After a two-year pause, Prognosis Festival returned to the Netherlands in April 2022 and Prog travelled to Eindhoven to soak up the atmosphere. Prog acts new and old rubbed shoulders at the rescheduled two-date event, which brought many surprises as well as some new favourites.

Tiptoeing through the tulips: Jerry Ewing

Focal point: Haken and Novena’s Ross Jennings kicks things off with a solo set.

Images: Emmelie Herwegh

This has been really expensive for us,” explains Ross Jennings, best known as frontman of Haken, but here in Eindhoven with up-and-coming prog metallers Novena, and as a solo artist in his own right.Prog has just run into Jennings and some Novena bandmates in the corridor that runs from the bar to the smaller hall within De Effenaar, the venue that houses Prognosis Festival, and as excited as they are to be here, the impact of Brexit on British touring bands is all too evident. “We weren’t able to bring any merch over,” sighs Jennings. “And what with carnets and everything else you now need to be a band abroad it’s costing a fortune.”

These solemn sentiments are echoed by The Fierce And The Dead’s Matt Stevens, who joins Prog for a beer on the Saturday afternoon between bands. And as the only other UK act on the bill, another band whose main source of income from live music has now been clipped. It was a similar story in reverse for Norwegian proggers Meer at the recent Winter’s End festival in Chepstow (see p106), who were unable to bring any merchandise into the country due to the UK’s ongoing bureaucratic red tape nightmare following our departure from the EU. It’s sadly ironic there might possibly be people reading this who voted the UK out the EU, but their fear of a foreign family moving in next door, or all that supposed EU bureaucracy (irony of ironies), still overrides the damage such a move is doing to the music they profess to love!