A more recently formed band, but put together of some of the top of the Belgian music scene with members of bands like Amenra, Carnation, Living Gate, Oathbreaker, Cross Bringer, Doodseskader, Every Stranger Looks Like You and Cobra the Impaler, Predatory Void released an exceptional debut album earlier this year and was most definitely a performance we had been looking forward to hard! So Saturday afternoon, we made sure we made it in time for their show on the Swamp Stage where they played most of the track of their ‘Seven Keys to the Discomfort of Being’. Getting to see and hear tracks like ‘*(struggling..)’, ‘Endless Return to the Kingdom of Sleep’ or ‘The Well Within’ live was an absolutely unforgettable experience, and we can’t wait to get to see them on stage again asap! If your bread and butter is anything in the direction of black, sludge and death metal, or even better, a mix of those, Predatory Void should be an obligatory part of your regular music intake!

Ever since their ‘Unfold the God Man’ album, we’ve been huge fans of what Psychonaut does musically. And with last year’s ‘Violate Consensus Reality’ they managed to make us fall in love with them even more. So their performance on the Helldorado stage on a very strong post-metal line-up at that stage had been marked in our planning as an absolute must straight from the beginning. And what a blessing it was to see these 3 guys bring their music live! It grabbed us all the way deep in our souls and got us drifting away from the hot Sunday afternoon into some dreamy, magical realms for the time they played. What a band!

Probably one of Belgium’s more popular heavy bands right now, when STAKE set up shop on the Helldorado Stage on Sunday, they were met with a pretty full tent and a crowd that was out of their minds straight away. Since the whole day this stage featured mostly post-metal acts, we had expected it to be somewhat of a haven of calmness for most of the day, but not with STAKE… Suddenly there was a humongous moshpit in the middle of the crowd, and you started seeing crowdsurfers pop up like little mushrooms everywhere, with at some point even a little girl, much to the delight of the crowd. Brent and his buddies kicked off with an incredibly high energy and never took the foot off the throttle throughout the whole show, what a rush it was!

Probably one of the hottest bands in Belgium right now would be Brutus. The 3-piece manages to create such gorgeous, emotion-laden compositions, it’s truly something special. And on top of that, they have the unique setup where the vocalist, Stefanie, is also the drummer. A mixture of post-hardcore, post-rock and post-metal, they constantly flow between captivating and trance-inducing heaviness and mesmerizingly gorgeous melodies. And live that’s exactly what you get, just a bit more pure and raw even than on record. Sure, they may not play everything absolutely perfectly, but those little live imperfections just take things to another level. This was really food for the soul and we had the impression that the huge crowd showing up for Brutus, came here to get that same fix. Pure magic!

We had the option to choose between Cult Of Luna and Hypocrisy to completely wrap up our festival weekend, and knowing how unique of an experience a live show of Cult Of Luna is like, we very much opted for them. And we were not disappointed one bit! The intensity of the music and performance, the mesmerizing light show and the unique setup with 2 drummers brought all the awesomeness we remembered of their performances. It was an almost cathartic way to wrap up the long and exhausting festival weekend, letting ourselves be captivated and float away on the atmospheric, yet harsh tunes of this exceptional post-metal outfit!