Regretfully, I don’t speak Dutch. This is a personal failing but doesn’t at all impact my ability to rock the hell out to Maria Iskariot, such is their harnessing of the language-transcendent punk spirit.
If you haven’t come across them before, perhaps when supporting Tropical Fuck Storm on their recent UK and Scandinavian tour, a jaunt to their YouTube channel bio debriefs: “Maria Iskariot is the patron saint of questionable behaviour. It’s semi-adult female punk rock from Flanders [northern Belgium]”. The band name comes from an appropriately saintly/contentious amalgam – Mary, mother of Jesus, taking on Judas’ surname.
And this antithetical matrimony extends through and underpins all their music. From the first 30 seconds of this, their debut LP, Wereldwaan (Worldmania), the listener is audio-witness to a hectic jumble of guitar screeching, chugging drums and barely contained, closed-mouth humming that indeed un-contains, and unhinges into a scream. I’m partial to a good loud grunt in a song, but the modestly quiet ‘huh!’ that curtains the incredible drum breakdown in Vele Mussen (‘Many Sparrows’) is pretty great. The sister songs Rozemarijn and Tijm (‘Rosemary’ and ‘Thyme’), rather than being any gentle ‘Scarborough Fair’ reference, are dark visions of gore and despair.
Lyric translations are available, though for the uncurious listener, remaining ignorant of these translations allows the vocal performances to pass through a filter of abstraction before hitting the ears, and be appreciated more deliberately as an instrument. Frontperson Helena Cazaerck truly plays her voice – her delivery shot through with the burn marks of the rawest power, the highest screams breaking in and out of audibility like a dog whistle to the receptive. But as revealed (to the non-Dutch-speaking) through translation, the lyrics are poetry.
In the title track (“I buy duty as truth / And along with it I share in the innocence / I do speak of evil / But I keep vomiting in contradiction”) and in ‘Suiker’ (Sugar) (“In summer I have freckles / In autumn I feel sorrow / In winter I must atone / For the spring ahead”), that moral push-pull continues, oh so eloquently. But these words aren’t delivered measuredly; they tear through the songs, guttural, savage, as if Cazaerck’s mouth is the lid on an overboiling pot. This lyricism seemingly can’t help but spill violently over, such is the flame beneath. If there is a language “barrier” it can only block explicit translation – the thrust of meaning is all there in the performance.
And don’t think that it’s all poetic cynicism and rage – Maria Iskariot’s power, in fact, comes from their deliberate hope: “We are four people that have found each other. Being a gang, having fun and creating something meaningful together is our way of coping with the madness attacking us from inside and out. We try to make something beautiful out of frustration, unwanted complicity, greed, finger pointing, ugliness. We choose life.”
The life that Wereldwaan embodies is not only right up my street, but it’s inside my home, up the staircase, and currently jumping on my bed. And now Maria Iskariot is rapping hard on the door of your life – let them in!
Wereldwaan was released on October 31 2025 via Burning Fik and can be purchased on Bandcamp
