The mid-point of Incubate in 2015 began with a band who, instrumentally at least, share an idea with Royal Blood. Youff are a drums and bass noise duo from Belgium and what they possibly currently lack in originality they more than make up for in energy. Although sparsely lit too the effective strobing amply shows up the speed at which the drummer has to hammer away at the kit to set the frenetic pace, his hands looking Wolverine-like as the light fires.

Old school Dutch grindcore in the shape of Kru$h came next at Little Devil. Bringing to mind such legends of the scene as Doom the dual-vocalled five piece growled and screeched their way through a set of tight, short numbers without a dancer in sight, ably showing up the differences in temperament between this and the hardcore audience despite the shared weight and pace of sound.

Over at Extase Beasts were tonight's third bit of entertainment. Only unfortunately they weren't that entertaining. The Metallica t-shirt was maybe a giveaway. Straightforward rock saw me make the second quickest decision and exit of the night. A walk back up the road to Hall Of Fame was in order for some more hardcore to hopefully invigorate the night but, although certainly loud, Vvovnds were curiously unengaging. True they were hampered by a mysterious crackling coming from the speakers but despite the battering they gave their instruments they seemed to just be going through the motions.

Three Trapped Tigers were tonight's opening act at Midi and were received well by a crowd who clearly knew who they'd come to see. Playing mostly new material they were a bit let down in the vocal department but otherwise were note-perfect and clearly happy to be back on a European jaunt after a few years away. Next door at Extase Spectres also had a bit of a vocal issue in the mix but their powerful, overdriven music more than made up for anything they were failing to convey by singing. A real tour de force.

Unlike Daggers who proved to be yet another loud but unengaging hardcore act. There's something a bit awry when such bands resemble hipsters until they take to the stage. Hard to take them seriously when that's the case. The UK was getting a lot of look ins tonight as next on the list were London's Yak, who as well as playing some very heavy & well paced indie had one of the better designed t-shirt images of the week so far. A trio who should hopefully be progressing steadily in the future.

Free jazz is a term bandied about a lot at Incubate & Dead Neanderthals are proponents of this inextricably linked to the event. What they mainly did at Midi was quality test the lifespan of a set of guitar strings when the insrument is battered, kicked, pounded and has all sorts of other physical abuse heaped upon it whilst a large sax is wailed away on and the drums thunder along. Fascinating like a car wreck and a good example of where jazz greys into hardcore but more theatre than music. Pretty self-indulgent too. Full Of Hell were perfoming sans Merzbow tonight so finally some absorbing hardcore was a possibility and they didn't fail to deliver this time around. As with the previous two acts at Hall Of Fame their singer took to the floor rather than confining himself to the stage, giving the early pit starters something else to avoid. "You guys sure like mayonnaise huh?" isn't maybe the greatest attempt at interaction with a crowd and at least one bloke seemed intent on being injured or causing the same when the pit got larger but the band were utterly convincing on all levels.

The bill at Dudok started quite late on tonight and first on it were the fun & laidback Jeff The Brotherhood. Top marks for actually having a good bit of chat with/for the audience and also obviously engaging with other elements of the festival. Their new album's out in October & from that they played 'Melting Place' as well as an unnamed track that, contrary to their more doomy paced songs, sounded not unlike some thing from an early Smashing Pumpkins album. They were so refreshing to watch in fact that I lost no time in going to catch the end of their set when Norway's Shining (not to be confused with Sweden's Shining) left me utterly cold at Midi. The least said about that experience the better.

Richie Dagger got to play at their own segment of the festival down in the Stadskelder and cranked out a nice line in Scandinavian-like garage rock, putting the seal on a really well curated few days that could easily have had a 3rd more bands of the consistent quality they'd programmed in. Rounding off the night was Sterling Roswell and his drone-heavy material over at Paradox. The accumulated experience of the man & his band was highly evident in their drawn out playing and ability to keep repeated phrases sounding as fresh as when first embarked upon. New song 'Ballad Of A Civil Servant', featuring such subject matter as David Cameron's brain being kept alive in a jar by US scientists, provided a light-hearted note of protest at the day's end.

Evening two of Incubate 2015 starts off with a walk to the Hall of Fame, housed in what was previously an NS Rail machine shop or something. As per the previous night the first act taken in are Belgian. Partisan are so new they apparently have no internet prescence as yet (other maybe than this). Theirs is a pretty edgy punk/post-punk amalgam that is hampered only by noticeably large amounts of tuning up.

Heading down to Midi it's time to catch one of this year's undoubted big names as Merzbow is playing the second of his three shows, solo last night & tonight with Hungarian drummer Balazs Pandi (tomorrow's show is with Full Of Hell). An appreciative crowd is in situ by the time I get there & the two players are respectively pounding away on the kit and doing all sorts of guitar murdering and button pushing to create an unholy racket. Not for the first time tonight will my enjoyment of utter noise be tested to the limit due to a seeming lack of a head & a tail to the piece being performed.

Round the corner I go in search of something more akin to recognisable music and pitch up at Dudok, which seems to be in one of the city's older buildings with a good vaulted ceiling which hints at good acoustics if the sound's mixed right. First onstage for the Rats On Rafts showcase are Dutch indie quartet Nouveau Velo. They experience a bit of difficulty in hearing each other on stage and so are maybe initially rattled by that but for me they never seem to get into anything resembling their stride, sounding too earnest and lightweight to really make any impact.

Keen now to finally get the night underway as far as actually enjoying a performance I'm thwarted yet again at Cul de Sac as Holland's Tamarin Desert can't quite convince me with their take on Byrds etc.-ish '60s sounds. Flat vocals and a lack of the sort of element Umungus had last night sees me head off after a couple of numbers. Thinking a change of musical style might be the catalyst required I head off to the Paradox jazz club for the second of Jasper Stadhouders' performances with his Improv Ensemble (all six of the group's performances over the festival will be released as a boxed set in the coming months).

The club's well set out and you can clearly picture it with candles on the tables and performers doing their stuff on stage to awed silence. The Improv Ensemble are though, as the name suggests, improvising away like mad and whilst they can probably all tell what each is doing or about to do and so join in it all comes across as folk just making whatever noise they feel like in the hope that it somehow fits into the whole. Jazz has its shades like any other music and this just happens to be one that doesn't suit me. Still, as I have a seat and the facial expressions of those involved (particularly the central drummer who seems to not play more than he does play until the dual drum workout near the end of the piece) are interesting in themselves, I hang around and catch the soundcheck of Khyam Allami, master of the Oud. Unassuming and clearly affable his workouts on the instrument just to get the levels right are thrilling enough that I'm hopeful that by the time he came back on stage the audience had bulked out and were treated to something special.

On now to tonight's second act with two drummers as The Melvins play the first of two shows at Midi. They've drawn the first truly big crowd of the week and so the balcony has been opened up, where I mange to plonk myself in a pretty comfy seat and marvel at King Buzzo's Paisley printed muumuu as the quartet pound away. This is great grunge rock performed for a crowd who know exactly what they want & are exstatic to be getting fed it. There's a small pit to the left of the stage but in the main it's just one single entity swaying and bouncing as the band play with hardly any let-up. It'll be interesting to see how tomorrow's show compares.

Buoyed by Buzzo et al's envigorating performance I head back up the road to Hall of Fame to see further hardcore from Belgium in the shape of White Jazz. Theirs is definitely the highlight show of the night for me and it's viewed by a barely double figure number of people. Where are all the pit starters from the Cheap Drugs show? Wherever they were they missed a searing performance from a band that put all their effort into supporting the sterling work of their mesmeric frontman who's firmly in the Rollins/Ian MacKaye mold. Only the destruction of a guitar string & the inevitable delay whilst that was replaced roused me to head off and see what else was happening.

Stage times started to be missed around this point so I wandered back & forth between the Stadskelder, Cul de Sac & Dudok attempting to see The Vickers, Girl Band and Useless Eaters. All were eventually seen to some degree or other. The Vickers giving out a good '60s performance of fairly psychedelic elements with a bit of beat attitude, Girl Band focussing a lot of angst and power into their show (Dara Kiely performing in a wheelchair clearly had some extra stress to exorcise despite also looking half-sedated when not howling his head off) and Useless Eaters smartly channelled the sound of '80s US punk to a packed house.

And that was it, until it turned out I could get a lift rather than wait for the bus by heading back to Paradox to see the end of Jeffrey Lewis's Sonnet Youth (readings of poems based around Sonic Youth songs) performance. This I duly did, joining a mere handful of punters watching him rather stumble through the final bits of the show. Not though that it wasn't without some gem-like moments - his being slightly put on the spot by having to reveal to Gary Lucas that he didn't really see the point of Jeff Buckley when asked to join a tribute show to the late singer/songwriter and the classic deluded rock star tale of the time Johnny Marr had the bright idea of having his tweets illustrated with Jeffrey being the artist in question. As he was the first to admit more (or even some) rehearsal of the night's material would have been wise & as it was I've seen him better in the past. Still, I got a lift home.