By Jase Walker

Poster for Pelagic Fest 2024Well this has certainly come around a lot quicker than I could have anticipated, it’s the end of July now, where did the year go? Anyway it’s looking good for August though, especially with an absolute belter of a show like this around the corner featuring a smattering of some of my favourite bands.

Opting for Muziekgieterij in Maastricht this year over Berlin, this positioning opens up the weekender to quite a large range of the surrounding area of Belgium and Germany and a good balance between main and second stage as well as a generally nice layout for other festival related activities.

So, for someone like myself who loves his post-rock/metal and prog, this lineup is pretty stellar and you really can’t fall off for 110 euros can you? I mean look at it! Big standouts for me are The Ocean (playing ‘Pelagial’ in its entirety too!), And So I Watch You From Afar, Psychonaut, LLNN, Hippotraktor and Playgrounded.

I’ll be doing my usual digging to get through the lineup for some gems I may not have heard of yet but I’ll drop some recommendations for my standouts… in no particular order:

The Ocean

Probably my favourite track of theirs and on an album that I have rinsed repeatedly over the years, ‘Phanerozoic I: Paleozoic’.

And So I Watch You From Afar

‘Set Guitars To Kill’ has been one of those songs that’s been a pretty big part of their set for many years now and I would hazard a guess by far their most played song.

Psychonaut

‘Violate Consensus Reality’ was the first song I’d heard from them and it’s definitely stuck with me as my favourite song of theirs, an absolutely fantastic slice of proggy greatness.

LLNN

LLNN. Heavy. Good. Smash imaginary rocks when listening.

Hippotraktor

Again, first song I’d ever hear from these angry Belgians as I was going through the ArcTanGent lineup for 2023 and the moment the vocals kicked in I was absolutely sold, new album is damn good too.

Playgrounded

A massively underrated band that I saw with LLNN and The Ocean a short while ago in Manchester that blew me away, top notch solid prog that loves going hard as hell.

Pelagic Fest is going to be a real corker this weekend and if you’re looking to get here from a bit further out then flying into the Netherlands itself, via either Schiphol or Eindhoven, then it’s generally a pretty simple train route to get you down to Maastricht.

You wouldn’t want to miss this, it’s a weekend of the finest stuff that Pelagic Records has to offer. See you in the pit.