A View From The Back Of The Room: Roadburn Festival 2024 (Live Review By Dan Bradley)

Roadburn Festival, Tilburg, The Netherlands, 18-21.04.2024

https://roadburn.com/

This year Roadburn celebrates 25 years of “redefining heaviness” and championing the cutting-edge of underground heavy music. It started out as a zine by Walter Hoeijmakers, whose generous and open-minded approach to new music and its grassroots communities is still the beating heart of the festival. Since 1999, Roadburn has grown from a small sporadic event to a four-day multimedia experience woven into the fabric of Tilburg city that includes live music held anywhere from 3000-cap main stages to intimate jazz clubs, pop-up DIY stages and a skate park, and a typical programme might contain full-album playthroughs, art exhibitions, talks and Q&A sessions with artists, and specially commissioned collaborations – not to mention the much-coveted secret shows.

I’d first heard about Roadburn in 2019 after a French friend recommended a tattoo artist who was “into the same dark, weird heavy music as you” and went to the festival every year. I’d planned to go in 2020, but then the pandemic upended my entire life, and triggered a discovery of neurodivergence after an umpteenth bout of work-related burnout. Roadburn playlists were the soundtrack to this difficult period of self-discovery, but with the cost-of-living crisis rolling on and on, an overseas jolly to see my favourite bands always felt like a foolish indulgence. Instead, over the past five years, I’ve closely followed the festival’s Spotify playlist, watched highlights on YouTube, continuing to discover my new favourite bands and trying to catch them live whenever they came through Cardiff, Bristol or London.

In February this year, with no sign of life in the UK improving for working-class people any decade soon, I decided, fuck it, grabbed a four-day ticket, last-minute flights and a pitch at the campsite. I knew less names on the line-up than previous years, but also trusted Roadburn to put on a programme I’d love.

WEDNESDAY

Travel from Cardiff to Tilburg was a doddle. Dutch trains are reliable and inexpensive, and English is commonly used and spoken, so the trip from Amsterdam airport down to Tilburg was very straightforward. The weather was cold and dreary, but I was too excited to mind.

Before I’d even got off the train at Tilburg, I was greeted by some friendly metalheads who asked if I was also going to Roadburn. After a nice chat, they pointed me towards the campsite (10mins walk from the central station) while they set off into Tilburg to buy some drugs (weed is legal, but the festival still offers guidance on etiquette and legal considerations on the website). The guys confidently assured me that Roadburn was “the best festival in the world”.

Some heavy rain the night before had forced a rearranging of the campsite layout, but the ground was fine for pitching, and everyone I met was helpful and friendly, and the site facilities (toilets, hot showers, drinking water taps, charging station under a large tent) were all clean and well-maintained. The campsite also had a communal campfire, an OFFROAD stage for live music, food stalls, a coffee van, pizza oven and a massive supermarket only five-minutes’ walk away, so you can get any food, drink and toiletries you need at reasonable prices.

Before the main festival started on Thursday, there was a Spark pre-party with three bands to entertain all those who’d turned up early. I was pretty wiped out from a day of travel, but went along to the Next Stage to catch the first band, Riot City (8).

There couldn’t have been a more fun band to start the week. The venue was packed and buzzing, and after a few minutes of The Terminator theme, we heard the shriek of an eagle. The band strode out with long hair, tight jeans, classic band cutoff tees and 80s NWOBHM attitude to spare. Their sound was very familiar – chugging guitars, melodic shredding, soaring falsetto vocals and one foot always firmly planted on a monitor, horns to the sky – but it was all played with such love, self-awareness and infectious energy, the crowd were bopping around after only a song or two. This set had me grinning, not only from the high-octane set, but how appreciative the crowd were from the first power chord. It boded well for the rest of the week.

Sadly, I was wrecked after a day of travel, so I headed to bed soon after their set, quickly lulled to sleep by a frog chorus in a nearby pond.

THURSDAY

I slept well, and was surprised how quiet and respectful the other campgoers had been during the night, even those returning late from a night of partying; proof that heavy metal festival campsites don’t have to be feral mud pits.

After a great hot shower, and some coffee and iconic banana cake from a vendor, I went to check out the art exhibition in NS16, a studio space hosting part of the free OFFROAD programme. The exhibition contained unsettling sculptures of fleshy biomachines by artist Fedrik Vaesson, reminiscent of props from a Cronenberg body-horror, while the walls were covered in moving and vulnerable self-portraits and photo essays from David Fitt, who was also selected for the 2024 website and poster designs. The fact that Roadburn offers a quiet, reflective space away from the crowds and heavy music, and champions up-and-coming visual artists alongside the musicians playing on the stages, is one of the things that really set the festival apart for me.

I next got my festival wristband from the exchange, located two-minutes’ walk from the Spoorzone, which contains several music venues, food stalls, lockers, toilets, merch tables, vinyl stalls and plenty of places to sit, grab a drink and rest. I was on a tight budget, so decided against getting any merch or music, but there was an impressive selection on offer, and lockers nearby costing a few euros per day if you wanted to stash things while you hit the mosh pit.

By lunch time, I’d started to feel lonely and overstimulated – such moment are inevitable if you solo travel to a festival, after all – but Roadburn do everything they can to make it easy to make friends. I headed over to the 013 basement bar for the meet-up for solo travellers and first timers (10). A few dozen of us all got stick on name tags, grabbed our complimentary free drink, and set to mingling. People were exceptionally friendly, and there was also a lovely welcome speech from Walter, Becky Laverty (Booker, Publicity & Communications) and a solo first timer from the previous year. I was lucky to click with some guys from Manchester, swapped numbers, and we ended up coordinating much of the week together.

The first major show we saw was Body Void (9), performing their 2023 album ‘Atrocity Machine’ in full. This album had seen the trio move away from a sludgy riff-driven sound to include a lot more synth and noise elements, so this tour saw Jacob Lee (Elder Devil) taking over guitar duties while singer/guitarist Willow focused on vocals and noise. Compared to their brutal set I’d seen in Bristol the week before, the light show, and the sound quality of the mix here was on another level. It was still loud and crushing, but the balance of components was so much crisper. Across the week, what impressed me was how the bigger venues captured all the fine-grained detail of these heavy bands’ sound, something that I’ve found gets muddied in smaller local venues.

Next, we crossed town to the Engine Room to see the first of UBOA’s (8) much anticipated three sets across the weekend. As 2024’s Artist in Residence, the Australian musician Xandra Metcalfe was invited to play three UBOA sets: an obliterating Meltdown set on the Thursday, a full playthrough of her 2019 album The Origin Of My Depression’ on the Saturday, and a restorative Calm Down show on the Sunday night. Her recorded work creates challenging soundscapes from whispered and screamed vocals, synths, guitar, drone and harsh noise to tackle themes of rage, sorrow, PTSD, neurodivergence, and ultimately catharsis. 

The Meltdown set was a real onslaught of harsh noise, screams and strobed lights, and I had to close my eyes at several points. The Body Void set was harsh and heavy, but this was like striding eyes-wide into a hailstorm, and the emotional and sensory intensity was almost too much. I found myself getting emotional during the rare lulls in the barrage of sound, which would be a recurring theme during the week. Stepping straight out into the sunlight and crowds was more than my fried brain could handle, and so I had to stand to one side of the hall with my hands shielding my eyes and my earplugs left in for quite a while before able to move onto the next show. Absolutely shaken.

After we’d recovered from that, we went to get a good spot to see Chelsea Wolfe (9), who would be playing the Main Stage. The venue has an excellent staggered layout that means there was plenty of space upstairs on the balcony to sit down before the show. I’d really enjoyed her run of albums and collaborations from Pain Is Beauty (2013) onwards, restlessly combining experiments in dark folk, gothic Americana and doom metal with her ethereal vocals, but admit I was less invested in the most recent electronica-influenced release, She Reaches Out To She Reaches Out To She (2024). 

The bulk of the show was taken from this newer album, but the complexity of the rhythms and dynamics were really brought to life by the band and Wolfe’s always-astonishing vocals, and I enjoyed it a lot more than I was expecting. It was nice to hear some earlier cuts from Hiss Spun too, although the high point was the stripped-back acoustic songs that finished the set. Being in that 3000-capacity venue and feeling a pin-drop intensity between each song was electrifying, and the hauntingly beautiful new track at the show’s close is an exciting sign of things to come.

FRIDAY

The weather this week had been largely cold, drizzly and overcast, with occasional spots of sunshine, but Thursday night it just rained and rained. My tent lost its battle against the elements, and so I woke up with my feet in the shallow end of an impressive tent-puddle. I got up early, just to get out of my sodden tent, grabbed a coffee and checked out a great set of progressive, grungy rock from Tilburg locals ENMA (6) at the campsite OFFROAD stage. Their sound did evoke other bands a bit too often, especially TOOL, but was still a polished and tight performance that got the campsite revved up for the day ahead.

The first official show of the day was the Roadburn debut of “Teeside agitators” Benefits (7), whose furious blend of harsh noise, live drums, and the acerbic spoken-word ranting and screaming of frontman Kingsley Hall perfectly encapsulates life as a product and participant in modern Britain, both in its grinding misery and despair, as well as in anger-fuelled defiance. The band were aggressive, confrontational, and Hall was hypnotic, and the band had the full attention of the Engine Room venue. We would have stayed for more of the set, but found this too harsh a start to the day, so ducked out after about 30 minutes to check out the commissioned piece from Ragana and Drowse (6).

Labelmates from The Flenser, the black metal duo Ragana and Drowse (Kyle Bates) collaborated to create The Ash From Mount Saint Helens, blending sections of soaring drums and guitars, sung and screamed vocals, with more lush, shoegazey sounds in quieter sections. The performance was a bit uncertain, and the two members of Ragana having to swap drum/guitar duties affected the pacing, but the songs themselves were strong, and hit some emotional highs once they got going. The set was quite short, which was a shame, as I could have listened to a lot more of this collaboration.

After two big sets, I wanted to check out a show at Paradox, a small jazz club tucked away from the main strip, as well as have a proper sit down and rest my broken feet. But this set by local electronic trio Drone Assembly (9) was one of the festival surprise highlights, and a good demonstration of how the festival rewards taking chances. By the time the band had started, the venue was absolutely packed. The trio then took us on an improvisational journey using synths, drones, vocoders, pedal-warped guitars, loops, chants, assorted bells, chimes and instruments to create a huge soundscape that ranged from devotional chants to soaring guitar-led sections to pounding EDM. 

The 45-minute set flew by, and the standing ovation and rapturous applause that followed was well-deserved. The band seemed overwhelmed by the number of people who turned up, and how appreciative they were; this is something that Roadburn seems to foster, and why artists are perhaps so keen to play here. A band may accept playing their heavy niche of music to a few dozen people on a rainy Tuesday most of the year, but then at Roadburn those handfuls of people from each town and city across the world come together to fill venues in their hundreds or thousands, so you can see why it means so much for bands to play here.

Next, we got right to the front for Liverpool producer Forest Swords (8), who played an absolute belter in the Next Stage venue. Forest Swords makes me think of a danceable Burial, using dislocated samples and dense, grainy ambient textures to capture the bleak rain-soaked landscapes of post-industrial UK towns but never losing that ear for a melancholy hook and danceable beats. I’d loved his latest release, ‘Bolted’, and this performance more than lived up to my expectations.

I watched about 25 minutes of the Health (7) set on the main stage and enjoyed their blend of synth-driven metal. They put on a great live show, with lots of drama in the music played out in their light show. But a friend had heard about a secret Agriculture show at the skate park, and he was desperate to be there early. Just as well, as we when we got to the park an hour early, just as Couch Slut were coming out of their secret show, the queue was already starting to form.

The Agriculture (10) set that followed was one of my festival highlights. We managed to get right to the front of the stage in the skate park, so we could feel the full force of their euphoric and crushing blend of black-gaze. The band’s whole gestalt is a mischievous subversion of black metal tropes and cliches alongside a heartfelt faith in the ecstatic power of music to transcend the everyday. And it’s a joy to see a band having so much fun on stage. 

In the second half of the set, they also had support from UBOA, who added improvised harsh noise and screams, although she was tucked away behind cabs, so I’m not sure how many people knew she was there. I went in not really knowing who Agriculture were, but came out a fan. This, to me, is one of the unique draws of Roadburn: seeing cutting-edge acts with the excellent production quality of big budget shows but with the intimacy of a local DIY show. You can watch a band crush a show in front of a thousand people, then chat to them in the line for food, as the boundary between musician and festival goer is so porous – perhaps because everyone here is a music fan first and foremost.

Nothing was going to top the Agriculture/UBOA set, so I had an early night to make sure I had enough energy for all the things I’d circled in biro for the next day.

SATURDAY

While writing my notes in downtime and strolls between shows on the first few days, I’d started to sketch out an earnest arc for this review. It would chart my interwoven path to Roadburn and a later-life discovery of my own neurodivergence, sparked by discussions a few years ago with a tattoo artist and Roadburn regular who was processing an official autism diagnosis in her mid-30s. The life-changing music I’d then discovered through the constellation of Roadburn artists had consoled me through a difficult few years of grief and acceptance around this discovery, and this would culminate in watching UBOA’s playthrough of The Origin Of My Depression, which deals with her own sense of feeling “broken” for being autistic, ADHD and trans. I’d already gotten emotional during her Meltdown set, so fully expected a cathartic experience at the album playthrough on Saturday night, no doubt bawling my eyes out.

And then I ate a dodgy supermarket salad on Saturday morning, and quickly succumbed to diabolical food poisoning.

Instead of getting to see anticipated sets from UBOA, Agriculture, Couch Slut and Torpor – not to mention Khanate’s first live performance in 19 years following their surprise album drop in 2023 – I shivered in my sleeping bag all day, nauseous and feverish, unable to keep down any food or drink, praying for the sweet release of death.

I give food poisoning a ‘1’ as, at the very least, it gave my battered feet a day off.

SUNDAY 

I didn’t “wake up” on Sunday morning as I’d never really gone to sleep the night before, but the fever had passed off, and I accepted that I had to get up at some point. I dragged myself to the showers around 7am, and hobbled a few loops around the campsite trying to get some fresh air and push down the nausea.

The only food truck open at this point was the small coffee stall. They kindly asked someone to go find me a paracetamol, and, perhaps seeing the state of me, gave me a hot ginger tea and slice of banana cake for free. I slumped down on a sofa under the large tent nearby, and spent the next half an hour eating the cake, several crumbs at a time.

The walk to the main stage in town was arduous but it was better to be moving than shivering in my tent.

And I’m so glad I did; the first piece I was able to catch was the astonishing commissioned piece Lux Tenera – A Rite To Joy held on the main stage. For a new commissioned piece with an enormous jazz and pop orchestra, the Main Stage was nevertheless packed out, which tells you all you need to know about the trust and open-mindedness of Roadburn audiences. This hour-long piece was a collaboration between Die Wilde Jagd (8), the music project of producer and songwriter Sebastian Lee Philipp and the Metropole Orkest. 

My review is hampered by the fact that I was sat outside with my head in my hands for most of it, but the diversity and dynamic range and power of this piece was hair-raising, from highs driven by pounding taikos and soaring strings, to quiet ballad sections. The quality of sound in the venue, when I ventured inside, was superb. There was even someone playing a carnyx, a tall Iron Age celtic trumpet with the head of an animal, which had been flown over from Scotland for the occasion. Just magical. The piece ended to rapturous applause, and I felt energized to tackle a few more shows.

Hilary Woods (7) was one of the acts that I’d been determined to check out, after discovering her dark and beautiful 2023 release, Acts Of Light. The album builds haunting dirges and drones from field recordings taken from Woods’ nomadic journeys through Ireland and Spain, stringed instruments, electronics, samples and live choirs, into something truly unsettling, challenging and affecting. This show covered the dark sounds of the recent album, enriched by Oliver Turvey on violin, and the dimly lit venue and muted performance allowed the audience to take their own journey through the drones and soundscapes. 

I want to say I loved it, and was transported by the hour, but where I was stood at the back of the balcony, the sound was unfortunately boomy and muddy. I struggled to pick out the textures and detail that had made the album such a wonderful listen. Nevertheless, when I heard the bassy droning strings of Where The Bough Has Broken – my favourite track from the album – I experienced a huge wave of emotion and felt grateful to be there. In spite of the subpar sound, I hope to catch her live again in different circumstances.

I grabbed a hot ginger tea and muffin at the food trucks outside the main stage, and wondered whether to call it a day. I was still feeling very unpleasant.

But then I got a text to say that Torpor (10) would be playing a secret show at the skate park, and, food poisoning or not, I had to be there. I met up with a mate an hour before the show, so we could ensure we got in; we’d seen from the Agriculture show that queue etiquette could crumble quite easily so we didn’t want to lose out (though in fairness to Roadburn, they now had metal barriers up to ensure a bit more order).

I’d seen Torpor at the Crofters Rights in Bristol the previous week, opening for Eye Flys and Body Void, and was really impressed. But this skate park show was something else.

We were both unsure about being in the mosh pit for this show, as the small audience space with ramps on all sides is a recipe for a tumble, so we stood at the back overlooking the park. Compared to the pristine and professional sound and light shows of the main venues, the skatepark is baldly lit, echoey and cold, but the atmosphere couldn’t be more perfect. 

The ground shakes with the bass, and seeing hundreds of people across the space moshing, leaning over metal railings, sat against walls, stood swaying in their own worlds – the secret skatepark shows capture the excitement and DIY spirit of the scattered local scenes that Roadburn curates its programme from, and reminds you of all the basement shows and DIY spaces where you’ve seen bands like Torpor get their start and build their following.

Their sound was huge, filthy and all-consuming, taking large slabs of sludge from their 2023 offering Abscission. The band filled the cavernous venue when dragging the audience through its slower heavier cuts, then swept everyone away on the faster songs. During the quieter sections, the band also capitalized on the intimacy of the space by standing on the raised wall in front of the crowd, with Lauren Mason (bass) reciting the spoken word section of Interior Gestures, while drummer Simon Mason took to the same podium for the screamed sections in Carbon.

The applause went on for a very long time, and as we eventually filed out into the chilly Tilburg air, everyone knew that we’d witnessed one of those shows that pass quickly into Roadburn lore.

MONDAY

The next morning, I rose early, feeling better after a half-decent night’s sleep, packed up my tent and made my way straight to the train station for a midday journey home.

While sipping coffee in the station, I kept thinking back to a moment from the night before. The Torpor drummer had gotten up after their crushing set to give his thanks, and admitted that despite not being an emotional guy, he had almost cried in the middle of three different songs. Nothing unusual about a band getting emotional, especially when Torpor’s Roadburn performance has been so anticipated since the pandemic scuppered their last planned visit. But I remembered a friend turning to me during the Health set and admitting they’d also been overcome with emotion out of nowhere. I’d been finding the same thing all week too – it would hit me during the sets, or while looking at art, or just waiting for a coffee at a stand, that I was here at Roadburn, among likeminded people and my favourite artists, experiencing shows that will never happen again.

The Roadburn Facebook group coincidently started a thread that week where dozens of people shared their own such moments, feeling overwhelmed with emotions during the festival, so it is definitely a communal experience. This is not only a credit to Roadburn for the powerful and moving lineups, and the way they facilitate making friends and new connections, but also for creating a progressive, openminded, supportive, queer-friendly space so that people can feel like they can be vulnerable and earnest about their experiences without fear of ridicule. Also, best vegan food selection I’ve ever seen, hands down.

Roadburn is not going to be for everyone. If you can only afford one major festival a year, I understand why people would choose a line-up of names they already know and recognise. And if macho moshpits and boozy all-nighters are your idea of a good time, you’ll probably feel out of step with Roadburn’s older, more esoteric crowd. But if you want to hear unique commissions you’ll never see elsewhere, witness full album playthroughs, secret shows, discover your new favourite artists, and attend a friendly, openminded festival where the boundary between artist and fan is almost non-existent, this is the place to be.

The tickets for 2025 went on sale the very day after the festival ended. I’ll be doing what I can to go again next year.