I went back and forth on whether I would write about Roadburn this year, mainly because I had no idea if I would have the motivation or the commitment to doing so once I got back home. Over the Festival weekend a few people asked and I was still leaning towards no up until the Sunday morning of the fest. It’s been quite a long time since I wrote anything substantial and even longer since I wrote about live music. However, the weekend was quite extraordinary and on Sunday morning after a strong coffee, I decided to go for it.

I got home and those feelings disappeared quite quickly. Was it worth it? To write down how I felt about several bands, how they performed and how the crowd received them? I still don’t know and yet here I am, writing about my feelings once again.

Roadburn Festival is a unique place. The atmosphere is always one of welcoming and of being open to new and interesting music. People wander in groups or alone, although there is never a feeling of being lonely in Tilburg as everyone is there for the same reason. To enjoy the bands you know and to discover the ones you don’t. I missed last year for personal (I was hella sad) reasons and so getting back into the spirit was a little harder this year. Getting up at 02:30 may have had something to do with this, yet a triple espresso on the train from Schipol to Tilburg certainly helped in boosting the energy levels.

Thursday

Laying the foundations for the first day of Roadburn is the wonderful Hexvessel, performing 2023s Polar Veil in full to a crowded Terminal stage at De Koepelhal. This is one of the newer venues for Roadburn, a short walk away from the 013 and its Main Stage and housing the merch area, The Engine Room stage, and a growing outside hub for food and drinks. A well-received, covered area called The Junction was a blessing during the rain and the Hall of Fame and Skatepark venues can also be found in this area.

Hexvessel are well prepared as their stage is adorned with the stark landscape of winter in bare trees and smoke acting as a shroud, creating a transformative drape between the band and the audience to cross and commune with. The album itself is a fairly heavy work which revels itself ever more in the live setting as guitars ring out with early 90s black metal worship while frontman Mat McNerney unique vocal spills out into the darkened hall. Friday will bring Mat’s commissioned work for the festival and this set only stokes the interest further.

A quick walk to the second venue inside De Koepelhal brings us to Sunrise Patriot Motion and their first ever live performance. Roadburn is the place for these kind of wild adventures, with special album sets, new commissioned works and bands taking on the live environment for the first time. The band themselves are no strangers to the stage as the Skarstad brothers also play in Yellow Eyes, and so their command of the audience is as immediate as their curiously bombastic post-punk style of metal. Songs are danceable and dark in equal measure and the aura that emanates from the band is one of vivid, vibrant danger.

Next, after a coffee break and a recommendation to check out Scaler on the Main Stage, is a walk back to 013 and the giant space that houses the Bristol-based quartet for the next 50 minutes (it might be worth mentioning, that for the most part I caught full sets for everything I saw this weekend). “Expect the unexpected” is a great tenet to live by when it comes to Roadburn and while having no expectations at all having not known Scaler prior to tonight, all expectations are completely blown away by the energy and passion the band display. Melding guitars with electronics is something that is becoming much more present within the heavy music scene and Scaler show exactly why it can work. I’m glad I brought my dancing shoes.

One of the highlights of the weekend, on a personal level, was the addition of clipping. to the line-up. Hip Hop may be the base of their chosen style, yet clipping. bring so much more to the proverbial table. Tonight sees their more upbeat tracks performed with vocalist Daveed Diggs delivering some of the fastest lyrics of the weekend – it’s truly a sight to behold – while Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson take the centre of the stage alongside their mesmerising and glitchy beats. Diggs promises us a wild ride and a wild ride we have as their touring partner Counterfeit Madison brings a whole other level to the clipping. live show with a vocal performance that blows the whole crowd away. Roadburn might be known more widely as a “metal” festival but recent years have seen them turn to other spheres of music in order to bring us heavy music that falls into other categories. Damn, it’s a good choice.

Roadburn Festival is as unique to each person attending as their fingerprints. As the incredibly diverse line-up shows, the festival is not beholden to one genre and so finding your own way through each day is quite the special experience. Choosing who to see and who to miss, when to take to down time and whether it’s worth standing in a non-moving line for a secret show (I saw none this year) — everyone will have had a different itinerary. I skipped White Ward because the queue for The Engine Room seemed neverending, but I enjoyed listening to them while sitting outside with a delicious coffee before going back in for the claustrophobic black metal of Canadians Thantifaxath.

Thursday was a danceable day, however, Thantifaxath put a stop to that with their colossal take on black metal. Beats are nowhere to be found and the dissonant aspect of the band rings out across The Terminal in waves of avant-garde fire. Finding any tangible rhythm is as nightmarish as their sound and the inclusion of live theremin only adds to the opaque, bewildering atmosphere.

In stark contrast Backxwash, only announced this morning, closes out the main stage with beats aplenty and an energy that is both nervous and excited. It’s a huge stage for only one person to cover and halfway through the set she climbs into the audience to scream more directly into the crowd faces, who do exactly the same back, bringing the community ever more into the fabric of the festival. It’s a thrilling end to the first day, that’s for sure.

Friday

Today is quite Main Stage heavy as every time I try to check out the Next Stage, the queue is longer than my patience/ultimate desire to see what’s playing there and the weather so awful that going outside seems like a terrible idea. First is the commissioned piece from Mat McNerney, superbly titled Music For Gloaming: A Nocturne by the Hexvessel Folk Assembly. This is a work that was months in the making and the attention to detail and pure love for the task comes through as soon as the musicians take to the stage. Ghostly make-up and cool lighting set the atmosphere firmly in the cold expanses of the north and as soon as McNerney lets out his first scream, the audience are enthralled. As the band move through the work, we hear the influences peak through yet the style is firmly in the realm of Mat’s career, taking in all aspects of his sound and placing them in the vessel of dark music. A surprise guest appearance from Dødheimsgard’s Vicotnik seals this commissioned piece as one for the ages.

This weekend we are privy to two Blood Incantation performances with today being focused on their wonderful, cosmic, synth heavy ambient piece, Timewave Zero. The stage is covered almost entirely in smoke for the entire hour or more as the lights and lasers captivate every soul here. It’s quite the spectacle, made even more fascinating when two figures take to the microphones set up at the front of the stage. A trombone appears and behind a familiar figure emerges from the smoke. Everyone seems to have the same idea as we look to each other and to the stage, wondering “Is that who I think it is?” And it is. It’s Atilla of Mayhem, who performed yesterday as Void Ov Voices, doing some truly hypnotising vocal work for a musical composition that is already spun out of the weirdest fabric of the universe. His addition to Timewave Zero was hugely beneficial and as we spill out of the side doors, most cannot believe that just happened.

Next on the Main Stage is Dutch rock band Dool, who are performing their new album The Shape of Fluidity in full tonight. Having only just been released today, the audience are not wholly familiar with the record and yet that bears no influence on the enjoyment of the crowd. Dool are an incredibly tight rock band and in frontperson Raven they have an electric and vital presence at the centre. The Shape of Fluidity may be the most personal album Dool have released so far, but today shows that this journey is not one that needs be taken alone.

HEALTH are certainly one of the main draws of the festival, with their take on electronic falling into the EBM vibe rather than being held hostage to the instruments they wield. Their whole aura is one of being outside of the norm, their internet personalities portraying them as guys who spent too much time on the internet in their formative years (I don’t think this is a lie, honestly), and they bring that to their aggressive beats and wild live shows. It’s tongue in cheek, in a way, and it’s really damn good to dance away your worries to songs that sound like video game soundtracks and bad decisions.

After HEALTH, the sense of needing to move still lingers and so clipping. provide the perfect structure in which to do that. Tonight they promise a harder, darker setlist that differs to Thursday’s and they deliver that in spades. The band are surrounded by the shadows of The Terminal as the beats glitch out into off-kilter rhythms as the crowd moves as one. Diggs rapping is still impressively quick, so much so that the disbelief probably shows on more than just my own face while the words spill forth in narratives that sound all too real and fully disturbing.

Closing out Friday is another recommendation – Patriarchy. Honestly, this was the most unexpected fun of the weekend with a sprinkling of – “what the hell is going on?” thrown in during almost every track played. Led by the fascinatingly named Actually Huizenga, Patriarchy are a whirlwind of spite, 80s synth and the kind of honesty that is missing from a lot of music. It’s a trippy end to the day and one that will stay in the memory for much longer than I’d like.