Humo’s Rock Rally is undergoing a modest recovery. After barely 600 bands registered for the music competition of the weekly magazine Humo in 2022, that number has now risen again to 784. Humo attributed the 2022 dip to the corona pandemic, which, among other things, made it difficult to rehearse.
However, some doubles appear to have crept into the count. Singers Jef Jenaer (Waste) and Lommelaar Niels Tuijaerts (Koala Disco) together accounted for almost a third of the bands in the final of this edition: together they also formed Zegel. “See you soon!”, Tuijaerts said when he finished his first set in the AB on Sunday evening.
In more ways than one it was the edition of the multitaskers. Singer Aaron Koch was there, six years after winning the competition, as guitarist with The Calico’s, with a solo project. The Antwerp-Dutch Teun also has a career as a band member with Eefje De Visser. Lindy Versyck shot the main bird: she sings with the band Meltheads, contested this Rock Rally with TJE, and that same Sunday evening played the support act for Johannes Is His Name in the AB Club with a solo project. See how cozy the Belgian music scene is: put ten bands together and the same faces will automatically return.
However, this did not lead to a very diverse palette on Sunday evening in the AB. Teun was the exception, performing solo with fragile piano songs. The Antwerp native with Dutch roots also turned out to have the best voice by miles, in an edition in which singers mainly used hiccups and shouts: this earned her second place. But the nine other bands balanced between artful indie rock (Aaron Koch, Lezard, Edouard Van Praet, TJE) and rattling post-punk (Those Who Didn’t, Zegel, Koala Disco, Waste, Maria Iscariot). The rappers who took their chances in the final in recent years seem to have disappeared like crazy.
The match in the match between Jenaer and Tuijaerts was decided by the audience: Koala Disco was allowed to take home the audience award, despite the completely absent voice of keyboardist Silke Ravesloot due to illness. That was good, because Koala Disco seems like a band that has all the pieces of the puzzle in their hands – they just have to learn to put them together.
In TJE, Versyck was sometimes reminiscent of Björk in how she allowed her voice to alternate between childishly naive and threatening. The Humo jury rewarded her with third place. However, the top prize of 10,000 euros went to Maria Iscariot, a Dutch-language punk band led by journalist and philosopher Helena Cazaerck. That was a first: for the first time in Rock Rally history, the entire stage went to bands with a front woman. Four of the past five editions were won by women – Humo is rapidly adjusting the historically male honors list of its rally.
What is more striking is that Maria Iscariot is the first Dutch-speaking winner of the Rock Rally since Noordkaap in 1990. After rap and pop, the mother tongue is once again making its mark in rock. Just like Stijn Meuris, frontwoman Helena Cazaerck has a vibrant stage personality and a striking accent: think of Isabelle A’s Ghent R, the bouncing punk of Sons. Cazaerck sang passionately about friendship and how she has freckles in the summer. The singer and guitarist was also one of the few in the AB to connect with the audience: during her second song she dived into the audience to crowd surf. You can never start being praised early enough.
