Brutal Assault 2024: Epitome of destruction in Josefov fortress, part three.
Dear readers, as all good things have an end, our metal journey through Josefov also ended but left a very sweet and smooth aftertaste on our taste buds once everything was over. Four days of intense concerts and an incendiary warm up served to show us once again that when festivals are organized from the heart everything is experienced in a very different way. At Brutal Assault they are clear that quality comes before quantity and that is why they offer a festival at the top with more than competitive prices and a very varied gastronomic offer as well as adapted areas and it is clear that they put a lot of effort into being one of the extreme metal festivals par excellence.
We have left for the end some of the biggest surprises as an audience attending this new edition of Brutal Assault without detracting from many other things that we have already mentioned in previous posts or those that unfortunately we have not been able to see due to our tight schedule. Be that as it may, I admit that Deicide is one of the bands I had last seen a few years ago and that I was looking forward to meeting again. The experience could not have been more positive.
Deicide‘s show, led by a sinister frontman like Glen Benton, was in some way oriented to present their most recent album Banished By Sin (2024, Reigning Phoenix Music) although as expected they played absolutely all their classics. They started the evening with the legendary When Satan Rules His World from the also legendary album Once Upon The Cross (1995, Roadrunner Records), one of my favorite albums and one of the first death metal albums I listened to as a teenager. From the aforementioned Once Upon The Cross they also performed the title track and They Are The Children Of The Underworld, as well as In Hell I Burn or Satan Spawn, The Caco-Daemon from their devastating second album Legion (1992, R/C Records) or Dead By Dawn and Sacrificial Suicide from their eponymous debut album from 1990.
One of the pleasant surprises of the festival for me was seeing Cancer Bats take over one of the main stages. The Canadian hardcore punk trio seems to me to be one of the most solid proposals of the genre today and they also offered one of the most energetic shows of the day, focusing a large part of the setlist on their second album Hail Destroyer (2004, Distort/Metal Blade) where there was no shortage of authentic anthems such as Sorceress, Harem Of Scorpions, Pneumonia Hawk, Trust No One, R.A.T.S. or Hail Destroyer itself from the aforementioned album. They also dared to play a fun and at the same time aggressive version of the Beastie Boys classic song Sabotage.
Candlemass also took over the Sea Shepherd stage to bring the darkness and heaviness of their epic doom with a large-scale show where the band put everything they had in their possession to offer a musical spectacle on a par with their legendary legacy. This was the third time that the Swedish quintet played at Brutal Assault and the first with vocalist Johan Längquist at the helm since his signing in 2018. The band went all out with the legendary Bewitched, followed by the equally legendary Dark Are The Veils Of Death from their glorious debut album Epicus Doomicus Metallicus (1986, Black Dragon Records). They didn’t leave out songs like Mirror Mirror, Dark Reflections, Crystal Ball, The Well Of Souls or Solitude.
With Impaled Nazarene something really strange happened to me that curiously had already happened to me the previous times I had seen them. Musically, they are a real steamroller on stage, but the aesthetics don’t suit them at all. I think that they are a band that, even though they may not need it because with their songs they don’t need a letter of introduction, I think that if they worked a little on some outfits as well as some more elaborate corpsepaint, they would gain many more points. This is a personal opinion and I don’t expect everyone who reads this to share this point of view. It’s just something I wanted to note because to this day it still surprises me that they haven’t taken something like this into account.
The Impaled Nazarene concert was pretty decent overall. The band put on an energetic show while the audience gave themselves over to songs like Motorpenis, Ghettoblaster and Armageddon Death Squad, although it was a bittersweet experience for me. I wish I had liked something more, maybe the sound didn’t quite go with them or whatever.
The opposite happened to me with the Scottish band Primordial. They were one of the bands that surprised me the most on the last day and I could even say that of the entire festival. The black and celtic folk band has been making waves since 1992 but to tell the truth I haven’t paid much attention to the albums they’ve released after Redemption At The Puritan’s Hand (2011, Metal Blade Records). I probably thought that album was already somewhat inferior to their two previous albums, The Gathering Wilderness (2005, Metal Blade Records) and To The Nameless Dead (2007, Metal Blade Records), but I have listened to this one again and to the albums after the return of Brutal Assault and I really liked them.
It must be said that the band skipped the first four albums of their career and focused more on their recent stage, so to speak. They opened the concert with the epic As Rome Burns from To The Nameless Dead (2007) and then attacked with No Grave Deep Enough, the only song from Redemption At The Puritan’s Hand (2011) that would be played that evening. From their most recent album they played How It Ends, the title track of the album itself, and Victory Has 1000 Fathers, Defeat Is an Orphan, which won me over completely. Their vocalist A.A. Nemtheanga (Dread Sovereign, Verminous Serpent) is a very competent frontman who knows how to win over the audience and Brutal Assault fell at his feet once again.
However, Cult Of Fire was something spectacular, out of this world. The Czech quartet had already announced that their show at Brutal Assault would be something completely different from what the band usually does live, but I was not expecting anything like that at all. Its four members got rid of their clothes to adopt an aesthetic in keeping with the concert they were going to offer, in which they were paying tribute to the composer Bedřich Smetana together with the Bohemian Symphony Orchestra of Prague.
As had already been announced, the band focused their repertoire solely and exclusively on paying tribute to the Czech composer Bedřich Smetana coinciding with the 200th anniversary of his birth. Some of their fans would be familiar with the songs Vltava and Váh since both are part of the EP Čtvrtá Symfonie Ohně (2014, Iron Bonehead Productions) where the band already wanted to pay tribute to the Czech composer by performing two of his most famous pieces. The setlist also included Tábor and Pochod Národní Gardy, two pieces that sounded wonderful thanks also to the sound technicians, all of it accompanied by a screen on which images of castles, fortresses, rivers and cities of the country were projected.
I would also like to highlight the performance of the American veterans Sadus and the Dutch Legion Of The Damned who spiced up the festival with their combination of thrash and death metal in their respective concerts. In the case of Sadus, I admit that I have not yet listened to their comeback album The Shadow Inside (2023, Nuclear Blast) although it is probably much better than the mediocre Out For Blood (2006, Mascot Records) which I have not returned to in years.
Anyway, I listened to the singles Ride The Knife and Scorched And Burnt when they were promoting the release of The Shadow Inside and I was more than satisfied, in addition to the fact that I was able to enjoy both live. From their debut album Illusions (1988, Sadus Records) they played both Certain Death and Sadus Attack, although I expected them to have focused their setlist on the devastating Swallowed In Black (1990, Roadracer Records) from which they only rescued Good Rid’nz and In Your Face as part of a medley with Hands Of Fate from their debut.
Legion Of The Damned, for their part, presented their most recent EP Poison Chalice (2023, Napalm Records) as well as some touches of their debut album Malevolent Rapture (2006, Massacre Records) like Werewolf Corpse or the eponymous song Legion Of The Damned, performing almost all of the songs that give title to their albums like Son Of The Jackal (2007, Massacre Records) or Cult Of The Dead (2008, Massacre Records).
Brutal Assault 2025: First batch of bands confirmed
With a hangover still in our bodies after the last edition of the Czech festival Brutal Assault 2024, the festival’s organisers are already preparing the next edition of the European extreme competition par excellence, having revealed some names that will be part of the 2025 line-up. Those who attended the festival were able to experience first-hand the bands that will be part of the upcoming line-up, as they were announced on-site by the organisers, highlighting the confirmation of Gojira after their spectacular performance at the Paris Olympic Games.
The rest of the bands confirmed so far are Dimmu Borgir, Ministry, August Burns Red, Angelmaker, Benighted, Between The Buried And Me, The Kovenant, Dope, Obituary, Pig Destroyer, Static X, Suffocation, Thrown and Unleashed. As usual at Brutal Assault, the number of bands confirmed so far once again shows the variety of subgenres within extreme metal that the organisers always handle in their line-ups, with a bit of everything for all tastes.
Brutal Assault 2025 will once again be held at the Josefov Fortress in Jaroměř from August 6th to August 9th, the first digital tickets have gone on sale at a price of €171 and at the time of writing this article, 68% of the first tickets at this price have already been sold. You can get your tickets at the official Brutal Assault store.
