GALLERY: 16.4.2026 Roadburn – Day 1 @ 013, Tilburg

June 18, 2026

Back at Roadburn at last! The countdown has gone to zero, and for the next four days, we are going to have an overdose of weirdness both in the musical and artistic sense. Our return to Tilburg could have gone a little more smoothly, as traveling seems to have become quite the challenge, and while we were supposed to be in town in time for the warm-up evening at 013, we arrived at our destination with a small 10h delay. By then, the shows were over, but at least we would have gotten another chance to see CRIPPLING ALCOHOLISM first thing on the opening of the festival on Thursday, April 16th, 2026.

So after some rest, we tried to forget the disappointment for the missing shows with a very chilled late breakfast at LOC Brewery, right after fetching our wristband and pass, of course. Nothing like an egg salad sandwich, some bitterballen, and a glass of locally brewed beer to properly settle in and celebrate the fact that we are finally back in the Netherlands. Following the positive news: the Koepelhal is back and more spacious than ever! Last year felt quite weird to enter The Terminal from the back entrance, so it was really nice to see these restoration works being completed.

With this renewed enthusiasm, we still had the chance to grab a coffee and greet some familiar faces, catching up on the events since last year, before heading in for the first show of the weekend. As mentioned, we missed them the previous evening, but CRIPPLING ALCOHOLISM gave us a second opportunity today. Even their set was exactly the same, understandably very much focused on the latest “Camgirl”. Not being a very experienced band, they had a major chance here to get their message through to a whole lot of people, seeing how the hall had already been crowded from the beginning. They are a quintessential Roadburn band: experimental goth noise / post-punk with socially-themed songs on subjects such as mental health and addiction, so they pretty quickly fell into the festival’s radar, and here they were, playing live two shows in two days for the first time outside of the US. The fact that some people had already seen the same show the previous night, combined with them being the very first band of the first day, made for a mixed reception, with the majority of the people already present who were just starting to slowly ease into the festival atmosphere. There were, of course, some more excited fans in the crowd, and I am sure the band has been overall quite pleased with their double European debut, spending quite some time during the rest of their stay hanging around and chatting with fans in the purest of Roadburn spirit.

Being the first properly t-shirt-worthy weather for us after the long Finnish winter, we made a mandatory stop at the ice cream shop halfway between the Koepelhal and the main venue, treating ourselves before catching the first half of ISKANDR’s show. Hailing from Gelderland, and precisely from Nijmegen, the project led by Omar “Iskandr” Kleiss (DOOL, SOLAR TEMPLE, and, among others, live guitar for FLUISTERAARS) is something we overlooked on its 2023 appearance at the festival, so this time we didn’t want to repeat the same mistake and dived straight into these doom-y folk atmospheres rooted in Dutch black metal. Melancholic as much as emotionally raw, the show offered a glimpse into the creative mind of this young artist, pushed further with the new “Sacraal.” The trombone was not the strangest instrument used during this performance, making this quite a unique experience.

We didn’t manage to see the latter half of this show as KRALLICE was going to perform the first of their three sets at this edition of Roadburn, the “Future” one, to be exact. For this long-overdue return, the main hall of 013 was well-prepared to receive the NY-based band. As artist in residence, this set was made of new compositions created for the occasion, and representing the future direction of their musical journey. Without knowing much what to expect, this was certainly the most-awaited set of the three, and it was one of the musical highlights of the festival. Aside from being able to finally see the band live, let alone with brand new music, they struck with not just the heaviness of their delivery but on how the material sounded as an upgrade to their classic sound, with room for experimentation, of course – as is in their avant-garde nature – but without moving completely away from their distinctive soundscape. It just felt quite brilliant. So we spent most of the set in the upper floors of the venue to witness this unique performance, finally realizing a few shows into this first day that we are back “home.”

Still reeling from this (and while having missed the MACHUKHA show everyone later raved about), we got to our first gig at the Hall of Fame for this year, namely DEAD NEANDERTHALS. Visually very minimalistic, their show was the manifestation of the band’s recent evolution, brutal in its heaviness, mesmerizing in its execution, and primitive as the name suggests. We are definitely glad we got to see this at least a glimpse of this, and would have wanted to check out the full set, but alas Roadburn can be cruel when you are really getting into a specific show, just to realize that you have to run to the next venue (and honestly through the years we also learned that sometimes you don’t really “have to” do that, thus getting our FOMO much more under control!).

So – cameras in hands – we headed back at speed towards the main stage, where PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS PIGS (or PIGSx7 for short) had just begun their performance. Having seen the guys from Newcastle a few years back at Sideways festival in Finland, we had a pretty good idea about what to expect, or at least that’s what we thought, as when the band began playing the latest “Death Hilarious,” it immediately caught me how much heavier the sound was. Certainly, the fact that they were playing in the main stage of 013 and not on a much smaller outdoor stage in a parking lot made for part of the difference, but the whole show made me re-evaluate the band in a more positive light, at least as a fan of this kind of sludgy, noisy, kind of stoner. Watching the vocalist Matthew Baty sweating all over the place barefoot, as per tradition, was a bit reminiscent of CHAT PILE in the last couple of years of the festival – the two bands have quite a different energy, though.

We skipped the last couple of songs of the set to find a good spot at the Next Stage, where we were really curious to see FAUNA. If we have learned anything about Roadburn in the past 3-4 years is that there will always be some oddball – party-vibe – intriguing bands, you have likely never heard of before. This is one of those cases, and in their live show, they easily exceeded the expectations we had from listening to their music in preparation for the festival. In the cramped stage, this Swedish ensemble based in Göteborg brought a massive dose of psych, kraut-trance, and electronic that got everyone dancing within seconds. This would have been a fantastic finisher for the day if not for the festival as a whole. In a way, it brought back some flashbacks from ALTIN GÜN‘s show last year, although the latter leans heavily on the Turkish folk. FAUNA relentlessly enchanted the crowd with their contagious rhythm, and you could really tell they were having a lot of fun themselves, which affected the audience as well. At the same time, we did miss both HABAK and EYES due to this, but we still left the hall with a big smile and these catchy tunes in our heads, which was a huge plus.

Deciding to make life a bit easier for ourselves at least on this first day, we were now going back and forth from the two stages at 013, so just as FAUNA‘s gig was nearing its end, we headed to the bigger stage to see UFOMAMMUT. The Italian trio embraced the past, present, and future theme of this year by offering a special set representative of what the band is, has been, and where it’s headed. The big stage served well in allowing them to manifest their powerful soundscape in full, aided as usual by the psychedelic visuals complementary to their massive riffs and spacey build-up to their doomier base.

Their vocalist, Urlo, this year will double down later in the weekend with his own solo project THE MON, and together with the guitarist have been heavily involved with the Malleus art collective, having an exhibition in the N16 space here in Tilburg during the event. After about half of the set, we had to make our way towards the Engine Room – unbelievably for the first time this year – for the first of the three ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE sets we are blessed with over the weekend. Another band with the badge of artist in residence, they gave us one hour (a bit more if you didn’t have to run to CULT OF LUNA) of pure psychedelic weirdness. Just closing your eyes would make you lose yourself in that ethereal, colorful world made of daring experimentation, only at times blunted by trying to find a spot with better acoustics inside the venue. Adding to the special nature of these shows, the band was enriched by the presence of Cotton Casino, founding member and defining voice for their early days, of which today was the main representation. Almost like a mystical experience, simply being here at this exact moment felt like it gave something unique to the audience, transfixed, witnessing the show among colorful, patterned lights illuminating the entire space. If music could speak to the mind, this is exactly how we imagine it to be. Snapping out of it was the reminder that we had to go catch at least some of CULT OF LUNA‘s show. But the fact that they had just earlier announced a Skatepark DOODSWENS secret show made our CoL experience a very brief one. Would have been nice to delve into their old classics set for longer (and they did start the show with “Finland”, after all), but on the other hand, we were pretty happy at the chance to see the Dutch black metal trio in such a peculiar setting.

Being used to seeing them constantly with corpse paint and all, both live and in their imagery online, the band from the nearby city of Eindhoven – featuring the guitarist of DÖDSRIT and OSSAERT, among others – performed in very casual clothing in a show that was just stripped bare, leaving the entire focus on the music, and especially of course their new self-titled record. The crowd was maybe not going “super” wild, and many were scattered around the other venues, but for us, this was a very good opportunity to witness this band in their rawest and purest form, without embellishments or any distractions. Given the proximity to the Hall of Fame, we did run out for a few minutes just to try and catch some of WORLD PEACE – while failing at it, or rather being able to see just about the very end of their very brief set, proving as elusive as their name – just to come back until the end of the DOODSWENS show. Eventually, that led us to miss also MARUJA, so we settled with UNSANE as the last band for our first day, which was not the worst of choices!

As the trio recently remastered their critically acclaimed “Occupational Hazard” from 1998, they presented it live as a whole, with a bunch of extra songs, to the Roadburn audience. Remember when we said earlier that FAUNA could have been a fantastic finisher for the day? Well, this is not that bad either, at least when you appreciate this kind of abrasive noise rock with a killer bass line. Clearly, from how intense things got with the crowd, their fans got what they wanted from this show, launching a good mosh pit. The energy of the front duo on stage was at least on par with our previous encounters with the band, who also played a few other fan favorites from other records before finishing off with “Understand.”

This was the time for a well-deserved beer to celebrate a positive first day, to my dismay the “nicer” beer spot at the junction was already closed though, but thankfully they must have sensed my disappointment at all that expectation as I was awarded a small freebie, eventually grabbing some late night food on the way to the Airbnb to try to get a good rest before things would really start to heat up!