ProgDreams XI, De Boerderij, Zoetermeer, Netherlands, 22 / 23 August 2025

Day 1: 22 August 2025

Redikin

The opening act on this eleventh edition of Progdreams was the Dutch outfit Redikin. At 3 pm no more than a hundred people showed up, maybe even less, to watch and listen to vocalist Afke van Althuis and the band, playing a mix of heavy rock and danceble music. The band's aim is to bring heavy music with 'groove' making it impossible for the listener to stand (or sit) still.

The songs are compact, swinging and virtually with no egotripping from soloists nor focussing solely on singer Afke. Most of the tracks the band performed were from their debut album The Crux (2024), but there were two new songs as well. Am I Really and Walk All Over You, the lyrics being not very subtle and the chorus being a bit inspired by rap music, if you ask me. Live, the band rendered strong and powerful performance, although I wouldn't categorise Redikin's music as progressive or even as prog-metal. If you wanna know how the band sounds, you can find a video of the song Nailed It on YouTube .

In just under an hour, Redikin left the stage to make room fort he next band who were to perform at 4.30 pm.

Line up:

• Afke van Althuis - vocals
• Haico van Attikum - drums
• Leslie Harberts - keyboards
• Saro Pulvirenti - bass
• David de Waal - guitar

This next band also originates from The Netherlands, from the Groningen area to be precise. Five talented instrumentalists formed the band Hackberry just about ten years ago and wanted to play rather complicated progressive metal without a vocalist. With an EP and two albums under their belt, Hackberry consists of experienced musicians with both talent and skills.

The band plays an interesting mix of prog-metal, stoner, prog-rock, and even some of the music has got psychedelic and symphonic elements. Without a vocalist, the instrumentalists are using their skills to create challenging music that keeps listeners on their toes. Multiple changes in tempo, frequent changes in time signatures reminding of Gente Giant, though this music is much more heavy.

Even though the band have got two guitarists, there's no limitless soloing from either guitarists. Instead, the music has been composed in a way that all individual instrumentalists have the possibility to excel on their own instruments.

The band played four long tracks, one from their debut album Hackberry (2018), two from their 2023 album Breathing Space and one new song that didn't even have a song-title yet!

On the band's website you can watch and listen to a live version of the song Manticore. Just like their predecessors Redikin, Hackberry played for a little less that one hour.

Line-up:

• Chris Bechtum - drums
• Marijn de Boer - guitar
• Francesco Bonardi - guitar
• Tim Hidskes - keyboards
• Simon Venema - bass

The third band in the line-up of this festival also originates from The Netherlands, but from the southern part of the country: Tilburg. Founding members of Scarlet Stories are vocalist Lisette van den Berg and guitarist Bram te Kamp. Normally Scarlet Stories are a six-piece, but violinist Sophie Ansems was unable to perform today.

The band released an album (Necrologies) in 2019, after two EPs, and with no upcoming gigs, this show might be a special treat. The lighting was a bit like the band's music: dark, colours of the light mostly purple or scarlet, and of course, a lot of smoke and mist making things for a photographer like myself rather difficult.

Although the band states they play a unique kind of dark progressive music with an eclectic range of musical influences, such as heavy metal, ambient, film scores and doom, my take on a label would be "progressive doom". Instead of pure progressive metal, a lot of the music the band performed was quite symphonic and atmospheric.

Singer Lisette, dressed in black, was obviously quite disappointed that Sophie could not perform and that her boyfriend (if I understood correctly) was unable to attend as well. There were just a few guitar solos by Te Kamp, but the majority of the music was dark and gloomy and characterized by strange chord sequences. Check out Scarlet Stories on Bandcamp .

Line-up:

• Lisette van den Berg - vocals
• Maarten Grimm - bass
• Bram te Kamp - guitar
• Tim Kuper - drums
• Robin van Poppel - guitar

Right on schedule, the first band from outside of The Netherlands took the stage: Altesia, hailing from Bordeaux (France). These five very talented musicians already released two albums: Paragon Circus (2019) and Embryo (2021). One could state the music of Altesia is prog-metal but this circumscription would do this band no justice. All the changes in tempo, the odd time signatures and switching styles from metal to symphonic, progressive and even jazz remind a bit of Gentle Giant, Spock's Beard and early Dream Theater.

The technique of these musicians, especially guitarist Casanova, was astonishing. Darrieu has got a very pleasant mellow voice fitting the challenging music just fine. In spite of the heavy rock elements, the band offers a lot of symphonic moments.

The band themselves describe their music as "frogressive rock" and I can surely relate to that description. During Altesia's performance almost all the people in the venue were attending. For me this was the highlight on this first day of ProgDreams, mainly because Altesia's music was by far the most orginal combined with solid melodies. Since their last offering Embryo is from 2021, it might be a good idea for the band to come up with new music. I'm quite confident their third album would do very well!

Line-up:

• Hugo Bernart - bass
• Henri Bordillon - keyboards
• Alexis Casanova - lead guitar, backing vocals
• Clément Darrieu - lead vocals, guitar
• Yann Ménage - drums, backing vocals

Main event of this festival were the German melodic hard rockers Poverty's No Crime, veterans in the scene because the band are about to celebrate their 35th anniversary. Poverty's No Crime doesnt't perform live very often, so maybe that's why the organizers thought this band would be a suitable choice.

Since their last album dates from 2021 (A Secret To Hide) and their previous albums from 2016 and 2007 respectively, one might think the band most likely wouldn't have a great following in The Netherlands. My assumption proved to be right because there were only about a 100 fans in the venue when PNC started their show at around 10 pm (just a bit later than scheduled).

The band chose to perform tracks from their 1999 album Slave To The Mind to their latest album A Secret To Hide. No new songs, but obviously these rockers know what they do and their melodic metal show turned out to be quite okay!

Funny note is that only guitarist Marco Ahrens had the looks of a rock-musician, the other four members seemed to be more like office employees, but nevertheless their playing was superb. Via the band's website one can listen to their music. You can find most albums through this site.

Line-up:

• Marco Ahrens - gitaar
• Heiko Spaarmann - bas
• Jörg Springub - keyboards
• Andreas (Theo) Tegeler - drums
• Volker Walsemann - vocals & gitaar

Conclusion

I would say this experiment, 5 bands in the prog-metal style, wasn't quite as successful as the organizers might have thought. It felt a bit overkill to me. Hanging around for nearly ten hours with no other events than going to the bar (because of the beautiful weather the outside was open for the public too, fortunately) is a long time. There was only one booth with LPs and CDs. And there were not enough seats to give the legs a bit of rest, especially for elderly people like myself, that was hard.

From the perspective of the artists, I don't think it can be great fun to perform in an almost empty venue, in spite of the balcony being closed to have the main floor filled up somewhat. A festival on the Friday, starting early in the afternoon, makes it hard to attend for people who have a regular day job.

The choice of the artists is another thing worth thinking about. Four out of the five bands didn't have any new music released for two or more years, and that doesn't help either.

Day 2 of the festival has got some well-known acts, so hopefully more prog fans will show up for the Saturday!

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Day 2: 23 August 2025

Agusa

The opening act for this second day was Agusa, a retro-prog band from Sweden, fronted by flautist Jenny Puertas, who was also the only voice on the last track the band played.

Although there was extremely good response from the people attending the show, personally I thought it was a pity that the only sound coming from the Oberheim keyboard was the organ. A switch to a piano or synth would have made the music even more varied. The same applies to the sound of guitar player Mikael Ödesjö who mainly used the same limited set of sounds.

The band did play a very nice set indeed, and with the enthusiastic engagement of Puertas Agusa gained quite a few new fans, based on the rounds of applause and of the interest of the many people visiting their booth after the show.

Elements of folk music were nicely mingled with progressive music and a bit of psychedelic influences as we know from bands like Camel and Caravan. Especially their music from the early seventies might have been a source of inspiration for Agusa, currently having five studio-albums and one live album under their belt!

Line-up:

• Roman Andrén - organ
• Nicolas Difonis - drums
• Mikael Ödesjö - guitar
• Jenny Puertas - flute & vocals
• Simon Ström - bass

Cheeto's Magazine

Second act, hailing from Barcelona (Spain), was Cheeto's Magazine. Just having witnessed a solid retro-prog show, the contrast with this frivolous bunch of chaps could not have been bigger. The band sounds a bit like Spock's Beard in the eighties. However, with the vocals, their lyrics, their dresses (like Teletubbies) and their behaviour (acting like clowns a bit), they seem to ridicule their own music.

Obviously, the band were having a lot of fun on stage. Though a lot of their music could be categorised as "genuine prog", the music is full of other elements from jazz, Americana, you name it, but absolutely brilliant. If it wasn't for the vocals & the lyrics (both not so much my taste), I would have bought all their albums! If these chaps should decide to write and perform real serious prog material, they really would be a first-class asset to the progressive scene.

Having said that, their show went down like a cheerful, pleasant whirlwind, and there was no one who wasn't moving, smiling or tapping to the songs the band performed. The band themselves seemed to be enjoying themselves thoroughly, and their enthusiasm proved to be really infectious.

Cheeto's Magazine released three albums, but heir last one (Amazingous) dates back to 2019 so one can only hope these chaps will give their fourth album a bit more serious approach because as I stated, these guys really know how to play and write beautiful melodies!

Line-up:

• Matias Lizana - keyboards, percussion, background vocals
• Alex Marques - bass
• Esteban Navarro - vocals, keyboards
• Manel Orella - guitar
• Gerard Sala - drums, percussion

(Note, the setlist was taken from setlist.fm and is probably not complete.)

Freedom To Glide

Another enormous contrast with the previous show were Freedom To Glide, a British band around Andy Nixon (vocals and guitar) and Pete Riley (keys), who were both active in the Pink Floyd cover band Dark Side Of The Wall.

FTG played a kind of prog that is, not surprisingly, heavily influenced by Pink Floyd. The band, with newly acquired bass player John Jowitt (ex-IQ among others) played a nice set with a sort of best-of from their four studio albums.

One would expect that the band would perform songs mostly from their latest album, but that wasn't the case. However good the band were playing, I missed that spark that made the shows by Agusa and Cheeto's Magazine more memorable.

Line-up:

• Stu Emms - drums
• Rob Groucutt - keyboards, guitars
• John Jowitt - bass, background vocals
• Andy Nixon - vocals, lead guitar
• Pete Riley - keyboards, visuals

Sylvan

About 300+ fans were gathered in the hall and on the balcony when Sylvan entered the stage. For many people, the show by the German art rockers was the main reason to come to De Boerderij in the first place. The band doesn't perform live that often, although Sylvan performed on The Midsummer Progfestival in Maastricht in May this year.

Sylvan have celebrated their 25th anniversary, and after their studio album One To Zero from 2021, the live album Back To Live was their latest release from 2024.

The Sylvan show was centered around visuals with a message to strive for peace, and as usual, an important part of a Sylvan show was the characteristic voice of Marco Glühman. Unfortunately, he did not have the best of days, and though the band with "new" guitarist Jonathan "Johnny" Beck played really tight, the overall performance wasn't as mind-blowing as many people might have expected.

The band played seven tracks that ended up on their Back To Live album. Strangely enough, half the show was centered around tracks from their 2006 album Postumous Silence.

Line-up:

• Johnny Beck - guitar
• Marco Glühmann - vocals
• Matthias Harder - drums
• Sebastiaan Harnack - bass
• Volker Söhl - keyboards

IQ

The main act at this festival were IQ. The band have been around since 1981 and they will be celebrating their 45 anniversary next year!

This "neo prog dinosaur" decided they'd play the successful 2009 album Frequency in its entirety With his characteristic, dry sense of humour, Peter Nicholls advised anyone who didn't like the Frequency album to leave. Of course, no one left.

Visuals behind the band enlightened the show on three square screens, and their live rendition of that album was impressive to say the least. Nicholls' vocals were exceptionally strong, and only at the very end of the whole show, he missed a few notes.

Though the show was quite static, there was some more interaction with the audience in the second half of the show, when the band played some really classic material.

The gloves and sunglasses helped Nicholls to recreate The Road Of Bones. Hearing tracks from The Wake (1985) after 40 years proved to be a real treat.

Of course, all prog fans stayed until the very end of the show, ending around midnight. De Boerderij, celebrating their 50th anniversary, made a very good choice with IQ as the main event, and undoubtedly many fans will return to Zoetermeer for the IQ X-mas bash in December!

Line-up:

• Paul Cook - drums
• Neil Durant - keyboards
• Tim Esau - bass
• Michael Holmes - guitar
• Peter Nicholls - vocals

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