Roadburn 2025: Temple Fang at The Spark
Before Show
Made it to Tilburg, which always feels good to say. The flight was a flight. In the seat next to me, an older gentleman boasting a particular odor accompanied (in the aisle seat) by either his much younger domestic partner of whatever sort or his home health aide, I’m not sure which. He was Dutch. Do they have home health aides here? Occurs to me I don’t even know how these things happen in countries where healthcare is seen as a human right.
In any case, seven bumpy hours of playing Zelda, not sleeping and having my dude’s smell imprinting itself on my olfactories and we landed. A car brought me to Tilburg. I’m at the Hotel Mercure, which continues to be nicer than anything I have any right to enjoy, and am once again sharing the room with Lee Edwards from The Sleeping Shaman, who apparently got in this afternoon and is already over at the 013, I assume being a useful and all around wonderful human being as I try to recover from the travel enough to get from ‘cave troll’ at least to ‘bridge troll’ before I hoof it down the block to the pre-show in about an hour and a half. A third espresso may or may not help, but I can only think of one sure way to find out.
The Spark is the Roadburn-branded name for the pre-show, and the lineup for the night puts Temple Fang first, followed by Rattenburcht and Thou. Unless adrenaline kicks in and I’m suddenly much closer to alive in four hours than I am now, I’ll probably abscond when the Amsterdam longform psych rockers are done. If there’s a vibe I’m ready for this evening, it’s them. Tell me it’s okay. Let me out of my brain for an hour. Let me drift for a little. And shit I hope they play new songs.
As for Rattenburcht, they struck me as more battle-vest, and Thou are always a good time on stage if you want consuming extreme sludge, as I often do, but they’re playing again this weekend and will probably do six secret shows at the skate park besides, so the opportunity will likely be there. If not, well, Roadburn has always meant hard choices. My daughter was hanging onto my luggage in the car at the airport to keep me from going away. That’s a new kind of hard choices, but pretty in-keeping with my experience of parenting up to this point in that I felt like garbage.
Maybe I’ll try to close my eyes again for an hour or so and see if that doesn’t get me right, though once the music starts it’ll all be fine. It always is. The rest is just anxiety.
—
Temple Fang
Doors at 7PM, or 19h if you want to do the 24-hour thing. In the venue — security pointedly NOT dicks about either the bag or the camera in it — and up to the balcony. Mellow prog, psych, boogie on the P.A. Roadburn DJs always on point. The Next Stage, which is kind of still the Green Room in my head, slowly filled up as the hour went on. I did some socializing earlier — enough to know I don’t have it in me — and ducked out. I had decided to leave the hotel early to find food beyond the almond butter I brought with me, but alas, I couldn’t get in the building in time and my dinner ticket went unused. So it goes.
Seeing Temple Fang was among my most urgent sets at Roadburn 2025. That is, the whole thing. This is because of their brilliant new album, Lifted From the Wind (review here), which is out next week on Stickman. I’ve seen Temple Fang before, including twice at Roadburn 2019 (review here and here), but the record is simply another level.
It’s also 71 minutes long, so no, they didn’t have time to do the whole thing in an hour-long set, but with incense burning on the stage, they came out and gradually made their way into “The River” before unfurling “Once,” “Josephine” and “Harvest Angel” from the album. That left out “The Radiant,” for which they premiered a video two weeks ago, but again, Roadburn means hard choices, and the big finish opportunity that “Harvest Angel” gave them wasn’t to be missed.
But it was the journey to get there that made it such a special set, and the power and heart poured into this material. I haven’t been so struck watching a heavy psychedelic rock band commune with the Beautiful since YOB, and if you think that’s hyperbole I’m tossing around, you haven’t heard the record. You didn’t need “The Radiant” because the shimmer was all around. At the same time, it’s incredible to think that these sprawling, massive compositions still align themselves around verses, choruses, repetition — that there’s structure to it and a plan unfolding.
That’s more evident in Lifted From the Wind than it’s yet been for Temple Fang, and whether it’s lines like, “Let it all come in,” from “The River,” or “We’ll keep believing in the beauty at last,” delivered in three-part harmony in “Josephine” from bassist Dennis Duijnhouwer, and guitarists Jevin de Groot and Ivy van der Veer, which they nailed, there, in the other emphasized lines at the ends of verses, and in the later non-lyric melody, its complex meld of rhythm and melody held together by Daan Woperweis on drums, or in “Harvest Angel,” which Duijnhouwer and de Groot incited the crowd to, “Follow the rainbow,” and didn’t the least ridiculous in the context of the song. For that accomplishment alone, it was a special set. Never mind the rest of the 60 minutes you just spent getting a spa treatment with your own soul.
I didn’t stay when they were finished. I didn’t need to. I’m going to see some amazing things at Roadburn this weekend, but on a certain level, it’s all gravy after Temple Fang. I consider myself fortunate now to have watched that band play these songs in that space. With all respect to Rattenburcht and Thou, both of whom I’ll almost certainly regret not seeing in the morning, that’s a problem for the morning.
Went back to the room, ate a protein cookie, wrote. I’m actively trying not to have a plan for the weekend. Someone told me to see pg.99, so I’ll do that. I’ll watch Kylesa. Beyond that, like last year, I’m content to let myself take the day as it comes, do a bit of wandering, and hopefully find some new sounds that way if I’m lucky and keep my mind open. Here’s hoping.
If you’re here, have a great Roadburn. It was slammed, line out the door. If you’re not and you’re keeping up, thank you all the more. “Once you feel this way, then you surrender.”
There’s a couple more Temple Fang pics after the jump if you’re interested. Thanks if so.
Hadn’t realised there was an album out – one of many things I’ve missed this year so far. But knowing that I can spend some time with it before seeing them in Germany next month has brightened my day.