De Brassers will play their last concert on 19 January 2024. Last concert? Indeed, after 45 years, De Brassers are going to stop performing for good. The reason is uncompromising and medical: bassist Marc Haesendonckx has MS. 

De Brassers only considered playing this final concert at AB: the place where their story really began, with the Rock Rally final in 1980.

Inspired by punk bands like The Damned and The Clash, brothers Eric (drums) and Marc Poukens (vocals), Ben Deckers (keyboards), Willy Dirkx (guitar) and Marc Haesendonckx (bass) formed the band in the late ‘70s, with no experience but with plenty of swag. At their local pub in Hamont-Achel, Limburg, they were once yelled at as ‘brassers’, the ideal band name they thought. “De Brassers became a nickname, because it had something cheerful about it, in contrast to our music," says guitarist Willy Dirkx. 

At Belgian re-issue label Onderstroom Records, we hear that: “De Brassers were an intense and rebellious post-punk band and were embraced by many as the heroes of the Belgian punk movement around 1980. Their doomed sound illustrated the dark atmosphere of the late seventies and early eighties: the fear of atomic bombs, cold war pessimism, police violence against squatters, and the grim years of Reagan and Thatcher." HUMO-journalist and writer Marc Didden once described them as ‘the most stylish of all disrupters’. 

In 1998, the line-up changed and ex-Struggler drummer Erwin Jans and keyboard player Joachim Cohen joined the band. In 2010, Willy’s young son Jules joined as well.

The cult single ‘En toen was er niets meer’ is still in the Belpop 100 every year and you can still find re-issues of De Brassers’ vinyl records in the better record shops. Mainly containing live recordings, as they are first and foremost a live band. So be sure to grab your chance to hear, see and feel De Brassers – joined for the occasion by some friends – live at their very last gig...