Belgian band Maria Iskariot played to a jampacked hall in The Hague. Herman de Tollenaere was there for Punktuation!
A free concert in the Paard venue in The Hague, the Netherlands, by Maria Iskariot from Gent, Belgium and local band Chattermag, founded last year, had the audience pogoing!
The venue Paard opened in 1972. Its name, Dutch for horse, is derived from the Trojan horse of Greek mythology. Over the decades, various punk bands have played there; Buzzcocks, U.K. Subs, Poison Girls and my Cheap ‘n’ Nasty (with Captain Sensible of the Damned then standing in on drums for us).
The hall was completely sold out – admitting any more people would have meant trouble over fire regulations!
The band name Chattermag is a Dorset dialect word for the magpie, as depicted on the band logo. Lead singer and songwriter Kate during the second song, ‘Pick Up‘, held an old telephone in her hand.
The audience liked Chattermag and danced enthusiastically. To me they sounded somewhere halfway the B-52’s and Amyl And the Sniffers. Mira played keyboards, Roan played drums, bassist Oliver had a Dickies T-shirt on. Jana had a skull picture on her guitar and the other guitarist Johann wore a Wasted Youth T-shirt.
Kate explained that their song ‘Football’ is about when she had wanted to play football along with boys, but was not allowed to. (I can relate – Ed!) The audience wanted an encore, so they got two more Chattermag songs.
Maria Iskariot are from Ghent, which you can hear from the singer’s accent. They call themselves ‘subadult women’s punk from Flanders’. They had earlier opened for Amsterdam band Hang Youth, and recorded their first EP, ‘EN/EN‘, for Hang Youth´s Burning Fik label. They won a contest in Belgium, the Humo´s Rock Rally 2024 (for the first time since 1990 that a Dutch language band had won).
Maria Iskariot are; singer and guitarist Helena Cazaerck, and guitarist Loeke Vanhoutteghem. Bassist Amanda Barbosa is originally from Brazil. The band hope to play one day in that country, where Dutch punk band Bambix are popular. The drummer is Sybe Versluys, the only boy in the band.
Their set began with only Sybe drumming. Then, Helena, Amanda and Loeke jumped onto the stage from standing in the audience! They danced wildly to the drumbeat, picked up their guitars and started a frantic punk song. I had seen them in Leiden last year, and at the Paradiso this year. Both times were great, and this third time in the Paard was no exception.
They played for an hour, more than the half hour in Paradiso. That meant more songs, including ones where Helena switched from electric guitar to acoustic guitar. Helena jumped off the stage twice. She got everyone singing along with their chorus line and song title ‘Dat Vind Ik Lekker‘, translated I Like That.
There was much dancing to Maria Iskariot, as much as being pressed together like sardines in a can allowed! Here is a video of their song, ‘Leugenaar’.
Helena said that the Netherlands are her favourite country. Applause, even as Helena continued ‘after Belgium’.. For their last song in The Hague, they played ‘Bedankt!’
As the audience left the Paard, Maria Iskariot were already thinking about their gig the next day at a Tilburg festival. Hopefully they brought really good memories of this concert with them!
Main Photo Credit: FakirNL (Maria Iskariot at the Valkhof Festival in Nijmegen)
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In 1978 Herman co-founded Dutch Rock Against Racism and was a founder of Pin punkzine. He’s vocals/saxophone for Cheap ‘n’ Nasty and in 2021 co-founded the Punk Scholars Network, Netherlands.
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