even spot a chance to follow any touristic endeavours before commuting over to Tilburg. So I just didn't waste energy until noon.
But since this was my last chance, I at least took the smallest cam of that bunch (plus the
Digital Harinezumi 2.0, with which I also took the majority of my live pictures), drove ten minutes to
De Loonse en Drunense Duinen and took a brief walk there. Even with my soles not being
that bruised I must say that walking the soft dune sand almost felt like a foor massage. Nice!
(My film photographs will follow in a seperate post later.
EDIT: Here they are!)
But now back to the reason why we've all gathered here: the final day of Roadburn 2025!
The band starting the day with a full performance of their debut album in the Terminal was kind of a Dutch undergound allstar group. Only to list members of Vuur & Zijde (Fire & Silk) I had personally seen at Roadburn before there's Laster, Terzej de Horde, Grey Aura and the guitar player of Witte Wieven, who I know from her duo project Deepsky, which I had just watched offroad the day before.
With the Black Metal background of all these bands seething in the background, the overall direction was rather a both dreamy and aggressive merger of Post Punk / New Wave with hypnotic elements and heavier stuff. Due to the style of the female lead vocals, yet also a lot of the melodies and guitar work, their whole sound very strongly reminded me of Gggolddd back when they were still only Gold. And that's a very good thing.
If my plan had allowed it I surely would have watched the whole show,but alas two bands with members of Swans were going to play back to back on the Next Stage, so it seemed highly plausibe that some people would try to secure their spots for both consecutive shows early...
The first
Swans musician on stage was
Dana Schechter with
Insect Ark, who I had last seen in the
Cul de Sac back in 2018. Then an all-female duo the band has meanwhile morphed into a trio featuring
Tim Wyskida of
Blind Idiot God on drums and additional member
Lynn Wright on lap steel and regular electric guitar, so
Dana has freed herself of the double duty of playing bass (plus looping it) and lap steel on stage.
That freedom was of course needed, since most of today's songs were material from
"Raw Blood Singing", her debut as a singer. So did she master her new role? Oh yes! In fact this was one of those shows where everything came together perfectly, so I couldn't imagine the bleak yet beautiful Doom, Drone and gloom of
Insect Ark being presented better. The sound, the atmosphere, her personality... there was something special in the air.
And what a treat after six new pieces to end the set with the epic instrumental title track of
"The Vanishing"! I love this band and this performance couldn't have done more to prove me right.
Oh dear, here comes the controversial one! I've seen Swans several times since their reunion, and even though their mastermind has a certain reputation, which mostly goes back to the 1980's, I've never actually experienced him being... let's say problematic. A man of stern grimaces and big gestures in context of an overwhelming storm of sound around him, yes. But it always just seemed to be just a part of the performance's intensity. This was different.
When Kristof Hahn and Michal Gira came on stage during the changeover to congratulate Dana on her show, everything seemed alright, but something must already have been foul. Since I was sitting down I couldn't see the two Swans during soundcheck, but even only listening it appeared a little strange. Michael thoroughly checked his singing mic and was particularly specific about the colour and intensity of the stage light. But when the sound engineer asked "Do you want to play something together?" he just simply answered "No." And there would have been plenty of time to go over everything!
That however was only the harmless part and still made people laugh. The show started with a solo instrumental by Kristof on the lap steel guitar - and it was mighty as fuck! I could have listened to forty minutes of just this powerful layering of sounds. There were two instances however, where he glitched a little with the volume pedal and maybe it was this was complety ticked Michael off? Or maybe it was something totally unrelated. Who knows?
I only know that Gira would continue straight out bullying Hahn, who reacted extremely calm ("So should I leave?"), yet also crew members, and throw a couple of pretty pathetic little temper tantrums.
Nothing of all that has been documented in minute detail, because during soundcheck he only once told the audience to keep their phones in their bags and noone dared to draw his scorn towards themselves. Even the festival photographers weren't nearly as active as usually. (Michael didn't specifiaclly forbid taking pictures with a toy camera, but I was very quick, careful and nervous while taking the total of six shots you can see below.)
The obvious question is: Why didn't I leave this show and go see the wonderful Midwife for example? Well, the truth is that why this behaviour was unexeptable and would have ruined ninety-nine in a hundred shows, the subject of this one were stripped down renditions of titles from the upcoming new Swans album "Birthing", which appearantly deals a lot with themes of anger and... yeah, I hate to admit it, but this uneasy intimidating atmosphere in the room just totally fit the vibe of the performance. And while I was leaving during Michael's spine-chilling spoken word epilogue I was actually afraid I'd eventually have to rank this as my favorite show of the day.
Luckily help in that regard arrived very soon...
Sumac's show with
Moormother the day before had already been fantastic. The trio's full performance of the almost eighty minutes long album
"The Healer" continued that trajectory and went even further. This
Main Stage show simple was an epitome and highlight of whole concept behind
Roadburn.
The pure fact that an album, which turns the rules and preconceptions of Metal onto its head as much as this abstract Avantgarde Sludge masterpiece does, is even meant to be actually performed live, is already far from a natural matter of course. This was something extraordinary, even within the context of ultra-heavy bands playing this festival.
While the devastating heaviness during a majority of the monolithic performance was undeniable, the structure and intention behind the sound transcended genre on a level last seen probably during
Bell Witch's
"Clandestine Gate" premiere in 2023. And that is quite an A-league ballpark to play in.
I can't remember any hint of weakness in this impressive demonstration of the power of creative noise. If
Roadburn had to pick an annual winner,
Aaron Turner,
Brian Cook and
Nick Yacyshyn would have to take the crown without question.
CLASHBURN:
This actually was the day I cared least about clashes and was most confident to just follow the very first draft of my plan without being tempted by other stages or secret shows. That doesn't mean the programme was missing strong competition. As I mentioned before I missed out on Midwife - again -, but Sumac had also clashed with Toby Driver. (I happened to see just the very end of his show, yet that wasn't enough for a serious impression of any kind.)
Right now Big|Brave played "A Chaos Of Flowers" in the Terminal, yet since I had already seen two perfect performances of exactly that album last year (at A Colossal Weekend and onboard the MS Stubnitz), I could do without hurrying over there to catch half of the show.
All upcoming choices would have been great: Bo Ningen, Violent Magic Orchestra, Pothamus... No, it was pretty impossible to do wrong. Yet that's also why I'm still very satisfied with the route I took, even if it demanded a little pain of parting just ahead. 
I estimated the time I could watch the Italians
Ponte Del Diavolo and knowing their great debut album
"Fire Blades From the Tomb" I looked up on
Bandcamp into how many songs that translated. Well, at least it was over half of the show. There's actually a video on
YouTube, in which I watched myself leaving towards the end of "La Razza". (I could have stayed for "Nocturnal Veil" as well, but that's the know-all wisdom of hindsight.)
I had come prepared to have a great time with their dark-wavish blend of Post Black Metal and Doom, but
Sweet Baby Satan did I underestimate the presence of singer
Erba, who oozed with charisma and energy as her glances confidently pierced through the audience. The whole band was on fire. I'd really love to meet the again.
Hafenklang Hamburg, please draw your booking pen!
My departure while those who stayed were bewitched with a magical spell was of course accompanied by the question: Will the next band really be worth this?
Oh God, they were worth it! Delayed after being first announced for Roadburn in 2022, the recent band of ex-The Devil's Blood singer Farida Lemouchi were finally on the bill now, giving me my final opportunity to visit the Spoorzone and enjoy a performance in the Hall of Fame.
Gott - which yes, is just the German word for god - had eveyrthing I expected: the unique voice howling over Occult Hard Rock vibes with inescapable groove, memorable melodies and awesome Heavy Metal triple lead guitar excesses. Was this actually the most METAL experience of the whole weekend?
It's idle to explore this thought deeper. What counts is that the music felt like being pushed through a flaming fever dream in the best way. A masterclass which desperately needs to be celebrated in more shows and releases.
But let's not forget what I promised you a couple of weeks ago in my review of The Spark, the Roadburn warm-up event on Wednesday: A return to the question of candles not being lit for safety reasons!
So Farida had this altar with candles pointing slantwise over the heads of the audience. Late in the show she finally lit them and soon wax was dripping onto the fabric and the ground below.
After a while a stagehand began having a hectic discussion with the stage sound engineer, which resulted in him just running to the candles and putting them out, securing safety for all of us. Rules are rules, I guess? The singer just had a laugh and I survived to tell the tale.
Even if I had stood aflame now, I probably would have been saved by the weather, because the bearded dude above couldn't stand someone rocking hard in His name and for the first time sent down rain onto the festival.
I can't remember if I even got one new item during my last visit to the merch tent. I definitely missed a handful of shirts and releases, just because I didn't have time to get here early enough. And then there was of course the case of the Ponte Del Diavolo album I didn't buy, because I falsly thought that I already had it on CD. Well, thanks to Seasons of Mist's free shipping weekend (plus a discount) I just rectified that mistake.
There was only one show left now before - much too early, but as always actually right in time - Roadburn 2025 would come to an end.
It was an odd yet fitting choice to let
Mong Tong, who I had seen before
supporting Kikagaku Moyo in Berlin in 2022, send
Roadburn into its one-year hibernation.
But as rhythmically confusing as their experimental mix of samples, Folklore, Funk and Electro-Kraut - all performed by the Taiwanese duo while wearing blindfolds - could get, as receptive was the audience for this last celebration of this year's strong Asian representation the festival had to offer.
It was for sure a special kind of Psychedelic trip (and quiet different to their more song-oriented show in Berlin), fascinating and magnetic. A great send-off to an amazing Sunday, which left me going with a heavy yet also very happy heart.
Gathering my final thoughts - as if there could ever be something like that after any five-day
Roadburn experience - I won't even try to put 2025 into a ranking with other editions. There have been years like 2022 with a higher density and intensity of magical and tear-inducing moments. There have been years much more formative in shaping my musical taste going forward. But seldom have I been so happy with almost all my personal choices. All artists I commited to see were worth it. And shouldn't that be close to statistically impossible after dozens of shows?
As always here's my first try of listing my favorite performances - with the special rule of including each stage only once - and my favorite
Offroad show...
my
TOP 7 favorite shows of Roadburn 2025:- SUMAC "The Healer" (Main Stage)
- ANGLES "The Death Of Kalypso" (Paradox)
- OTAY:ONII "True Faith Ain't Blind" (Next Stage)
- ZOMBIE ZOMBIE (The Terminal)
- WITCH CLUB SATAN (The Engine Room)
- GOTT (Hall of Fame)
- MANTRA MACHINE (OFFROAD, Little Devil Bar)
Finally, here's the mood of Monday morning and a couple of digital pictures I took after my second breakfast in Deventer, where I also finished the analog film I had started to fill on Sunday morning.
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 -
- Why Club Japan -
