Brakrock 2026, day one, part one.
Pulley at Brakrock in Duffel, Belgium 8/7/2026. All photos by Paul Holstein.
Normally, I don't have a problem finding a place to start, but this time it's different. I'm from the U.S.A., and the festival was in Duffel, Belgium, so there was a whole lot that happened leading up to watching For I Am take the stage. For the past three years, I had covered Punk Rock Bowling in Las Vegas, Nevada, for In-Spite Magazine, and to be honest, I was really looking forward to continuing the tradition this year. Due to politics in the U.S.A., so many of the non-U.S. bands that would have played PRB were denied work visas that the festival had to be cancelled (with no guarantee it will even be back in 2027). My secondary had been Punk In The Park, and that was also cancelled for very different reasons. Undeterred in my need for a great punk rock festival in 2026, I started looking overseas. Brakrock was the perfect choice, where we could fly in and out of Schiphol in Holland (giving us a day before and a day after to enjoy Amsterdam) and then take a train to Duffel and back for the festival.
I'd been to both Holland and Belgium before, so it would be fairly easy to book hotels in both countries, round-trip air, and the trains are always running. I reached out to the Brakrock staff to request a photo pass, and they were gracious enough to provide it, which sealed the deal.
Everything went according to plan, and our first day in Europe was spent on fine dining, a boat cruise to see where the 7 bridges intersect, and a walk through Amsterdam's red light district. We decided to keep our hotel in Amsterdam, also booking two overlapping days in Mechelen, Belgium (two stops after Duffel) to make things as easy as possible. We booked our round-trip train tickets, packed an overnight bag for Belgium (leaving the bulk of our luggage in the room in Amsterdam), and set our alarms for an early start on Friday morning. We got extremely lucky in that the weather on all four days would be warm and sunny, with no need for anything other than shorts, comfortable shoes, punk rock T-shirts, and dark shades.
The train from our hotel at Amsterdam Centraal to Duffel required backtracking to Schiphol Airport and then stopping in Antwerp (Antwerpen). We then continued on two stops past Duffel to Mechelen, where it was a 10-minute walk from the train to the Holiday Inn. We checked in, and they let us help ourselves to a few Belgian beers from their cooler. Two of the guys in my party decided to skip the first day of Brakrock to go a few more hours southwest to Krotrijk, Belgium, for Alcatraz Fest. After a misstep that found them in Bruges, they made it safely with plans to see Savatage, Body Count, Dirkschneider, and Armoured Saint. Admittedly, I would have liked to photograph Ice-T and Udo Dirkschneider, but it wasn't enough to keep me from the day 1 line-up at Brakrock. The rest of us took the train back to Duffel and started the 15-minute (extremely well-marked) walk to the festival entrance.
Fatal Move at Brakrock in Duffel, Belgium 8/7/2026. All photos by Paul Holstein.
With the rest of the In-Spite Magazine crew at Rebellion Festival over in Blackpool, England, I was the only one covering Brakrock. Given that, I would have liked to see every band, and even though the festival was planned to make that almost possible, it would not be in the cards. The line to get in was long but moving fast and included going through a group of policemen with a drug-sniffing dog (from some advance research, we knew that marijuana was not legal in Belgium and would result in a €180 fine). There were plenty of concertgoers lined up to pay the fine, but we breezed through and headed up to get my photo pass (wristband) and our ecotokens. Brakrock had a really great system in place where patrons were given ecotokens to secure items like cups, bowls, and sporks and then bought other tokens for food and drinks. When you turned in your items again, you got the ecotokens back. As a result, the amount of waste and garbage around the festival was significantly reduced, and recycling was made much easier.
This was my first time at Brakrock, but my understanding was that everything was updated and expanded this year for the 15th Anniversary. There were four stages that included the River Stage (along the bank of the Nete River), the Woods Stage (in the middle of Terelst Park), the Lake Stage (the smallest stage, by a pond deeper in the park), and the Ruins Stage (in the courtyard of the Ter Elst Castle ruins). Finally, inside the festival, walking through the entrance took us right by the River Stage, where For I Am was getting ready to play.
For I Am was great, and I ended up running into their singer later in the festival and giving her my card to look for my photos online after the festival. After their set, I hustled over to the Woods Stage to catch Evergreen Terrace, a melodic hardcore band from Jacksonville, FL, who also tore it up. There was no time in-between bands, and I was on a roll, so I checked out a couple of songs by Tim Vantol back on the River Stage and then made my way for the first time over to the Lake Stage to catch Fatal Move. One of the great things about these big festivals is that they have diverse sub-genres and plenty of local bands that I would have otherwise never heard. I was especially looking forward to Fatal Move, as they are a local hardcore band from Merksem, Antwerp, Belgium. They didn't disappoint, and I was especially impressed by the cozy atmosphere over at the Lake Stage, which was very small and had no barrier between the stage and the crowd for photographers (we were right in the mix when the pit got going). Next up was Deez Nuts, and then on to see my personal favorite set of the day.
To cap off the first half of the first day was one of the bands that I was most looking forward to for the entire festival. That would be Pulley, fronted by Scott Radinsky, who also famously fronted Scared Straight/Ten Foot Pole and had an 11-year career in Major League Baseball. Pulley played all three of the songs that I was hoping for, opening with "Bad Reputation" and later doing both "Soberbeah" and "The Ocean Song." The first day had been absolutely awesome so far, and was just getting started with A Wilhelm Scream, Terror, Bad Cop/Bad Cop, The Suicide Machines, and The Dickies up next.
