A lot has happened in the world of Black Metal since our resident Black Metal Expert Cheryl Carter’s last column, and there’s never enough room to talk about it all. Curse those bloody word limits / the internet’s embarrassingly short collective attention span. Whatever. Here are the 6 things that Cheryl thinks are worth your time and interest in Black Metal right now.
We’re not going to review Bolt Thrower’s headlining set at Damnation Festival 2014. You were either there, or you weren’t. You either get it, or you don’t. They are Bolt Thrower. That was Damnation Festival for 2014. Bring on the next 10 years.
We couldn’t get in the room to review Sólstafir properly when they played Damnation Festival 2014. Not only were security having to operate a one-in-one-out policy to cope with the popularity of Icelandic four-piece, but by the time we made it to the PHD stage, the queue was spiralling out of site up a nearby staircase. What we could hear by lurking near the doors sounded pretty damn great, but we’re going to have to let our photographer Kirsty Garland’s photos do the talking for this one.
Believe it or not, 2014 was only Orange Goblin’s second time performing at Damnation Festival, the other time being back in 2007. Yep, it surprised us too. We thought that given that Ben Ward and co. are among the most long-running British stoner-doom types, they’d have occupied the stage more often than that at one of the UK’s now longest-running indoor festivals. Still, they were here for Damnation’s 10th birthday blowout and boy, did they bring it with both barrels.
Wait, did we say outdoor festival season had ended with Reading and Leeds? Well, we were wrong. A whole truckload of bands descended upon Brighton Racecourse last weekend for Breakout Festival. We sent our newest snapper, Mike Burnell, down to shoot the best and the brightest for Thrash Hits.
There are over 200 artists performing at Reading Festival. Assuming you’re not one of those pricks that goes to a festival just to see the headliners, that’s a hell of a lot of bands you don’t (yet) give a shit about to trawl through in the hope of finding your new love. Plus, you’ve got a job, pubs exist and you don’t even have a tent yet, so time is in short supply. That’s why we exist. We’re here to make sure that you don’t settle on wandering around in a field, blindly hoping to stumble upon greatness but settling on Deaf Havana or, even worse… Mallory Knox. Here are our top tips. Some are new bands and others are just great. Also, there are 12.
When we went to Download Festival 2014, we had planned on asking all the bands what they would do if Linkin Park ratted them out to the cops (not sure what we’re talking about? Here’s a link to Sublime With Rome’s version of what happened when they played a festival with Chester Bennington and co at a festival in the USA). However, we got distracted by drinking booze and watching bands and only did a handful. The best of our videos – by far – was when we caught up with our old friends CJ McMahon and Lee Stanton from mighty Australian deathcore monsters Thy Art Is Murder what they would do if Linkin Park grassed them up to the fuzz.
Roadburn Festival describe themselves as “Europe’s leading underground festival for psychedelic, avant-garde, doom or any other variation of leftfield sonic pleasures that push the boundaries of music.” It’s that offering that brought Rob McAuslan over the sea and back to the festival for his third consecutive visit – this year featuring line-up choices and a day of curation from one Mikael Åkerfeldt.
Six Things We Learned At Roadburn 2014:
It’s time for another Thrash Hits festival splash page – and this time it’s for Hammerfest 2014. All of our coverage from the weekend will be linked to on this here post, so make sure you bookmark it as it’s all you’re going to need. Yep. That means individual band coverage (photos, setlists and so on), all the dodgy rumours and awful gossip our team overhears, and every single photo of Wales-based debauchery that Gary Wolstenholme and Jenn McCambridge snap will be here.
Headlining the Saturday night of Hammerfest 2014 were German thrash legends Kreator. It’s pretty hard to go wrong with dependable Teutonic thrash as the a headline act of a boozy, indoor metal festival.