Dutch Prog Matinee - Musicon The Hague, 19 July 2026

Dutch Prog Matinee was it called and three to me unknow bands came to Musicon. Now I was worried for it being a Sunday afternoon show during school holidays. Apart from that Musicon does not really program a lot of prog anyway. So there I went supporting the venue and the prog scene, being surprised that some 30-40 people showed up. No faces I recognized from Musicon, but opening new markets makes sense always. Today's beers came in plastic cups, as last night's national grunting championship had a fuller house. Opening band were Proxima Flare. Their prog was metal light and moody. At times making me think of A Liquid Landscape, especially on the moody parts. They were pleased with their T-shirts and stickers. Me not being a cat-man not so much impressed. Their presentation was comfortable, but they did not mention song titles. I liked the last two songs best, when the metal bit and guitar soloing increased somewhat.

Next band were called Hurryland. With a name like that I hoped for some speedmetal blended with their progmetal. Well I hoped in vain, as they mixed more jazz with progmetal. Actually instrumentally a very strong band, but with no bass on stage I heard loops and tapes I guess throughout their set. The keyboardist played his first gig with the band, so looking a bit uncomfortable with headphones on, should be forgivven. I actually liked the vocalist's voice and considered the three songs where she sang stronger than the three instrumentals. When she sang and the band played their technical bits I thought of District 97. Nice band, even if their presentation has space to evolve a bit.

Last band were Artemis from Delft. They played more hardrock, than anything prog really. The band was fine, but the voice did not click with me, being a bit over the top at times. At a certain moment did he also ask for a circle pit? well that did not happen. It was sounding fine, but after some songs I decided to go home to watch the tour de France. Turned out that when I was on my bicycle, Vingegaard fell off his. That ended the last bit of tension of this tour, but I can still enjoy the stages. Finally musically I should have gone to Breda today to see Ruthless and Mindwars in Sounddog. But I preferred staying close to home and see some sports in the afternoon and evening. Wednesday it is time for metal in Brabant. Next Prog must attend do in Musicon is in November when Changeling comes over bringing Obsidian Tide and Hyla along.

Werfpop (Textures) - Leidse Hout Leiden, 12 July 2026

Summer festivals are suffering. With the increased fees for bands, plus all additional costs the many free festivals in our region are falling one by one. Over the years (decades) cycling distance from The Hague lost Parkpop, Schollenpop, Vlietpop and Westerpop to name a few. Werfpop is still running and this year they included two metal bands to the bill. Now Werfpop is not at cycling distance on my city bike, but we have trains going to Leiden. Well that is until our national rail gets involved. So I had to make a mix, cycling 10 km to the nearest station with trains to Leiden and than train and walk. Why telling all this unnecessary travel information? Because it made me decide to go for the shorter version of Werfpop and only attend the evening. This resulted in me missing the second best band of the bill The Curse Made Flesh. I say this without even knowing them, but by seeing bits of Prins S en de Geit and Postmen, I guess it is not hard to know. Actually of the bands I did see before Textures, Arson were pretty nice. These Belgians play a sort of modern punk, post hardcore and dressed up nice they presented this in such a way, that the crowd had to move along. Not unlike Martyr they let a bottle of booze go rond, but kept control by holding the bottle themselves. Well they did get pits and even joined one at the end. plus a wall of death was made upon request by people whose dayjob obviously was not attending a wall of death.

The closing band, reason to head to Leiden and festival headliner for me were Textures. This year Textures came back after an eight year hiatus, with the very strong album Genotype. I followed Textures from the beginning and remember them playing Polars when OLS was still called OLS. Swandive! Later on I would see them several times and before their end they headlined a Saturday at Progpower too. The current line-up of six is very strong and live they always prove why they are Holland's biggest Progmetal band. Vocalist Daniel de Jongh was also playing Werfpop with Crown Compass last time I was at Werfpop, but for Textures it has been ten years to be back. Now I don't take notes and with Textures I cannot place all songs immediately with title and album it came from. So opener was a tape Void from Genotype and I think we did get A Seat for the Like-Minded too. Basically what we got was one hour of progmetal build on grooves and melody. with vocals going from clear to extreme and heads would bang. A very nice way to end a pleasant evening in the park, which justified taking poor train connections.

Masacre & Dauthuz - Musicon The Hague, 7 July 2026

Tuesday night and the worldcup is on with two matches. So I was in doubt, but in the end I preferreed Colombian Death Metal over Colombian football's first half. So after a long break back in Musicon I was. Two bands on the night means always a more relaxed time schedule, so at 20:30 Dauthuz kicked  of. This gave me time to read on whatsapp that once again Argentina won with opponents complaining about the referee.

Dauthuz opened and these Noord-hollanders play death metal. Quite a bit of variation through their set, so at times death doom moving to OSDM and what I maybe liked best were some guitar shredding parts as if an eighties schrapnel record was blended in. Their presentation was lively and the vocalist made sure you would not drift off in thoughts. They are over ten years around, but I don't remember seeing them before, nice band they are.

Headliners tonight were Masacre with one s from Colombia. Formed in the late eighties and  releasing their debut full lenght Reqviem in 1991. I never heard of them before and went mainly to support the underground, Musicon and Colombia. Checking their discography I noticed their last five releases since 2020 are all live albums. I saw noone recording tonight for a live in Musicon album. That would be a short album anyway, as it seems that they played a festival set only tonight lasting some 45 minutes. But what they played sounded very nice. Especially the duelling guitars were to my liking.  During the set we also got the chance to improve our Spanish when vocalist Alex asked us to shout along. I recall shouting along Hijos da Puta and Imperio Del Terror. At the end many times Death Metal Forever was shouted which gave the closing song more of a Power Metal feel really. When all was over Colombia were closing their first half against Switzerland, so I sort of rushed home. Next time Masacre come over I will get one of their albums in Spanish, as I need to upgrade my Spanish anyway for South American guests in Brazil. Now I left pleased that I decided to revisit Musicon after almost three months and getting confirmed music always beats football.

Dimhav - A Forest of Stars - Psyclops - The Scalar Process

While in Brazil my CD purchases always tend to lack behind. In that case I go more to bandcamp. So herewith 4 very diverse albums I bought the last two months.

Dimhav - Ondine

Dimhav are from Sweden and they play porgmetal with power metal traces, just like we know from Sweden over the decades. The band consists of two brothers Olle and Staffan Lindroth. They take care of all instrumenst and as vocalist they called in Daniel Heiman. Now that was a smart move as vocals are top on this album. The songs themselves are also great, even if not all are stuck in my head yet. That is not strange as seven songs lasting together over an hour, you  do the math. The power metal influences makes it sound more like 1996 than modern progmetal bands. I love this style of progmetal, but PPE seems to ignore it alltogether this year. Check Dimhav out, apparently this is album number two, so I might have to explore their past too.

A Forest of Stars - Stack Overflow in Corpse Pile Interface

Now here is a challenging band: A Forest of AStars from Leeds. They play Black Metal, but of the avant-garde kind with folk influences. I discoverd them on their last album, which I ended not picking up in 2018. Now they are back with another long ride. six songs totalling 73 minutes, so do the math again. Their long songs mean they are not in a rush. The vocals are not singing, but more reciting. The music has an eary haunting atmosphere over it. An interesting album, which needs some time to consume. Especially those into a band like Dodheimsgard should check this out.

Psyclops - Bound to Burn: Melody of the Martyr

Is it an EP. or is it a full album? Who cares, this is my progmetal discovery of 2026 so far. It also is not an album, but a multimedia project where a comic book is added to the lyrics and I don't know what more. Now I don't care about comic books, but very good music makes me happy. We get modern progmetal here, with old-skool progmetal leanings at times. Both the clean and grunting vocals are pleasant to my ears. Musically there is enough power and speed in their prog to keep matters exciting. The 13 songs include three triple part anthems, so it is all a bit confusing on that front. I sneaky hope that PRR have to cancel their Progstorm appearance and Psyclops step in. I mean I am even interested in their 43 page comic book, that comes along with the album. If you like progmetal in any shape or form, you should listen to this album.

The Scalar Process - Agnomysticism

I think it has been proven that if you have to fight yourself through days speaking hte horrible French language, you seek solace in technical death metal. I can't explain otherwise why so many great tech-death bands are from France and the French speaking part of Canada. The Scalar Process released their second album, but were new to me. I actually first bought their sweatpants, as my old  Pagan's Mind one was worn out. This was when it was still cold around February. The album was released 29 May only and I bought it on bandcamp too. Their tech-death has more accessible parts woven in and should appeal to those into progmetal not afraid of grunts too. I now picked up my sweatpants with my neighbours and I can proudly wear them over winter, as The Scalar Process deliver for when I need to hear my metal fast, furious and technical.