A couple of Wednesdays ago we headed over to Cactus Club in Bruges to catch Psychonaut on their tour supporting the release of their latest album ‘World Maker’. The show was part of the <Bruges is Doomed> series, a recent effort to bring back heavy music to the city. The weather was cold and dreary, but the venue became warm and fuzz-y very quickly.

Supporting Psychonaut was Belgian trio Bloed, “three siblings making heavy music”, to quote the band themselves. The band name translates as Blood, which is the theme throughout all of their releases. Fun fact: all of their track names are single words in dutch that can be combined with ‘bloed’ to form composites that result in double meanings.

I had the luck and privilege to see and shoot Psychonaut when they were only 6 months into their career. They blew me away from the start and that impression’s never gone away – on the contrary, as evidenced by their continued rise to international fame. The trio is ever kind and grateful to the audience and each other, but delivers songs with blistering intensity. They easily wrap a filled venue in their heavy but warm wall of sound, take them to higher spheres and then bring it down gently at the end.