The trio, formed of bassist and vocalist Thomas Michiels, guitarist and vocalist Stefan De Graef and drummer Harm Peters, sat down with us at this year’s Arctangent festival where they performed for the second year in a row. Playing on the festival’s first day, a more curated early entry Wednesday featuring a single stage stacked with favourites from previous years, Psychonaut joined Arctangent mainstays such as Curse These Metal Hands, Bossk and And So I Watch You From Afar. The trio were excited to share a stage with such fantastic acts as Michiels elaborated “every year there’s a bunch of bands, so many and it’s such a great lineup. Today? I’d say LLNN. We’re on the same label and our sound guy does their mixing too but I’ve never actually seen them so that will be a lot of fun.” As for the lineup throughout the rest of the weekend he names prog metal trailblazers Animals As Leaders and Friday night’s headliners Meshuggah as two bands that he’d love to see live.
Psychonaut have always been a band of two halves, seamlessly blending their more progressive, post-metal inspired side with a stoney, doom-fuelled edge. Getting into their writing process the band explain, “if music isn’t intricate or musically interesting then it doesn’t speak to us as much as it could. It can’t only be intricate though, it has to be organic, it has to be emotional and listenable. I admire bands who can bring that level of technicality into their music and still make it listenable.” While their early work leant heavily into stoner territory Psychonaut have steadily moved further into progressive psychedelia over the years, Michiels goes on to say “I know we started out as a stoner band and some previous bands we’ve been in were very stoner inspired, by Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath but nowadays…hmm. We don’t really listen to that much stoner stuff, stuff like Sleep and Kyuss inspired us a lot at the start but now it’s much more post stuff. It doesn’t inspire us as much as ten years ago but it’s fun to listen to.”
Psychonaut have made a name for themselves with their extended prog jams, with even their shorter songs stretching over the six minute mark and some of their more extravagant tracks reaching over double that. Guitarist Stefan De Graef goes into detail on their process explaining “it all starts with a riff, with an idea and we see what comes from it. Sometimes we’ll get to about four minutes and think, this is all good, and my hunger is gone. Sometimes the hunger stays and I think we’ve had our longest song at 16-17 minutes. We don’t want to make long songs for the sake of it, but we want the songs to grow organically. If we keep pushing an idea, we think it’s too much, it ends up getting cut”. The trio’s longest track, ‘The Great Realisation’, which clocks in at sixteen and a half minutes, takes up their side of a split EP with Norwegian metal band Sâver, De Graef continues “Our longest song didn’t make it originally, it was on the shelf for a while but then we had it on a split with Sâver and we knew that was it. It didn’t fit on the album and it would have been too much.”
The Belgian post-metal scene has become one of the world’s most active hubs for inspiring new music, birthing bands such as Amenra, Brutus, STAKE and of course Psychonaut. Discussing the reasons behind this brilliant scene the band had one simple answer – “the beer!”. Other than their country’s famed brewing culture De Graef explained “I think the Belgian scene and Belgian bands in general are good listeners and learners. We take from each other and develop and each band develops their own way, and build upon it. We’re all inspired by each other. If Amenra didn’t exist then maybe us and STAKE wouldn’t exist. Amrena are a big influence on the scene. The scene is very much alive”. When asked if Belgium’s education system could be a factor the guitarist mused “Kind of, it could be better. We had to learn to play the stupid recorder and flute…luckily I went onto guitar”.
“Amrena are a big influence on the scene. The scene is very much alive”
In Psychonaut guitarist Stefan De Graef and bassist Thomas Michiels split vocal duties evenly with Thomas taking the higher, more melodic vocals and Stefan delivering fierce growls. In Stefan’s other band, Hippotraktor he acts as the sole vocalist, explaining the his approaches in the two bands he says “I try to approach things organically and it depends on the music. I tend to vary things up with screams and singing. I still think I’m a better guitarist than a singer, but the good thing is that in Hippotraktor I can focus on my vocals whereas in Psychonaut I have to sacrifice some vocal styles for playing guitar. Splitting vocal duties helps, we have differing voices and range in Psychonaut and we work really well together. I don’t think we could carry this band with just one of us on vocals, we both are a big part of it. The combination makes it work”.
With three albums of far-out, psychedelic post-metal behind them and a fourth on the horizon, Psychonaut have made a name for themselves as one of Belgium’s most important underground acts. Heading into the studio this year, the trio are gearing up for 2025 to be their biggest year yet.