Hellfest 2026 : Live report from the Inside

🖋️ Sam Pillay
📸 Jorge El Alaoui Cortés

No one doubts it, and our musician friends – who might well be reading this – won’t disagree: when you’ve had the pleasure of playing a gig at a festival as popular as Hellfest, you can’t wait. You look forward to it in the run-up, you get ready, you try to plan ahead, you try to think of everything down to the smallest detail, to do your very best. Then the gig flies by in a flash. And the post-gig anticipation kicks in. We can’t wait to see the photos, the stories, the videos. We can’t wait for the live reports to come in, to read what the media will say, to gauge the performance we gave our all for through the lens of a stranger’s words.
Yet those words won’t change a thing – neither the quality of the show we put on, nor the sincerity with which we delivered it, and certainly not the joy or disappointment we may have felt, musicians and audience alike, during that brief moment. Those words, those feelings – whichever side of the crash barrier we find ourselves on – are beyond our control. That is the magic of music and of the moment.

So rather than waiting impatiently for the reviews to come out, here’s what we thought: What if we wrote our own review? What if we told you what we experienced from the inside, and conveyed what the audience at that concert meant to us?
Because it’s difficult to recount a memory through five different voices, it’s naturally the voice and pen of Point Mort, Sam, who will tell you this story mosty in the first person. Nothing extraordinary, nothing crazy, just a defining moment in the lives of five musicians, and the technicians and people who support us. People who, for the past ten years, have done everything they can to experience moments like this.
Here is the behind-the-scenes account of our time at the Warzone.

It’s time. Simon (drummer and, more often than not, the technical jack-of-all-trades for our project) plays the intro sample. The magic of a live performance—which we’ll only realise later—is that the audience can hear the audio perfectly, whilst we, on stage, can hear the intro to Queensrÿche, who are kicking off their set at the same time on the Main Stage. We exchange confused, even panicked glances, followed by looks of support and encouragement – it’s no big deal, let’s go for it – as if nothing had happened, as if we were right in the thick of it.
First contact with the audience: we launch into it with gusto, we look at each other, we greet one another, we smile.

The first Polaroid is of a leek leaping into the air – yes, a leek. Apparently they’re real leeks and that’s the custom at Warzone. If we’d known, we’d have gone for fruit and veg as well as flowers.
We kick off with In Cold Blood ; a Warmer Heart, and find our feet. It all still feels a bit mechanical. But the audience certainly isn’t. From the very first notes, we feel a wild, tenfold energy – undoubtedly the most tangible energy any audience has ever given us to date.
So by the middle of the track, we let rip.
We launch into An Ungreatful Wreck of our Ghost Bodies
Leeks are flying – and so are people!

And then there’s a smile – one of those that means a little more than the others. It’s the smile of Xavier, our number one fan, who’s become a friend over the course of our gigs, whom we can see from the top of his seat ‘floating’ through the air, lifted up by the arms of the generous crowd. I’m happy to catch his eye and take that memory with me, lost in the trance of the concert.
The pit is teeming with generosity. People are thrashing about with radiant fervour.
We kick off with ‘Skinned Teeth’; I rush towards the mosh pit, climb over the barrier and let the crowd carry me along, savouring the moment and taking another mental Polaroid of our gig – this time from the audience’s perspective.

The concert flew by in a flash – just enough time to close our eyes and open them again to a shower of confetti. We snap one last Polaroid, etching this downpour of joy onto our retinas; a little something to quench our thirst for when times are less rosy.
We took our bows, just like at the theatre, more united than ever, and presented our final gifts: little bouquets of fresh flowers we’d put together that very morning.

We’d surely pictured this concert a thousand times in our minds—something we’d been longing for, yet nothing at all. We left with our joys and our sorrows, changed yet intact, humble yet victorious.
We reached out our arms. And we received love as we’ve rarely experienced on stage before.
This Warzone will no doubt not be our best concert, but a beautiful, colourful bouquet that will take a long time to fade in our hearts – and we hope in yours too.

Being musicians means being able to lay bare your most intimate thoughts for all to see.
It’s a sincere gift: accepting judgement and living with it.
It’s beautiful, it’s alive, it’s honest. That’s who we are.
And without you, we are nothing.

We are Point Mort, and we’re proud to have shared this moment with you.

I take my place on the drum riser; I’ve barely had time to get my bearings for the concert – I feel as though I’ve been thrown in at the deep end. At last I see them, my stage partners, my friends. They look brilliant, dressed to the nines. There are flowers everywhere. The sky is azure blue.
The audience is there – and not just a few people, no; there are crowds well beyond the control room, right up in the stands. A few seconds that seem to stretch on forever. This is going to be a beautiful moment, that’s for sure. But I’m thrown off balance; I can’t hear our intro. I’d planned to greet the audience, but it’s too late – the song’s starting.
A shaky first shout, and everything just flies by. It’s going so fast that almost nothing remains in my memory.
Well, some flashes, glimpses, moments of bravery, at least.

It was as if the crowd had anticipated the more festive second half of the set, to help us get there without a hitch.
From that point on, it’s all hustle and bustle, positive energy and smiles.

A little nod to our 2022 gig – we’re playing the second half of Olympe. The crowd are like a bunch of happy little goats. As for me, I’m starting to feel a bit more at home here; my gaze wanders off into the distance. Right in front of me, I can see Em, our lighting technician, in her control booth. I’m proud that she’s been with us for all this time; seeing her perched up there leaves a little Polaroid snapshot in my heart.
We kick off with ‘Iecur’, our catch-all, good-vibes track. This one’s for us above all else; we know we’re going to have fun playing it.

Next up is The Bent Neck Lady. We’ve planned a very special set for this gig at the Warzone – something really high-energy, tailored to the venue and its audience. The Bent Neck Lady stands out a bit, but we were keen to keep this track in the set, to give everyone who doesn’t know us yet a taste of our full musical range. But ‘The Bent Neck Lady’ is a risky track, and for me its intro is demanding and unforgiving. I didn’t have time to sort out my sound before the gig; I can’t hear a thing – or rather, I can hear everything! A buzz rises from the crowd, who are chatting away happily, and it drowns out everything in my ears, as I’m practically singing a cappella. I concentrate; I’m singing blind. When the track kicks into high gear, the crowd suddenly launches into a massive circle pit – completely unexpected. ‘The Bent Neck Lady’ is one of our most introspective tracks; it deals directly with anxiety and the obsessive fear of dying. We hadn’t counted on this track sparking a circle pit. I think from that moment on, we just let the gig sweep us away. It was so unlikely to see people whirling around in that joyful chaos, to this track that we play whilst mentally laying ourselves bare.

But I’m already drifting too far away to make it back to the stage in time. And then I catch the eye of a makeshift lifeguard in this sea of people. This alert bloke grabs my arm and pulls me back without ceremony so I can get back to the barrier – and for that I’m grateful to him today.
The final track is already upon us. It’s called ‘Celebrity Spin’ and we’re delighted to round off our set with it, as we wrote it especially for the occasion. After a quick explanation to get the audience singing along with us, we sang about our joy and the privilege of being there, of being listened to and, above all, of sharing this special moment with this peaceful ‘Warzone’. This song was our gift, a treat, a brand-new track for the people who’d come to support us. They gave us back that gift a hundredfold.

This isn’t our first time at Hellfest. In 2022, we played at La Valley, at the ‘crack of dawn’, in a packed tent. It’s impossible not to compare the two experiences. But no, this gig won’t be anything like the last one. Not the same stage, not the same music, not the same people. Four years have passed; we’ve grown up – not to say grown older. We know what we want and what we don’t want. Yet despite all the preparation beforehand – a technical run-through, an artistic run-through, hours of rehearsals – setting up is a bit chaotic. It has to be said that we’ve got loads of kit, a gigantic backdrop – almost too big (when you love something, you don’t count the cost) – and, above all, lots and lots of flowers. As soon as we start unloading, the back of the Warzone takes on an unexpected look. The carpet of flowers spread out on the rear platform really catches the eye. There’s a whiff of mischief in the air (that’s obviously a metaphor – we didn’t rob a florist on the way here, and these flowers don’t actually smell). It’s already beautiful, and it warms our hearts. But we need to set up, warm up and get changed. And we do it all ourselves. The stage is a whirlwind of activity. The riser isn’t in the right place; we’re having issues with the HF frequencies… With just three minutes to go before the start, surprises are coming thick and fast. Never mind, we’ll sort it out. We’re sweating – both literally and figuratively.