Here we go again: with increasing attendance and an ever more ambitious and varied line-up, Motocultor Festival continues to grow. Taking place for the third consecutive year in Carhaix, on the Vieilles Charrues location, the famous metal (but not only) festival opened under a blazing sun heralding a heatwave rare for the region at this time of year.
Among the new features, we note that the site has moved a few meters and has been slightly reorganised. The Bruce Dickinscène at the entrance is no longer covered, as its marquee was damaged before start of the festivities (it will be back next year), the Massey Ferguscène is a little more isolated, while the two main stages, the Supositor and the Dave Mustage, sit side by side at the back of the site, as they did last year. While getting to and from the Massey can sometimes be a headache, especially at night, and there is a bit of a lack of space around the main stages due to the space taken up by the VIP area, it has to be said that it's pretty well done: most of the festival-goers are grouped together in the same place, the flow of people is well broken up and directed, and the three open-air stages are slightly lower down, making them easy to see even from a distance. .. Motoc' is refining its organisation.
In fact, its organisation is often a source of tension. The festival has a reputation for being a bit rough around the edges, even messy. When one thing improves, another deteriorates. ‘This isn't Hellfest!’ some purists always shout, seemingly taking pride in the sometimes bizarre conditions of this event. However, this year, there's not much to complain about in terms of water points and toilets, with reasonable waiting times (except for a shortage of toilet paper during Gutalax, of course), beer machines reducing queues at the bars (although we've heard of bugs that mean the machines charge you but forget to dispense the drinks!), and everything is going pretty well in terms of parking and access to the site (a quick thought for our colleague, who panicked on the first day when he discovered that the media and VIP entrances were mixed up and that there was little chance of him arriving on time for his 3pm interview with the gates opening at 2pm!)...
However, we are a little more sceptical about the stone ground in certain areas of the campsite (not great for pitching a tent or sleeping – of course, we understand that you don't go to the camping to sleep, but still!). As is often the case in festivals, we regret the cruel lack of shaded areas, which was particularly noticeable with temperatures above 30 degrees... The festival security seemed regularly overwhelmed, with several moments of uncertainty and tension that were a little strange and even worrying. We'll come back to this later, but they seemed understaffed or insufficiently trained for this kind of situation. We would also have appreciated a few solutions (watering the ground, wood chips) to prevent the dust from making the place unbreathable after each lively concert. Finally, we wouldn't have said no to a little extra lighting here and there, as some corners were really dark at night (do you also find yourself tripping over the stakes holding up the Massey marquee every time?).
Nevertheless, as usual, certain aspects improved as the festival progressed, leaving a somewhat mixed impression: on the one hand, Motoc' demonstrated a certain responsiveness thanks to its often highly competent staff and appeared to be attentive to feedbacks (for example, bottled water was provided free of charge from Saturday onwards due to the heat)... while still seeming, after so many years, to be somewhat improvised. In any case, this does not prevent it from gaining popularity, with its line-up and human scale remaining its best selling points. It is true that we sometimes had the impression that it was becoming a little like Hellfest: there are far more people in costume than before and, in a major innovation, the festival is even starting to pay attention to its decor, with a strange metal structure at the entrance featuring a mini exhibition of artwork. It's basic, but perhaps the beginning of a more polished look! In any case, it feels like the festival is continuing to learn from its mistakes, drawing inspiration from what is being done elsewhere and questioning itself in order to improve its reception and comfort.
DOGMA
How about we start talking about concerts? Our first steps in this 2025 edition had a carnival feel to them. We first communed with Dogma and their heavy/power mix with a few pop and gothic accents imposed by an artistic direction that was hard to ignore: nuns grimacing on stage is not something you see every day! While the nunsploitation craze is amusing, we are more seduced by the atmospheric parts and cinematic touches (they enter the stage to the sound of Lux Aeterna, Clint Mansell's main theme of Requiem for a Dream) than by the songs themselves, which are demonstrative without being memorable and in a register far from our usual sulking. It's entertaining and effective, though, with bassist Nixie putting on an absolutely delightful show full of monstrous facial expressions, and hearing a cover of Madonna's Like A Prayer so early in the day makes quite an impression.
VERSATILE
Carnival continues with Versatile and their monstrous black metal electro/industrial parade. The Swiss band has grown in stature, with each member comfortably playing their part. Theatrical, grotesque, a form of macabre and misshapen poetry: in festivals, they know how to get noticed. They shoot jets of flame while handing out masks so that everyone can hide their ugliness. Versatile has a flair for spectacle but doesn't forget about power. It's both dark and nasty, festive when the electronics take over, and unifying when Alter Ego's slogans are chanted. Our only regret is the timing, as the midday sun did not do justice to this deviant and putrid Court of Miracles. Let's keep our fingers crossed: evening slots will eventually come along! Versatile has what it takes to make its mark, and the number of festival-goers who wore their masks for the rest of the festival is a good indicator: they will continue to be talked about!
HELLDEBERT
Don't ask us what we were doing in this Hell made of good vibes. 4:45 p.m., heading to Helldebert for a set as long as a headliner's (though we can't imagine him playing at any other time than teatime). Helldebert is when Guillaume Aldebert gets angry and lets his evil twin play metal, like the big boys. The show is called ‘Enfantillages 666’ (Childishness 666), and the songs are called Seum 51, Les Super-pouvoirs Pourris (Rotten Superpowers), and Pour Louper l’École (To Skip School). The kind of stuff you say when you're not going to tidy your room, you're going to eat all the sweets, have two desserts, pretend to brush your teeth and watch cartoons all night until at least 10 p.m.! The lyrics are funny and tender, and Helldebert masterfully strikes the right tone of innocent, childlike rebellion, without forgetting to slip in some more serious and redeeming messages. There are lots of kids in the audience, and there's a certain poetry to this gentle madness: in terms of humour, it's more endearing than Ultra Vomit. The highlight of the show comes with Le Cartel des Cartables (Schoolbags Cartel) when Max Cavalera appears on stage in a Brazilian football shirt to launch an attack on bullying at school. He will later play with Nailbomb, but in the meantime, you can sense that Aldebert is like a kid in front of one of his idols (even though they are almost the same age, but shhh, don't tell anyone). We feel the same way, too. It's far too positive, joyful, innocent, kind and cute to be bearable, but apart from that, it's very nice.
GUTALAX
According to parents we heard during the festival: ‘Gutalax is perfect for 8-10 year olds too, as they have a theme that this age group can easily relate to.’ Gutalax's theme is poo. And a bit of farting. Judging by the number of people equipped with toilet brushes, something is brewing here. There isn't a single roll of toilet paper left to be found at the festival; everything has been looted to be thrown on stage or used as a skipping rope. In the audience, we come across a toilet seat being carried proudly. One guy has a suction cup stuck to his head. A girl is crowd-surfing into a bin, spilling its contents onto the security guards and photographers, who are delighted. The Czech ‘shitbusters’ put on a show in their traditional toilet cleaner outfits but are ultimately not as funny as the bunch of idiots having a blast in front of them. The music sounds like a grizzly bear orgy, the songs are separated by flatulence, and the vocals are a succession of ‘brown noises’ straight out of an episode of South Park. It's best not to eat before going to see them. It was completely idiotic, but ultimately harmless, and despite the more extreme aspect of their simian gore / grindcore, there is a certain continuity with Helldebert. It's as if we had eaten too many sweets at snack time and indigestion was added to the overexcitement. Motocultor provided a nice interlude ‘for under 12s’.
YEAR OF NO LIGHT
The contrast is striking as we approach the shadows of Massey Ferguscène, where Year of No Light is playing at the same time. The Bordeaux-based band contrasts the primitive, simple and immediate pleasure of playing with their poo-poo with the satisfaction of longer tracks that immerse us in a poetic, cathartic and mystical universe. With Year of No Light, things take time, both in the studio (many years separate their albums) and on stage, where each track is around ten minutes long (playing the two parts of Persefone alone takes up half the set). It takes no less than that, and the audience is rewarded with an intense and intimate experience where textures and moods overlap, like layers of a mysterious narrative. We've known them to be less communicative, especially when they played with their backs to the audience. Here, despite the daylight filtering through the marquee, the contained emotions hit their target. Post-rock clearings, dense fog between dark ambient and black metal, psychedelic shadows, opaque doom heaviness: it's both dreamlike and incredibly classy. Perhaps we were naive to hope for a set dedicated to Les Maîtres Fous, their soundtrack to Jean Rouch's documentary, recently released on vinyl and played twice in the past, but that would have required a whole different set-up!
ME AND THAT MAN
To shake us out of the pleasant torpor into which Year of No Light has plunged us, it's time to move on to something more sunny. Nergal, Mr Behemoth, has come to play cowboy with Me and that Man, his blues/country/folk project in which he enjoys clapping his hands and occasionally reminding us that he has ‘another band’. On stage, Me and that Man has had to reinvent itself, since since the second album, each track has featured at least one different guest, giving meaning to the project's name. While it may lose some prestige by not having its blockbuster cast, it gains in consistency and uniformity. Polish artist Sviniarski joins the line-up to add an extra voice, while Nergal mentions the stifling heat (typical Polish thing: officially, it's not even 30 degrees in Carhaix yet, and the cool of the evening is beginning to envelop us in its benevolent arms!).
Although less theatrical than with Behemoth, he still has a vaguely blasphemous quip to entertain us: ‘It's like being in church here... except the church is BLACK,’ he says before playing My Church is Black, obviously, and we're back to clapping our hands in rhythm. Not bad, this little gospel song. To the irresistible anthems that are Burning Churches and On the Road, Me and That Man adds a reminder of its leader's origins with a cover of Venom's Black Metal, pays an inevitable tribute to Ozzy with their rendition ofBlack Sabbath's Paranoid, and presents us with a new track. Yes, it's sometimes kitsch in its over-the-top gimmicks... But it's also very entertaining and absolutely appropriate under the late afternoon sun, in the dust of western Brittany!
NAILBOMB
Opportunities to see Nailbomb in France are rare. In fact, opportunities to see Nailbomb are rare, period. The thrash metal/industrial band launched by Max Cavalera and Alex Newport in 1994 was only supposed to release one album so as not to end up parodying itself. They toured at the time and then disappeared. Thirty years later, Nailbomb is back on stage, Alex Newport has been replaced by Igor Amadeus Cavalera, and a new line-up has been built around the father-son duo. The band appeared in Toulouse and at Motocultor in 2025, their first French shows in over thirty years. It was impossible to miss, even if it meant sacrificing Ne Obliviscaris. We made the right choice: it was crazy! With its explicit messages against fascism and the violence of its music, Nailbomb is a radical and exhilarating force, whose reworked theme from A Clockwork Orange already hinted at the nightmarish and dystopian flavour to come.
Igor Cavalera, the raw frontman, brings a feverish intensity to the stage and embodies all the rage of these thirty-year-old songs that we never thought we'd hear live again, while his father, standing slightly back, seems to be having a great time. We are particularly impressed by the energy of Alex Cha from Pig Destroyer behind his machines, wearing his Author & Punisher T-shirt, who seems possessed. In fact, when a guy in an orange T-shirt manages to get on stage to make hearts with his fingers, and security fails to react, it is Alex who ends up removing him from the stage. Unusual, but also a little disturbing. For the rest, there's a bit of Slayer's savagery, a bit of Godflesh's ruthless roughness, a bit of Ministry's mechanical alienation and Sepultura-style tribal rhythms, all inflamed with hardcore rage: it was killer, and you can't resist the industrial groove of Religious Cancer or the snarling explosions of Coakroaches and World of Shit. It's 9 p.m., we've taken a monumental beating, we're going to go drink some mint water while looking for our teeth on the floor, because without them we'll have a hard time biting the dust, which is already thick.
MOGWAI
It's not a bad thing if rest of the evening is quieter! Perhaps a little too quiet at first, with Mogwai. After a thirty-year career and a discography as extensive as it is varied, the Scots have plenty to offer their audience. Depending on your tastes, you might get a little lost here and there before finding your feet again later on. Eloise, a little girl nearby, says, ‘It's not bad music, but wouldn't they rather have a festival just for them, with this kind of music, so we could go back to crowd-surfing in the meantime?’ Not even ten years old, but already a purist with a sharp critical eye! We'll be less intransigent, though: the more upbeat tracks, such as the post-rock tracks from the album Hardcore Will Never Die but You Will or the recent Hi Chaos, glide over us without leaving the slightest mark, but we are more easily captivated by the hypnotic loops of I'm Jim Morrison, I'm Dead or We're No Here, just as we appreciate the extra embodiment provided by the vocals on Ritchie Sacramento. It's a matter of sensibility, and we come away with mixed feelings: it was very beautiful, very elegant, but a little too distant (the musicians' cold faces, restrained and introspective, don't help us let go) to completely draw us in.
MAGMA
Usually, photo terms allow us to take pictures ‘during the first three songs,’ depending on the number of photographers present. When Magma launches into Mekanïk destruktïw kömmandöh, their legendary 1973 album, we know we're in for at least a good half hour without interruption, and we understand why we were told ‘you have 15 minutes’ instead! Magma at Motocultor is a story that began in 2019, and the band should have played there again last year. However, drummer and leader Christian Vander fractured his elbow, so the gig was postponed. Here he is, behind the drums and often hidden by smoke, his two elbows in perfect shape, leading his troops with his drumsticks. We were afraid it would be long, but we were surprised by the power that emanated from the beginning of the concert, with the rhythmic repetition giving it a ritual solemnity and a mystical touch. The choirs added extra theatricality, and the different instruments began to respond to each other, between jazz, progressive rock, neoclassical and hallucinatory delirium. Zeuhl, as Vander says: total music with sacred overtones. The performance is epic and dizzying and probably came at the ideal time for the audience to be easily carried away. Earlier, we wouldn't have been tired enough. Later, we would have been too tired.
Then began a period of nocturnal wanderings. Most people went to see I Prevail, who put on a well-rehearsed show, but whose metalcore sound seemed far too generic to us. It was only during the medley of covers of My Own Summer (Deftones), Them Bones (Alice in Chains) and Chop Suey (System of a Down) that we pricked up our ears. There was also ‘another well-known song we've heard before’, which we were told was Taylor Swift. We held our breath when a girl from the audience climbed the enormous flame-spitting devices to get on stage, risking being turned into a barbecue if the pyrotechnics had chosen that moment to go off. A short break in the concert, cold sweats: after Nailbomb, that makes two bizarre security failures on the big stages on the same night, which is crazy. As for the rest, we'll confuse I Prevail with all the other very effective bands of the same genre. We'd like to take this opportunity to share a small gallery of random things, with scenes from life on site.
DIIV
So, somewhat randomly, we went to check out DIIV, with serious doubts: after Mogwai and Magma, wouldn't another cerebral and introspective act be the last straw? We were pleasantly surprised by DIIV's show, which played in front of a screen providing transitions between songs and creating an aesthetic yet biting universe: these fake adverts exuded a certain unease, a retro-futuristic irony where cyberpunk LEDs mingled with a denunciation of over-consumerism. The nervousness of their post-punk roots stretches the melancholic sweetness of their shoegaze. There is torment in these contemplations, a welcome tension (Under the Sun, Blankenship, Doused), sometimes even a heaviness that seems to lurk, just waiting to explode (Taker, on the edge of a slightly doom-laden grunge straight out of a 90s depression).
SAMAEL
Then comes THE heartbreak of the day: DOOL or Samael? The two bands don't have much in common musically, so it makes sense to have them playing at the same time. Nevertheless, we're torn. The VerdamMnis Inc. delegation splits into two teams of one and embarks on a sprint between stages to see both as much as possible! On the Supositor Stage, Samael seems to have had a slightly too short soundcheck and starts a little late. We know their show well: it's imposing, majestic, unifying, sometimes grandiose (Slavocracy). Electronics mix with relentless riffs, Vorph chants with his usual theatricality and charisma as the band runs through its discography, from the dark roughness of Ceremony of Opposites to its most recent works. Logically, the album Passage, which was released live last year, is the most represented. A bit like Alex Cha during Nailbomb or Nixie during Dogma, guitarist Drop steals the show: while we've seen Samael more possessed on stage at times, he remains a hurricane that only a mischievous cable lying around at the beginning of the concert seems able to hinder! Samael is a bit like a comforting concert, a ritual that we always enjoy, even if we're no longer really surprised: the last album was released almost ten years ago. Rumour has it that its successor could be released next year... we can't wait!
DOOL
Under the Massey Ferguscène tent, a whole different kind of communion is taking place in the darkness. The dark rock band DOOL is giving it their all with the same intensity as usual, bringing their songs to life in a way that already stirs our souls in the studio. Raven's fiery spirit, leading the charge with a fist raised and unwavering commitment, the increasingly drenched hair shaking in the darkness... We've seen DOOL many times before, but never like this, after midnight, in the dark. We then discover a characteristic of the Massey that will eventually become a recurring joke: at night, you can't see much! In a way, this gives DOOL's performance a new power, reducing the band to silhouettes that can be glimpsed in the smoke or between rare bursts of strobe lights, like so many resurgences of images from their first music video, Oweynagat.
The setlist is mainly devoted to the album The Shape of Fluidity, and the intensity reaches its climax during a cathartic Hermagorgon and the now traditional finale on Oweynagat, ending with the track that started it all. In between, House of Thousand Dreams offers a welcome poetic respite, but we are especially delighted by the return of the incantatory The Alpha to the set, which, at such a late hour, resonates with unprecedented power. DOOL is definitely a band apart, an irresistible whirlwind of emotions whose refrains captivate us and linger long after the concert. A perfect conclusion to an emotional first day with nuns, poo, cowboys, heavy stuff and slightly more subtle stuff. It's only the first day, but Motocultor 2025 is already commanding respect in terms of its musical offering.
Nos tops 3 :
Maxine : Nailbomb, Versatile, Me and that Man
Pierre : DOOL, Nailbomb, Versatile
