Rock Werchter

‘With great responsibility comes great power’, a fan dressed as Spider Man would shout to the audience three times. Queens Of The Stone Age took that responsibility and gave a rock ‘n’ roll masterclass on the Main Stage.

Queens Of The Stone Age

Seen on 2/7 at Rock Werchter

Quattonists claim that Queens Of The Stone Age will never play such a good set as they did back then with Dave Grohl and Mark Lanegan in the ranks. More than twenty years later, however, the Queens are still just as relevant and they have made a number of records from which to choose without disappointing fans. They don’t care much about that.

A divorce, cancer and the merciless ticking of time turned the red giant Josh Homme gray, but you can set your clock right that as a frontman he still eats festival meadows from his hand. Especially with a set that mainly draws from …Like clockwork, the band’s modern classic that is also ten years old.

Better oiled than any fryer on the meadow, the five are attuned to each other. And to moisten the strings extra, Homme spit cool into his hand. With riffs tighter than their black jeans and a gratitude that reaches to the back rows, this was yet another triumph for the Queens.

‘Make it with chu’, with the return of Spiderman, was perhaps the best version of the world song we’ve heard, augmented with a snatch of ‘Miss you’ from The Rolling Stones. But the new ‘Straight jacket fitting’ was also a sing-along that the audience loved.

‘When you live like you’re in the dark, all you can do is see the light’, Homme gave as a life lesson. He’s been in deep shit, but with ‘Songs for the dead’ as a scorching closing track, life’s many moshpits buzzed. Regardless of what Arctic Monkeys plays next, the final day of Rock Werchter already received a five-star rock show as a gift.

Photo: Koen Bauters

2023-07-02 21:08:07
#Queens #Stone #Age #takes #responsibility #rock #roll #masterclass #Rock #Werchter

Headliner Muse may not have given a very memorable concert, fortunately our reviewers saw enough top concerts: Danielle Ponder and Fred Again.. are good for five stars. However, Machine Gun Kelly and Interpol fall through the ice. These were the highs and lows of day three of Rock Werchter.

Star Parade

The toppers of the day

Danielle Ponder

Danielle Ponder aimed straight at our hearts and hit the mark

Not to be touched in the depths of your soul by this forty-one-year-old soul singer from Rochester, New York? That was simply not an option.

Read the full review >

Fred Again…

Fred Again.. the madness was over

Sober as we are, we would have liked to write that it all got a bit out of hand. That Fred Again.. has his merits, but that the madness surrounding his concerts has lost all touch with reality. The 29-year-old producer thwarted our plans. Fred Again.. the madness was over.

Read the full review >

Fred Again.. Photo: Koen Bauters

Honorable Mention

Even more memorable concerts

Fred Again.. and Danielle Ponder played near-perfect sets, but a range of other performers also put on a four-star show. An overview.

Oscar and the Wolf – Max Colombie has always had a knack for shining. But when he hit the main stage at Rock Werchter as Oscar and the Wolf, he had just completely turned into a glitter ball. Read more >

The Murder Capital – This Irish band loves Belgium and that love is still mutual during these two Werchter passages. At the end of The Slope on the third day of the festival, the quintet was literally adored.

Blackwave – Blackwave took a packed The Barn to a world full of sunny West Coast hip-hop vibes. Read more >

Blackwave photo: Koen Bauters

Touché Amoré – The heavier guitar work doesn’t always go down well on Rock Werchter, but the overwhelming riffs of Touché Amoré really hit the spot on The Slope. Read more >

Dope Lemon– Angus Stone is known from the indie folk duo Angus & Julia Stone. With Dope Lemon he turns out to be a groovy guitar king. Read more >

Stone – This British band proved to be much more than a Britpop nepo baby. Moshpits and straightforward riffs on The Slope. Read more >

Better luck next time

The disappointing acts of day two

Machine Gun Kelly

Spicy climber is a mediocre musician

Machine Gun Kelly showed himself to be a gifted climber during his set, but also regularly went into the depths.

Read the full review >

Machine Gun Kelly Photo: Koen Bauters

Interpol

Hard to warm up to New York cool

At the beginning of the nillies, Interpol was the reference for post-punk bands trying to reincarnate Joy Division. Little of that relevance remained at Rock Werchter.

Read the full review >

Mimi Webb

A love rainbow painted with faded colors

Mimi Webb went viral on Tiktok in 2020 with ‘Before I go’, which was picked up by influencer Charli d’Amelio. If you don’t know some of the names and terms above, Klub C had 10,000 people who can explain them to you in great detail.

Read the full review >

2023-07-02 08:50:48
#Tops #flops #day #Rock #Werchter

‘When they used to say they wanted to play at Rock Werchter, everyone laughed at them. But look: now they are here.’ Presenter Stijn Van de Voorde subtly summarized Xink’s unlikely comeback: twenty years after their participation in Eurosong For Kids, Xink was on the main stage.

Xink

Seen on 1/7 at Rock Werchter

For the third day in a row it was a Belgian band that was allowed to shake up the Main Stage at noon. That’s no surprise on a rainy Saturday: it took halfway through the set before the field started to fill up. Those latecomers missed, among other things, ‘The other side’, one of the songs that still stands strong after all these years, with an amazingly mature text about the search for ‘more’ in life.

Singer Jonas Meukens seemed even more concerned with voice conservation than at the four comeback shows in the AB: now that he has a beard in his throat, he sings the songs he throated as a teenager a key lower. Guitarist Thomas Valckiers also contributed to a more mature sound: in the new ‘Aura’ you can hear the rattling rock that he also injected in recent years as a producer in bands such as Equal Idiots.

Apart from bass player Philip Valckiers – who now works as an international relations adviser at the Dutch Authority for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection – the members of Xink have always remained active in the music sector. That made them in an excellent position to realize that the gaping hole of Dutch rock had not been dived for years. A new song like ‘Maybe’, which was already at the top of StuBru’s De Afaccount, showed how it should be done: that song was sung almost as loudly as ‘The friendship band’ as the closing song.

A punky ‘Volkslied’ and ‘It’s my own life’ showed that those new songs were also welcome – in the AB they dug up better songs from the old box. Fortunately, ‘Let me free’ – another precocious song – made it to the setlist. ‘Life is mine / don’t keep telling me what to do’, Meukens sang there. Many would have recommended a band like Xink to put the past to rest. On the Main Stage they showed that the future is what you make of it.

2023-07-01 12:13:44
#Xink #Rock #Werchter #comeback #year

With Frank Deboosere gone from the screen, Maarten Devoldere took on the role of weatherman at the end of Warhaus’ show. Our prediction: Goosebumps with a probability bordering on certainty.

Warhaus

Seen on 29/6 at Rock Werchter

Warhaus was this time without ex-frontwoman Sylvie Kreusch at Rock Werchter, a loss that was compensated by an all-star line-up. Guitarist / producer Jasper Maekelberg and bassist Sander Verstraete of Faces On TV and Balthazar drummer Michael Balcaen and multi-instrumentalist Tijs Delbeke made The Barn’s ventilation system work overtime.

‘This tour we keep track of how many couples break up’, Devoldere added with some glee, and provided the ideal soundtrack in passing. Heartache is indeed a little less painful when songs like ‘Time bomb’ and ‘Love’s a stranger’ resound in such a tight performance.

Trombone, congas, flute and a trumpet disguised as a flashlight: it all fit into the sultry sound of Warhaus, culminating in the horniness of ‘Beaches’, described as fake jazz. ‘Fall in love with me’ Devoldere performed solo on acoustic guitar.

So goosebumps, even when ‘Open window’ sent a long-after-humming breeze through the tent. This Warhaus left no one indifferent.

2023-06-29 19:20:28
#Warhaus #leaves #cold #Barn #Rock #Werchter