By Jase Walker
It’s probably taken a lot longer than I should have taken to get along to ProgPower Europe for the first time ever considering I now live in the same country as the event but 2025 marks my first attendance! The train trip here was less than ideal, as was the bus ride which ended up with me getting to Baarlo and Kasteel De Berckt about two hours later than I intended but nevermind, I’m at Sijwa in Baarlo now and ready to indulge in some big prog for the weekend.
I’m currently typing this while standing in the queue for the drinks currency as Netherlands events are quite partial to separating direct currency and drinks through tokens as it makes the bar process quite a fair bit faster. It’s a bit of a pain in the arse at first considering the wait times to get the ball rolling but the speed of service with the tokens makes up for it a lot.
Sijwa is actually quite a cozy venue, considering the grand reputation of this event I actually expected something quite a fair bit larger but I won’t complain about seeing incredible bands up close like this! I’ve already bumped into quite a fair few friends in the first minutes of walking into the venue too so let’s get this weekend started eh?
Kicking off the Friday, and the event, is Nospūn. There are only two bands for today but both have extended proggy sets so it’ll be a big set for both acts!
After a bit of a dreamy and quiet intro, it’s into big proggy riff territory with unusual chord progressions, sudden rhythmic changes and whiplash style switching in the middle of songs, it’s prog baby! Extended range bass and guitar, both with fanned fretboards, you don’t specialize your axes to this point without having the chops to back it up and Nospūn aren’t messing about when it comes to demonstrating that. With the way those two are bouncing off each other with bass and guitar competing for playing the most notes I’m reminded that they do in fact have a vocalist who eventually makes his return after a several minute shred session.
I can’t help but feel that these would benefit massively from having an extra member to do the keys and synths live for a bit of extra dynamics. I don’t think it hurts them much though as it’s often just how this sort of thing rolls but the extra sonic padding from a live keys player really helps fatten the sound out for a lot of prog, especially with how some parts remind me a ton of Dream Theater.
Because it’s me though, I’m obviously going to home in on the bass player playing the absolute fuck out of that six-string bass. The guy’s fingers dance around the fretboard like it’s going out of fashion and switches between fingers, slap, pick constantly, tailoring his playing for specific segments with lightning speed and incredible accuracy. The random smash-cuts in songs to swing blues style with matching vocals reminds me a lot of Between The Buried And Me with songs like ‘Voice Of Trespass’, a bit of musical humour if you will. All in all quite a fun ride through some proggy goodness that pays homage to the giants before them but puts their own charismatic spin on it.
The second band on tonight is Extol and I really cannot stop myself from feeling a pretty visceral reaction to how bad they sound. I really try to give bands a fair shake when I’m writing about them but this is not good. Almost the entire band is inaudible barring the drums; the vocals and guitars are completely muffled and vague compared to the drum kit dominating everything. Unfortunately I couldn’t really last this one out so I’ve moved on to sit back with some friends until the after-party rolls around.
Local prog personality Daario is running the prog pub quiz for the after-party, a selection of intros from various artists with some deeper cuts. I was quite pleased with myself at identifying Caligula’s Horse and Karnivool pretty immediately. Sijwa’s downstairs bar is pretty nice and cozy too although the background chatter made it a bit hard to hear the music over it. After the answers are called out and an inevitable “bah! I should have known that!” moments, I’ve elected to return to the hotel with some others for yet another after-party. We gathered around a large fire in the hotel gardens and chatted the night away and before I knew it, it was 5am. I think I might be sleeping in a bit tomorrow.