Protest The Hero Finished battle vest

On the 16th of June 2025 I was at Into the Grave festival in NL and I thought to myself: I want a battle vest after all those (22) years of listening to metal! I collected a couple of patches right away.
I started making the vest on June 22, 2025. I finished it on March 23 the next year! It was a blast to work on. Meet Maliënkolder (Dutch for Hauberk or Chainmail).

Total of patches: 142. That's 139 band patches and 3 festival patches. I had already bought lots of patches in the previous years for them to collect dust (or dirt on backpacks), and many more were bought after the idea of creating the vest. I've made 40 patches myself. 25 of which I've created with self cut stencils and textile paint and 15 patches are embroidered by yours truly. (And some are made from cut up t shirts, but i don't count them as DIY)

The theme: every metal subgenre I listen to: from SOAD to Devourment and from Molotov Solution to Nasum. Later in the process I decided to add some of my favorite bluegrass related and punk bands too.

The color scheme is mainly browns, oranges, yellows and black and whites on the back. Greens, blues, greys and black and whites on the front. I used a brown colored thread that matches the original thread of my denim vest! Meters of thread used: over 200, but I doubled the string so actually more than 400 meters (1300 ft).

All patches were sewn on by my hand.
All pockets are still functional. The left breast pocket is equipped with a waterproof poncho and the right one holds a sewn in bottle opener!
Some edges of the vest are showing denim as to respect the mighty denim (and it looks cool of course)
The buttons are still functional for cold weather ;)

On the inside you'll find all cloth festival wristbands of the metal related festivals I went to.

Fun fact: the average year of the albums that made me fall in love with the bands on this vest is 2009/2010.

The number of bands/albums per country:
US 68, UK 16 (1 Orkney), CAN 10, GER 10, SWE 9, FIN 4, NL 4, BELGIUM 3, AUSTRALIA 3, ITALY 2, SPAIN 2, RUS 2, IRE 1, SWITZ 1, NORWAY 1, COLOMBIA, 1 POLAND, 1 INDONESIA 1, FRANCE 1