Report
Brutal Assault 2025: Five Days & 73,000 Steps of Metal Paradise
Band Photo: Dimmu Borgir (?)
This year was Brutal Assault’s 30 anniversary and the organizers gifted metal fans with over 140 bands ranging from the avant-garde to the most extreme black metal plus every heavy metal genre in between those two. Even though I was exhausted by the end of the festival, I have nothing but incredible memories to look back upon. If you’re into statistics the following are Metalunderground’s for the fest: Thirty-four bands covered, two face-to-face interviews (Gene Hoglan from Dark Angel and Malevolent Creation), 73,000 steps with temperatures ranging from the upper 50’s to the middle 80’s Fahrenheit over a five-day span with fifteen minutes of rain on the warm-up day. Not too shabby.
If this is your first time hearing about this festival, I’ll make this quick. Brutal Assault takes place at the 18th century Josefov Fortress located in the metalhead friendly town of Jaromer, located on the eastern edge of the Czech Republic. The fortress has served as Brutal Assault’s home base since 2012 and its massive worn brick walls and labyrinth of hallways and catacombs make Brutal Assault one of the most unique and popular European summer metal festivals year after year. If you’ve never been to Brutal Assault before, check out the video below for a brief and partial walkaround of the festival’s grounds.
In the past, I would normally post reports of the bands that I saw day by day and also my overall opinion of that year’s festival. To be honest, I think writing long-winded reports is now considered outdated in terms of Road Reports and more of you would prefer to read the bullet points and watch some videos to get the gist of the festival being reported on. Without further ado, here’s the skinny on this year’s Brutal Assault.
I was able to catch the majority of this year’s headliner acts to include Macabre (warm-up day), Kerry King, Rotting Christ, Gojira, Blood Fire Death, Fear Factory, Mayhem, Dimmu Borgir, Cult of Luna, Opeth and The Halo Effect. With all the aforementioned bands worthy of headliner status, one band stood out above the rest, and it wasn’t even close. That band was Gojira.
Even before Gojira was awarded Olympic gold medal status among heavy music fans around the world, they had already proven that they were one of the world’s top metal acts long before last year’s Summer Olympics performance. Fast forward to Gojira’s set at this year’s Brutal Assault set and I think just about everyone that witnessed it would say that it was a jaw dropping and heart stopping performance.
I’ve seen Gojira plenty of times and they’ve always been excellent, but this time it was just on a different level. They only way I can describe it was that they were perfect. Their sound, the musicianship, their stage show and the energy flowing back and forth between crowd and band was amazing. If you don’t believe me, just go on YouTube and watch for yourself. I was able to record one song and even though it’s farther back from the stage, you can get the gist of it.
Other noteworthy performances during the 5 days were given by Dark Angel, Oranssi Pazuzu, Zeke, Gutalax, Obituary, Asphyx, Grave, Exhorder, Tsjuder, Hanabie and from a shorthanded Malevolent Creation. You might be scratching your head with Hanabie, but they were a lot of fun to see live.
I was happy to finally see Grave with their old school line-up playing their classic brutal tunes as well. They played with an intensity not witnessed since their early days. Check out Grave just crushing “Into The Grave” below.
Some of the performances that disappointed me this year were Ministry (not enough emotion), Sylvaine (overhyped and boring), Gaerea (gimmicky in a boring way) and Agnostic Front (too much fronting). I’m not saying that those bands suck, I just didn’t enjoy their sets.
Here is Gaerea.
I mentioned the word gimmicky above and that descriptor isn’t always bad, in fact, sometimes it’s fun. For instance, the Czech goregrind band Gutalax is the literal definition of crude and obscene and if you’ve never had your fill of fart jokes growing up, this is your band. If you ever need to clear a room of bourgeoisie partygoers, just play literally anything from their discography and your unwanted guests will scatter like passed gas. Live, this band is something to experience. It’s a warzone of flying toilet paper rolls, hundreds of pool toys being thrown all over, hazmat suit adorned moshers and sometimes even porta john surfing. Here’s Gutalax performing their “s”hit song “Assmeralda” at this year’s festival.
So those are the bullet points from this year’s Brutal Assault. This is my 5th time attending this incredible festival. Every time I’m leaving the festival grounds on the final day and even though I’m exhausted, I wish that there was another day left. I’m not too sure if I’ll be back next year because I’d like to check out some other festivals that take place during the same time as Brutal Assault. But I hope you as the reader/viewer enjoyed this writeup and will either return next year to Brutal Assault, or if you’ve never been, make the decision to check out this top-tier summer metal festival.
Metal isn’t just a type of music, it’s a lifestyle for Nikos Mixas. In addition to playing guitar for the Phoenix’s own Mosara, he’s a contributing writer for V13 and The Sludgelord. And when he’s taking a break from it all and on vacation, you can almost be certain he’s banging his head at a metal festival somewhere interesting.
