Motocultor Festival pulled out all the stops by booking Machine Head to close this year's festival. Robb Flynn's band, already very popular, seems to have gained a new aura lately and is transforming itself into a huge headliner ready to take the place of older bands. This fourth day is sold out, people have come in droves to see Machine Head in Carhaix. However, the site remains relatively pleasant despite the crowds, and traffic is still fairly fluid... although it's true that the area around the Dave Mustage is going to become less and less accessible as the evening progresses.
LUNAR TOMBFIELDS
Four days of festival is a long time. Even with the best will in the world and having set twelve alarms, we drag ourselves a little more than usual under the Carhaix sun and arrive a tad late in front of Lunar Tombfields. We bitterly regret it, because despite it being an open-air concert in broad daylight, the atmospheric black metal band immediately draws us into its tormented and melancholic universe. Live, the songs gain power and manage to lose us in these ‘lunar tombfields’ (even the band's name is great), while the melodies bring poetic images to life and the vocals lighten up to more easily bring this cold, nocturnal universe to life. Intensity, very human pain that bursts forth from sometimes epic songs, a real evocative power... we didn't expect to be so captivated first thing in the morning.
WYATT E
Belgians with a name borrowed from an American officier and bison hunter, but who immerse us in a mystical universe steeped in Babylonian imagination? Why not, after all, Carhaix is a bit like the French Wild West, and the combination of dust and sunshine could well plunge us into a fantasy world mixing the arid landscapes of the Far West with ancient Mesopotamia! Once we get over the novelty of the costumes, we realise that these fake beards and togas don't really help to communicate with the audience. Never mind, Wyatt E. isn't here to chat with words, but to take us on a journey.
We allow ourselves to be seduced by this unique offering, this hypnotic and fascinating doom metal with Eastern influences, which aims to take us on a journey to explore ‘ancient Babylon with an almost mythical approach through the eyes of the exiled captives of Jerusalem’. The heaviness works very well to cast a spell on the audience at the Bruce Dickinscène, and the compositions have real cinematic potential, both as an illustration of forgotten and dreamt landscapes and as a narrative accompaniment... If the band continues to invite female singers in the future, as was the case on their latest album Zamāru ultu qereb ziqquratu, Part 1, we still hope to have the opportunity to see them on stage to bring extra life and embodiment to the ritual!
DOODSESKADER
We knew the start of the day would be intense. We had already seen Doodseskader on stage. Yet we weren't ready. Tim de Gieter and Sigfried Burroughs don't cheat, they don't hold anything back, and they give their all in every performance. This one had a special feel to it from the very beginning, when Tim, with a dark look on his face, began pacing nervously across the stage, staring hostilely at the crowd in front of him. He came to do battle with himself, and the concert turned into an intimate fistfight, a physical exorcism: you could feel that he was trying to extract all the darkness he found within himself and lay it bare, live, tearing his soul apart. He was wearing shorts, but it was as if he were naked. Behind him, in the smoke, his partner and friend Sigfried pounds his drums to provide a backbone for the guts on display, singing his parts that give a grunge/shoegaze/alternative rock touch to Doodseskader's mix of burning rap, tortured industrial and bursts of hardcore/metal.
The riffs come from far away and hit hard, stunning the audience. Bone Pipe is overwhelming. FLF is intense. Doodseskader delivers a series of painful and cathartic blows. The concert is not a show; the performance exudes authenticity, vital necessity, urgency, despair, rage. As usual, Tim de Gieter takes advantage of the breaks between songs to thank his audience profusely and humbly, placing the exchange at the heart of this unique, wild, true and deeply human moment. At the end of the concert, as soon as the last note is played, he runs off the stage. Doodseskader is not a trivial project, it is a beast made of suffering. You don't get involved without taking a few risks and, for us, it was the most emotionally charged concert of the festival. From a somewhat voyeuristic and sadistic perspective, we find all this communicative pain both magnificent and redeeming... but we also hope that one day they will find a form of peace so that they can show us the gentler side that they promise (or threaten?) to reveal one day, if their musical therapy finally pays off!
MARGARITA WITCH CULT
The Margarita Witch Cult concert comes at an unfortunate time: after the explosion that was Doodseskader, it's impossible to fully immerse yourself in their psychedelic stoner/doom with obvious influences (they're from Birmingham, which indicates their obvious legacy). One could blame the sun, which doesn't help the band's occult, 70s vibe, but ultimately it's not that distracting when you're listening to heavy riffs played by guys with a relaxed attitude. However, we savour the nostalgic approach that imposes itself, the sinister tone that creeps behind the heaviness of Lord of the Flies or Crawl Home to Your Coffin and its heady mystical riffs, while enjoying the sunny rock'n'roll groove of what is ultimately the best appetiser before Candlemass tonight.
GOST
After the sunshine of the Bruce Dickinscène and the excitement of the early part of the day, we thought we'd go and chill out a bit in the shade of the Massey Ferguscène to see GosT. Texan James Lollar's darksynth/black metal project divides opinion. While we can appreciate the chaotic and infernal madness of his mix on album and his desire to try his hand at several things (notably with a goth/darkwave album), we can also criticise a certain tendency towards messy layering. Live, it's the same: GosT will divide opinion.
You can have fun dancing like crazy to his ultra-aggressive dark electro assaults with their ever-entertaining hint of blasphemy... or you can wonder what the point is: you can't see anything through the smoke, but there's not much to see anyway. Lollar has swapped the skeleton mask he wore last year for a simple black hood. He launches his sequences and occasionally moves around behind his gear: even if he's not really playing live, we'd like to see him put on a bit more of a show, or sing a little, as he does on some studio tracks. Fortunately, his sidekick, bassist Cole Tucker, brings a human face and a little life to the show. We know that GosT would also like to perform with a drummer in the future: we can't wait to see him again in a configuration that will make the live show even more interesting than just giving us nosebleeds with bass from outer space!
It's time for a ‘Machine Head update’: shock among photographers! Contrary to what was initially planned, it seems that no photos will be allowed during their show after all! ‘We're not sure, we'll keep you posted, we'll try to negotiate,’ we're told. Some sigh, others panic. We're not going to lie: Machine Head is great to shoot for showing off, but at the end of the day, if we can't bring you any photos, we don't really care (and, given our editorial line, you probably don't either).
FEAR FACTORY
Bitter critics will say that you don't go to see Fear Factory to hear their most recent tracks. And they'd be right. With industrial metal somewhat overlooked in this year's line-up, we weren't about to miss out on these giants of the genre! When the Californians take to the stage, it's mainly to play tracks from Demanufacture, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. So much the better! Replica, New Breed and company take us back to a time when music videos were all filmed with wide angles and hair gel ruled every haircut. As for the line-up, guitarist Dino Cazares, the only member from the Demanufacture era still involved in the band, is the boss. Tony Campos, often busy with Static-X, gave way to Ricky Bonazza of the Butcher Babies. Milo Silvestro, who replaced Burton C. Bell on vocals in 2021, may have been only seven or eight years old in 1995, but he has easily mastered the repertoire and puts on a great show, energetically assuming his role as frontman.
Fear Factory occasionally deviates from Demanufacture for the unmissable Linchpin, which takes us back to the days when all bands mixed electro-metal and nu-metal and made music videos that looked like The Matrix. We also get Shock and Archetype, which, having been released in 2004, is the most recent track to date. There's dust, a huge wall of death, the machine crushes us relentlessly from start to finish... and ultimately, yeah, we didn't come to see Fear Factory to hear their recent stuff, and that's just as well, because the old songs haven't aged a bit. We, on the other hand, have, and our bodies are making that very clear.
GAUPA
Alongside Fear Factory, dark rock/stoner/doom band Gaupa offered the Bruce Dickinscène a less turbulent alternative. We are quickly surprised by the involvement of singer Emma Näslund, who runs barefoot and energetically across the stage, dancing and smiling at her audience. We are also surprised by the more positive turn the music takes, just in time for aperitif hour. Gaupa's latest EP, FYR, was released recently and left us with a more sunny, rhythmic and psychedelic aftertaste. Gaupa is eccentric and unpredictable, offering catchy tunes tinged with mysticism. It's very well done, far from stereotypes (even during the more folk-inspired passages). The recent Lion's Claw, for example, holds the audience's breath before exploding with intensity... But here's another band that we hope to see again in concert to better appreciate the more immersive parts of the songs and the darkness required to be more in tune with their more melancholic touches!
PRIMORDIAL
The problem with festivals is that the word ‘festival’ sounds like 'festivities'. A term that does not fit AT ALL with Primordial's universe. Primordial's music, with its blend of doom, heavy and black metal infused with touches of folk, is music for rushing towards your doom, throwing yourself into battle with the only hope of a fatal defeat. These are hymns to bury the dead, a distillation of suffering, mourning, lamentations by the fireside, desperate causes, forgotten bodies rotting under the clouds... but with an epic touch, a zest that galvanises our withered carcasses on the Irish moors. A funeral march led at a brisk pace, in short. A funeral cavalcade. ‘We are falling over the ends of the earth, So gather your children before you and tell them these are the final days of all’: the first words sung by Alan Averill as he kicks off the concert with As Rome Burns set the scene.
And then there is the attitude of Averill, a.k.a Nemtheanga, the charismatic and facetious frontman who holds out his microphone stand to the audience before, with a sceptical pout, showing us how our attempts to sing along with him are futile, doomed to failure. A communicative showman, sporting a stern executioner's air with a remnant of rope around his neck, he strides across the stage with a menacing look on his face. Between the contrasts offered by the music, which is both stimulating and gloomy, and the live performance, which brings a touch of fun to the darkness without veering into buffoonery, Primordial is always a sure bet on stage. Hearing The Coffin Ships as the sun began to set was the perfect way to wash down a beer with the tears of mourning gleaned from the trampled earth.
It's almost 8pm. Time for a quick update from Machine Head : ‘So, it looks like you might be able to take photos after all... but it's possible that it'll have to be everyone at the same time and only during the first song.’ According to some sources, there were about 50 of us accredited. According to others, more than 80. Whatever the source, it's a lot! We're already stepping on each other's toes when there are 10/15 of us, stuck between the pyrotechnics and the essential security cordon to catch the crowd surfers... So 50 to 80 people? We look at each other, those who were panicking start to hyperventilate. Those who were sighing with annoyance shout ‘I knew it, Robb Flynn, you're a pain in the arse!’. We start to think that if we have to pile on top of each other to take pictures of Machine Head, we'd rather be underneath so we don't get burned by some pyrotechnics or get beer thrown in our faces.
LANDMVRKS
A few moments before the concert, some guy from the security staff, who like everyone else is starting to feel tired after four days of festival, asks, ‘I don't know this band, is it going to be calm?’ Poor old fellow... At festivals, we often go to see things we probably would never have seen elsewhere. We challenge ourselves, we surprise ourselves, we step outside our comfort zones. What would four days of festival be without at least one detour to see a modern metalcore band? And while we're at it, we might as well go see Landmvrks, whom we happily bump into every summer... We remember their appearance at Motocultor two years earlier, in a tent, in the afternoon. Since then, the young band from Marseille has come a long way, including a super-boost appearance on the Main Stage at Hellfest at 10 p.m. as a replacement for Bad Omens, and Landmvrks has become a phenomenon that now fills big venues.
Landmvrks is flashy, often predictable... And yet, it's also done well enough to command sincere respect. We are regularly impressed by the versatility of singer Florent Salfati, whether he's belting it out, rapping or launching into his clear voice parts (Suffocate gets a perfectly mastered unplugged opening). We have a lot of fun with the very flashy side of the show, with pyrotechnics and graffiti interludes that contribute to the ‘this is Marseille’ folklore and amuse us greatly here in the fields of Brittany. Salfati asks the audience twice to jump ‘as high as possible’: but then, is the second time to prove that we didn't do our best the first time, or will it seem lacklustre? Oh dear, how stressful, quick, let's jump as high as possible and we'd better put our hearts into it!
It's raining crow-surfers, hallelujah! You can even see a guy surfing on top of his mate's body as he's carried along by the crowd... to the point where you realise that at Landmvrks, despite the pyrotechnics and the band's best efforts, what you really want to watch is the audience! A quick thought then for the guy who, a few minutes earlier, was warming up his wrists and wondering if he was going to rest a bit. It was chaos, and Landmvrks made Motocultor absolutely unbreathable due to the tons of dust kicked up.
Sorry, we missed Harakiri for the Sky. We know how popular this band is. For once, our team decided to eat during the festival, for the first time in four days, so we could listen from afar (you'll see, we're planting the seed for a plot twist here that will come to fruition later). In any case, Harakiri for the Sky's appeal lies more in their music than their visuals, especially under the Massey tent where we wouldn't have been able to see anything anyway. We're telling you all this mainly to say that we have nothing to say about it, but we still wanted to mention that we knew they were there. So, let's check in with Machine Head again: still no news, 10 p.m. is approaching and the festival's big headliner is keeping us in suspense!
CANDLEMASS
Finally, headliner, that's easy to say... For us, the big bosses of the day, the metal bosses of the weekend, were Candlemass. We anticipated their arrival hours earlier on the same Bruce Dickinson stage, whether in front of Margarita Witch Cult or Gaupa... Or even Primordial on the Supositor stage, heirs to this blend of epic and sinister. The moment has finally arrived! Under the Breton night sky, the grand mass can begin and the Swedish legends appear to the sound of their revisited Marche Funebre. We shiver: it's going to be so good, and already Leif Edling counterbalances the heaviness of the atmosphere with his festive mood and invites the audience to wave their arms in the air. It's a bit like when we used to hear Ozzy chanting while Black Sabbath played the intro to War Pigs... well done metal, it's like being at a funeral but in a stadium!
And it was awesome. How could it be otherwise? You don't need to be a die-hard Candlemass fan: all the songs are instantly familiar and all the songs are awesome. It's mystical, heavy, imposing, groovy, embodied, fun and epic. Bewitched cuts through the night. The voice of Johan Längqvist, back in the band since 2018, is powerful and flawless: hear him chant Dark Are the Veils of Death with theatricality! The enthusiasm of the wizard grandpas, led by the unshakeable bassist Leif Edling, is contagious. Earlier, we were amused to see that all the songs played by Fear Factory were at least twenty years old. Pff, babies! The only song played by Candlemass dating from after the fall of the Berlin Wall is Sweet Evil Sun! This may also explain the coherence of the show and the feeling that each song is an eternal classic! During the gloomy inflections of Under the Oak, Crystal Ball and Mirror Mirror, we regret not having anyone to sacrifice at hand. We end with The Well of Souls and Solitude, which will remain one of the most deeply satisfying concerts of this festival, a timeless monument of absolute accuracy, certainly absolutely predictable but so COOL.
11 p.m. So, what's the latest about Machine Head? "Good news: conditions are normal, you've got three songs, and since all the festival photographers will be there, we'll rotate with quite a few people at a time and not too much time... Anyway, there's still an hour before they play, so expect things to change again between now and then!" Sighs of relief among the photographers, immediately replaced by a new anxiety: but then, wait, if we want to be sure to take pictures of Machine Head, we'll have to get there really early! So we'll have to rush through Kanonenfieber or the Bloody Beetroots as quickly as possible!
This edition of Motocultor was rich in personal discoveries: we saw some absolutely kitsch things that we would never dare mention in public again, we tried to take a lunch break... So we have two personal realisations left in reserve: first, do we actually care about Machine Head, after all? Please understand, we say this with the utmost respect for this cult project... but it doesn't necessarily fit with our team's tastes or our editorial line. So if that means, at best, taking photos in difficult conditions, with the stress that this causes and the tensions exacerbated by fatigue? Then, imagine that taking a lunch break was actually a terrible idea: the one time we sat down was also the one time we got food poisoning. That settled the matter: too bad for Machine Head, we decided to finish with stomach cramps, yes, but also with fireworks.
KANONENFIEBER
The fireworks in question are Kanonenfieber. The German blackened death metal band pulls out all the stops for their show, adding barbed wire on stage and trench scenery to (very) numerous flame throws, explosions, sparks, costume changes... But it's not just about the show! Kanonenfieber's highly rhythmic approach gives their music a wild and martial energy in keeping with their theme. Kanonenfieber is World War I in all its horror. The musicians are anonymous, paying tribute to the soldiers who died during this slaughter. The lyrics are inspired by period archives, letters, etc.
The result is both a total spectacle, with occasional long pauses to change costumes or set pieces, and a poignant concert in which violence is used to highlight the atrocities of war. One example is Der Fusilier, in which blue lights and snowflakes create a cold and desperate setting, with the musicians returning to the stage shivering and frozen. Noise, the singer and author of the project (in the studio, Kanonenfieber is the work of one man), reads a letter and then tears it up, its pieces scattering among the snowflakes. Then he brandishes a snow cannon to cool down the audience, whose skin had been scorched by the pyrotechnics. It's a feast for the eyes, but also for the soul, as the melancholic chorus bursts forth into the night.
There are flamethrowers, skull masks, a big boat. Kanonenfieber has only been around for five years but already has an ultra-ambitious show. In the audience, you hear the inevitable comparisons with Sabaton or the other Teutonic pyromaniacs of Rammstein... it's true that Panzerhenker's riffs do have a vague resemblance to a hybrid of nu metal and industrial metal from the 2000s! Kanonenfieber still exudes something more visceral, with its more violent but nevertheless accessible music. Let's congratulate Motocultor for booking them where they deserve to be: on a big stage, at an ideal time slot. As many people were waiting for Machine Head who were about to play on the stage next door, many of us realised that Kanonenfieber definitely have what it takes to be headliners.
The impact was monumental and reinforced our decision: let's end Motocultor 2025 on this crazy memory, with the impression that the festival has really taken a step forward this year. We could sense it recently, with the festival lasting four days, a new site and an increasingly ambitious line-up... But now, Motoc' has come of age. Apart from the minor issues we raised when we talked about the first day (most of which – particularly security – were resolved as the festival progressed), the event has never seemed to run so smoothly and enjoyably. The first announcement of bands for next year nevertheless raised a few eyebrows, as the festival had skilfully avoided controversy of any kind so far (to put it politely, we're more in the Witch Club Satan team than in the Slaughter to Prevail one...). We now hope that Motocultor will continue to build on this year's very strong foundations. If it manages to retain its strengths (its capacity, in particular!) and refine a few points (shaded areas, dust management), we will soon have nothing to complain about in terms of Motocultor's organisation. We will then only be able to argue and grumble about the subject that interests us most: the music!
Our tops 3 :
Maxine : Doodseskader, Lunar Tombfields, Kanonenfieber
Pierre : Doodseskader, Candlemass, Kanonenfieber
