London
3-5 May 2019
Friday: Gary
The May bank holiday is normally a time for the revival of pagan customs in Britain. These can be found from local village morris dancers to the crowning of the May Queen in Glastonbury. For a few days, Britain takes on the stance of people being an extra in The Wicker Man while also drowning their innards in vast quantities of booze.
For the past few years, my May holiday has consisted of having my ears pummelled by some of the heaviest bands to ever walk the planet at the three-day Desertfest festival in London. Sprawling over five venues, the festival seems to have grown so much in proportion since my first experience of it, which just proves that heavy music is very much alive and well.So once again Camden Town will become flooded with more long hair and beards, like some Viking horde have taken over, and will shake to the sound of metal.
As I arrive, Swedish three-piece Vokonis take to the stage. They are both heavy and melodic, the kind of 1970s heavy rock that only Sweden or Finland now seem to be able to produce. There is a touch of early Witchcraft or even Graveyard in their songs, but add a soupçon of psychedelic progressive rock and you have a heavy brew indeed. With track titles like “Celestial Embrace” and “Olde One”, I think its obvious which way the band are heading. They seem genuinely happy to be playing the UK (for many of the bands at this year’s festival it will be their first appearance on these shores). Their musicianship shines through their forty-five minute set, and for me this is an excellent way to start the festival as the band seem to have a rather laid-back quality about them.
I make my way back to The Black Heart to catch 1968, but by the time I arrive the queue is already down the stairs and almost outside the pub. I wait in it for about ten minutes without it moving, and decided to head back to The Underworld to catch one of my must-see bands at the festival this year.Blackwater Holylight are a five-piece band from Oregon in the US, and have one of the oddest sounds that I’ve heard in a while. It’s a strange amalgamation of music that makes them one of the more interesting bands on at Desertfest 2019. The bass plays a heavy role, while the keyboards give an unearthly flourish to proceedings. The drums provide a steady rhythm, but it’s when the two guitarists take off that the band really come in to their own. At times they reminded me of the late 1980s and early 1990s power trio Ut in the way the songs are put together. There’s a certain amount of angst in the singing that certainly comes across live and helps build up the tension of performance. Today, they crank out songs like “Jizz Witch” and “Babies” with such power that you can’t help but be impressed. The sound has a touch of psychedelia and a molten lump of good old-fashioned doom in it as well, but for me its those awkward semi-atonal sprinklings they add to some of their songs that really gives the band their edge. Here’s hoping they return to the UK soon.
I head back over to The Black Heart to catch High Priestess, another US band who I had not heard before. Within moments of me getting in the venue, the place starts to fill up very quickly, “They are today’s hottest ticket”, says the guy standing next to me. Within a few moments, the three piece takes to the stage and begin their deep rumbling ride into dark magick. Mariana Fiel’s bass casts dark shadows over the slowly rising in temperature oven that The Black Heart is becoming. This feels like a dark pagan ritual played out at one of the most heathen times of the year. The only problem being that guitarist Katie Gilchrest’s singing seems to be slightly out from the rest of the band, and I assume she couldn’t hear herself properly through the monitors, because listening to their recordings later her vocals are quite wonderful . Songs such as “Banshee” and “Firefly” have a real power to them, and the kind of trance-inducing spirit that you could be dancing around a large fire in the woods at midnight. It’s a sound that summons ancient gods to revisit and renew us with their spirit. I rush back to The Underworld to catch my second must-see band of the day, Alastor. “Are you enjoying yourselves?” enquires Alastor’s singer. “Well that ends right now”. The band then decide that they are going to punish the audience with some of the heaviest riffs around. Presenting a set mainly taken from their new Slave To The Grave album, the band who wear black skull-like make-up around their eyes launch into songs such as “Drawn To The Abyss” and the uplifting “Your Lives Are Worthless”. Alastor are ferocious, with the kind of riffs that batter the brains and the ears, but make you still want to shake your head along to it. I first heard the band when I picked up a copy of their Black Magic EP when it first came out, and the Swedish band certainly don’t disappoint in laying a heavy, dark sludgy trip on the audience that left our eardrums whistling for several minutes after they had left the stage.I stagger back over to The Black Heart to try and catch Great Electric Quest (and by this point I haven’t even had a beer). By the time I get into the room after queuing, the US band are well into their set, giving The Black Heart some much needed Seventies rock’n’roll vibe. Song such as “Anubis” and “Heart Of The Son” give out a full-on stoner groove, while mixing in some more psychedelic tinges in the vein of the early Edgar Broughton Band. They are a fantasticly charismatic live band with lots of energy, who I’m sure take away a few new fans from their performance, including me. But now a slight fatigue is beginning to set in, so I think a break for some food (and finally a beer) will help give me the energy to face the next bands on my list.
When I’m fully revived, I make my way to The Devonshire Arms to catch another Swedish band, Cities On Mars, a group who I had also not heard of before, but was curious to hear because of their name. The three-piece has their bassist double up on keyboards, similar to Geddy Lee, and in fact, some of the band’s sound reminds me of Rush as it moves from eerie atmospherics to big power riffs within the space of one song. I can hear elements of The Sword in their music as well, but its their off-world subject matter that really draws me in to their songs. “Trenches Of Bahb-Elon” gives a hint of the mystical cosmic undertone of most of their songs, and “Inner Sanctum Outer Space” has to be one of the best track titles I’ve heard for a while. They are the aural equivalent of reading an Edgar Rice Burroughs planet story novel, so for me this was musical heaven.I mange to rush back to The Black Heart and caught about fifteen minutes of Blanket, the only UK-based band I have witnessed today. Their sound is kind of melancholy prog-based and at points reminds me of later Marillion. But it’s then I realise that I had best head back down to The Underworld if I’m going to get a good view of my last must-see band of the day.
It’s hard to explain the experience of seeing Electric Citizen live; certainly, singer Laura Dolan puts her all into each performance and somehow manages to connect with every single member of the audience, a rare thing indeed. They are another band whose début album, Sateen, I bought when it came out in 2014, full of Charles Manson-esque acid grooves, and it was my soundtrack for quite a while. Tonight, their set leans heavily on their new album Helltown, but still blisters and bangs as the band crash through the songs at full throttle. Its hard to get across what an invigorating experience it is to see them live. “Heart Attack” rips into you while “Cold Blooded Blue” is delivered with acid-drenched sugar to get you moving and shaking. Their sound is very much in the vein of classic Seventies heavy rock, but this is certainly no bad thing and is also the best pick-me-up after a long day of seeing bands. This is a motorcycle ride to hell filled with the glee of wanton abandonment that only Electric Citizen can deliver when they are at their peak; it’s big and bluesy at times, and downright magnificent.With that, I begin to make my way back after what has been an exhilarating first day of bands, ending on a massive high.
Friday: Justin
To paraphrase the old nonsense verse, spring is sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the metal is? Well, this being May bank holiday weekend, it’s not hard to figure out. It’s in Camden. For this is the week of Desertfest, when various venues around the area play host to an invasion of amiable Vikings, keen to drink all their beer and enjoy an eclectic selection of doom, stoner and desert rock. And I’m here all weekend.First stop, as always, is London’s finest rock pub and organisational control centre of the whole festival, The Black Heart, for a quick pint while we peruse the (as ever, handsomely-produced) programme and try to formulate a plan of action. First tip-off of the day is when a mate shows up and tells us we should check out Jaye Jayle at The Electric Ballroom, so we head straight there. And he was right. Hailing from Louisville, Jayle’s minimalist balladry sets the scene for a Desertfest full of dark Americana. There’s a real ominous vibe going on, and the whole thing comes off like a doomier, less chaotic take on the first couple of Bad Seeds albums. He’s got a real grasp of space and dynamics, which puts me in mind of Angels Of Light, mantric bass grooves giving way to epic noise crescendos. It’s kind of wonderful.
Next up at the Ballroom are Portugal’s HHY And The Macumbas. And they’re delightfully weird. Two drummers and some electronics, so in set-up a bit like Zombie Zombie, but with (even) more drums, although they take the format in a very different direction from ZZ’s John Carpenter-inspired spooky synths. Fronted by a guy who spends the gig with his back to the audience and a creepy mask on the back of his head (to be honest, this is a trick that would have worked better if he’d worn his suit backwards and stopped turning his head from side to side so much, because it’s fairly obvious it’s a dude with his mask on backwards when you can see his beard, rather than a spooky creature with reversed joints, which would have looked awesome) with two switches triggering various sounds, while another guy sits at the back doing electronic stuff, they whip up an insanely danceable storm. Remember the isolationist music of the 1990s? Imagine that, but overlaid with ridiculous levels of percussion. They’re loads of fun.After all that dancing, it’s time for another pint, so we repair once more to The Black Heart (although while I’m here reviewing stuff, the burger place outside the Ballroom doesn’t half do a great veggie hot dog). And the sound coming from upstairs is awesome, so we decide to head up there and check out the band who are making it. And that band are One For Sorrow, clearly the result of a weird experiment where Ross Kemp and Matt Johnson had a baby who went back in time to join a very early line-up of Metallica and introduce them to the delights of the more metal end of grunge so they can sing a lot of songs about fighting. They’re really fucking good, not gonna lie.
So good, in fact, that we end up missing most of Grave Miasma, which is a shame — partly because they’re great, but mostly because they used to be called Goat Molestör, and that umlaut makes me unreasonably happy. (That said, Grave Miasma’s not bad either; true story, I was once thrown out of a department store in Yeovil in the 1980s for saying the word “miasma”. Some friends and I were using their Lego to play “the Apocalypse” — it was really cool, the Archangel Gabriel was on skis and everything — and I said something about a “foul miasma”, only to be approached by a member of staff and told not to use that kind of language in the toy department where children could hear it. “But I only said ‘miasma’” I pleaded. “GET OUT!” came the reply). Basically, Grave Miasma are ALL THE METAL. Flying Vs, chains and leather, a mic stand that is CLEARLY what’s left of a goat for whom molestation was the least of its worries, and some serious amounts of UK death metal. They’re awesome, and I kind of regret not seeing more of them, but I think One For Sorrow was a fair trade. Then it’s Wovenhand, who I’ve wanted to see for a very long time, ever since hearing their album Ten Stones many years ago. They get called a lot of things — Americana, country rock… but the word nobody seems to want to use is “goth”. And I’m using it RIGHT FUCKING NOW. They don’t look like a goth band, although David Eugene Edwards is wearing sunglasses indoors, but they pretty much are. He played on the last Crime And The City Solution album, FFS! There’s something very Fields Of The Nephilim about their cowboy-infused anthems, though his vocals skew more Walker than Waits (and it’s worth remembering that in their early days, Carl McCoy used to describe the Nephs as “spaghetti metal”). And this is no bad thing. Speaking as an ex-goth myself (if indeed there is such a thing, rather than just a goth who can’t be arsed wearing makeup anymore), I heartily approve. Again, Angels Of Light come to mind, or the more song-oriented Swans stuff (thinking specifically of The Burning World here), or a deep-voiced Bonnie “Prince” Billy who’s cranked up the volume.Headlining the Electric Ballroom tonight are the majestic Om. It seems to me there must be some sort of rule that Sleep (like Kyuss) have to be involved somehow in every Desertfest. If they’re not playing themselves, as they weren’t last year, then Matt Pike‘s High On Fire take over. And this year it’s the turn of Al Cisneros‘s devotional hypno-doom outfit.
Now, I have a couple of problems this evening — one, the Ballroom is absolutely rammed (which is as it should be, really, Om more than deserve it). Problem being that this means I can either get right in the crowd and hear them but not see them, or I can linger at the edges where I can see perfectly but can’t hear shit because everyone’s talking. I mean, fair enough, I am near the bar so that’s to be expected. But, aware that being a drinker myself makes me something of a hypocrite for saying this, there may be too many drinkers here tonight and not enough smokers. However, being a human being with the capacity for abstract thought, I can extrapolate from the fact that they look like they’re playing a great show and also sound like they’re playing a great show that they are, in fact, playing a great show, even though I don’t get to experience both aspects at the same time.
At some point I start feeling sorry for Skraeckoedlan, who are currently playing upstairs at The Black Heart, because surely there can’t be anyone there watching them. So I go to give them some support, and it seems that inexplicably there are still quite a lot of people in London who aren’t watching Om at the Ballroom, and they’ve got a big crowd too. I watch a bit of their fuzz-based rock psychedelia and absolutely love it. But I also love Om, so I go back to the Ballroom, push myself into the crush and get there just in time for the part of any Om gig I always think of as “the awesome Lazarus bit”. And if I close my eyes it’s like I can almost see them. Mind you, eyes closed is never a bad way to appreciate Om — it is, after all, how Cisneros tends to play.A fitting end to a great first day of what’s always London’s best weekend of the year. And now home to bed.
Saturday: Justin
Next up at the Underworld are Headless Kross, one of today’s two Glaswegian acts at the Underworld. On the surface their sound is pretty classic doom metal, but there’s space rock and psychedelia in there as well, and everything goes up to eleven. Like all the best doom acts, the experience is somewhat akin to being run over by something very heavy moving very slowly. Imagine Khanate if they’d been smoking a lot of weed, or Conan (not the band, the actual barbarian dude) reminiscing with a beer after a heavy session of crushing his enemies, seeing them driven before him and hearing the lamentations of the women.
The good thing about today is that there aren’t really any bands I’m that knowledgeable about playing, so there’s nobody I really HAVE to see, which paradoxically means I get to take in more and varied flavours as I check out bands on a whim, like some kind of meandering wastrel. So I find myself enjoying Stoned Jesus, despite having been put off somewhat by the slighty-too-on-the-nose name. Stoned Jesus are a band who understand the importance of a groove; there’s something of Wovenhand’s dark Americana going on, but it’s been upended and smothered in Sabbathian riffs, taking the doom / stoner sound back to its roots in the blues. And when they rock out, they rock out hard, and we get our first crowd surfers of the day. Much as I am enjoying them, I get an urgent text telling me that Acid Cannibals are “ripping it up” at the Underworld, so I figure why the fuck not?
Acid Cannibals are a two-piece who rock as hard as Motörhead. James McKay of The Cosmic Dead is an enormous Glaswegian Viking, fuelled on Bucky and metal, while behind him Robert Marley (no, not that one, he’s dead for a start) beats the shit out of his kit. They’re one of those bands who feel like a tap’s been turned on, like there’s a portal to a dimension of eternal noise which gets opened and closed every time they start or end a song. That text was no word of a lie. They are indeed “ripping”, and I cannot stress this enough, “it up”. Like the Lightning Bolt of thrash, there are literally no fucks given, and they punctuate their set with jokes about (of course) Buckfast and Motörhead. They’d be scary if they weren’t so much fucking fun. Born from the ashes of Biblical doom legends Trouble, The Skull play good-time hard and heavy rock and roll. They are very much classic metal, and like Stoned Jesus, have not forgotten the role of the blues in all this malarkey. This isn’t metal to make you feel bad or provide bleak solace when you’re down, this is metal to crack open a beer and enjoy. Albeit of course, somewhat doomy.Another band who are far more fun than their name would suggest are Berlin retro combo Kadavar, playing at the Ballroom. Visually they’re pretty much the perfect representation of the Desertfest aesthetic, even having a bassist who bears an uncanny resemblance to Metalocalypse’s William Murderface. And they rock as hard as Dethklok. Like many metal acts they worship at the shrine of the 1970s, but they haven’t missed any of the tweaks and fine tuning metal has received in the last few decades. When they lock into a groove it’s relentless, almost like if Swans were a metal band. While sounding nothing like Gira‘s gang, they have a similar grasp on dynamics, with massive and ominous buildups exploding into a fury of soloing and intense riffage that it’s impossible not to get swept up by. Oh, and in case you were wondering, yes sir, they CAN boogie.
Overall, the general tempo of Desertfest this year’s been somewhat faster than previous events, but never fear, it hasn’t lost its love of The Slowness. And indeed the Saturday headliner at the Ballroom is CONSIDERABLY slower than last year’s blistering set by High On Fire, as we are treated to the unspeakable cosmic darkness of Amenra. Admittedly I’m quite drunk at this point, and my entire notes for their set consist of the single word “stunning”, but that one word is no word of a lie, and pretty much says it all, but that wouldn’t make much of a review. There is much more that can be said of these Belgians’ sonic excursions into horror, but the main thing is that they are fucking brutal.
Back to the crowd, Colin H Van Eeckhout screams and howls into the roaring whirlwind that the rest of the band are whipping up, and it feels like being sandblasted. There’s something incredibly cleansing and cathartic about surrendering yourself up to their Lovecraftian cacophony, somewhat akin to the feeling one gets watching Neurosis or (again) Swans. It’s transcendent, like going through hell to come out at the end blinking in the light of heaven. Except you actually come out blinking in Camden, and it’s after dark. But you get my drift.Feeling strangely uplifted by such intense darkness, I make my way home, only to have my mood slightly soured while playing Pokemon Go, as I find a mudkip, but the bastard gets away. But still, after a day of such delights, I can live with that indignity, I guess.
Sunday: Gary
I start at The Underworld watching four-piece local band Surya. Their sound is big doomy and sludgy. There are samples of voices over most of their instrumental pieces, while violent images play on a screen behind them. The sound and visuals together reminds me more of industrial gigs in the early eighties, and its only when the howling vocals appear that I really feel a sense of twenty-first century metal urgency coming in. The riffs are big, heavy and hard, and steamroller your brain into oblivion — especially at 2.30 in the afternoon. Its only later I find out that the band supports a vegan lifestyle, so I imagine some of the lyrics touch on this theme as the attitude of the band has a touch more Crass post-punk about it at times. Anyway, the sampled voices work really well over the music and certainly add a touch of tension as well.
One of the next bands that I wanted to see, Naxatras, have sadly not been able to make the festival, so instead I head back to The Black Heart to check out the bands there. Seeing as its quieter here today, there are not the massive queues to get into this tiny venue as on the previous days. I catch another London four piece called Wren, who I knew nothing about previously (after Friday’s international fare, it’s good to see some more local bands). Their sound is full of complex rhythms smashed by big, heavy power chords. While watching them, I kind of thought that this is what Electric Wizard would sound like if they played math rock. The vocals are screaming and penetrating, and in this small venue you feel quite bludgeoned by their sound.I now have the strange thing of having a thirty minute window before I see the next band, so I chill with a pint and chat with a guy who was a regular at all the doom gigs back in the early to mid 2000s about how there only used to be fifty people turning up to see this type of music, and generally it would be the same faces at each gig. This year, sadly, he was the only old guard face that I saw at the festival. It really does feel like the baton has been passed to the newer fans, and this made me think of how time has passed. On Friday, I wore my Reverend Bizarre tour t-shirt and some guy asked me if I had bought it off eBay; when I said that I got it at a gig at this very venue (The Underworld), he seemed shocked. It’s a shame that the good Reverend split before the forming of Desertfest, as I’m sure they would have gone down a storm.
After my slight digression, I head upstairs to see Video Nasties, a powerful UK five-piece band. At points, the bass work reminds me of some early post-punk bands as it plays more chordal sequences than riffs, but maybe this is more of an influence from Om, who also use it in a similar fashion. You get an idea that the band have a sense of humour, and when I see the cover of their release Viva Death with a pastiche of Mötley Crüe’s Too Fast For Love cover on the front of it it all seems to make sense. Their songs are big and powerful, and the riffs are cranium-crunching and the vocals are harsh. I leave a bit early as I want to get a good spot at the front stage for the next band.
My stomach is rumbling, so it is time to get some food and ponder over the four bands I had already witnessed, coming to the conclusion that Sabbath Assembly are definitely my highlight of the day so far. I stroll languidly back to The Underworld, where things are politely buzzing, trying to imagine how many people are packed into The Roundhouse right at that moment.
There is a hovering atmosphere of disquiet as I enter the venue where Chve And Syndrome are playing. I know that they are two members of Amenra, but this wasn’t quite the thing I was expecting. The comes across as a melding of Zeit-era Tangerine Dream mixed with Throbbing Gristle. It pulsates, it drifts and it gives you an eerie sense of cold, dark space. At times, it has the same feeling as darkened woods at night, the sense that something unexpected might happen at any moment. This feels almost like transcendental music and is a welcome break from the ongoing riffs. However, the big guitar sound of heaviness returns as The Secret hit the stage next. They have a heavy wall of sound that attacks you and threatens you in every way possible. It feels like someone is shouting in your face as the guitars wail around and the drums beat you into submission; this is a full-on assault and the band are up for making you feel as uncomfortable as possible.It’s now getting near the end of the day, so I stroll up to catch some of Fu Manchu’s set and also so that I can experience a little bit of the atmosphere of The Roundhouse. Knowing that Justin is covering them, I just let their music flow over me for a while among the heaving masse,s before I make my way back to The Underworld to catch a couple of songs by Devil And The Almighty Blues. The songs are perfect for a late-night, laid-back experience, tapping into the vein of Robert Johnson via Led Zeppelin.
Playing tracks from their new album Tre, which I have to add is an amazing aural experience, they touch the soul of both The Groundhogs and Kaptain Kopter And The Twirly Birds, and it’s a shame that they are not on earlier as I have to start clock-watching, knowing that my last train back to darkest Kent leaves fairly soon. But at least I get a chance to soak in their blues-filled haze for a little while before I have to make my way up into the darkened streets of Camden town and say goodbye to Desertfest.
I have been covering the event since 2014, and over that time it’s certainly grown in stature. I can only imagine what the logistics are like for organising an event over so many different venues and catering to a bewildering variety of different sound set ups and stage gear changes. But somehow it all seems effortless (and I know from my time playing in bands that this isn’t always so). So aside from all the great bands I’ve witnessed and reviewed over the years, it feels right to raise a glass for all those people who have made this run so smoothly over the last six years and help keep the doom, sludge, etc music scene alive.Sunday: Justin
On Sunday afternoon, I pack my things and head out to Chalk Farm, because today Desertfest has control of the legendary Roundhouse. The line-up there’s pretty good, and the bands in Camden proper are already being covered, so I decide to spend a more chilled day in just the one venue. Well, I say “in”, but the weather’s nice and there’s a supermarket over the road where you can get two cans of JD and Coke for £4.20 (an appropriately Desertfesty number, that) so I decide that in between acts I will take advantage of this comparative bargain. Unfortunately it’s not only heavy music that has a tendency to move slowly, but also the 393 bus, which takes aeons to make its glacial progress to Chalk Farm (there’s some football on, I think), so by the time I arrive, Earthless are already balls-deep in their set.They’re pretty much the ideal Deserfest band — Earthless pump out incredibly loud psychedelic jams, with very little attempt made to compromise to any expectation other than that the guitar will keep soloing off into the stratosphere like Hendrix when he really let himself go. In this respect, they’re kind of like Acid Mothers Temple with more of a krautrock background. Did I mention they were loud? As they finish, I realise my right ear’s gone weird (and it will take a good three or four days to recover. Really must start wearing earplugs to noise gigs).
A couple of boozes later, and it’s time for the first “witch”-related band of the day — for it is time for Witch. Dinosaur Jr‘s J Mascis sits behind the kit in this Vermont powerhouse. This is occult metal, but not in the “woman sings over Sabbath riffs” sense. This isn’t the elegant occultism of your Hammer movies; it’s a bunch of dudes playing music to get murdered to by teenage Satanists high on biker crank in a parking lot. Of course the Sabbath riffs are in there, but there’s a fair chunk of 1980s West Coast hardcore slamming its way through them too. It’s dirty, it’s dark and it’s also pretty fucking joyful. I like it a lot.Then more witches! All Them Witches. They only really disappoint on two fronts — one, that they’re not an enormous supergroup comprising Witch, Wytch, Witchfinder General, Skeleton Witch, Burning Witch, etc — and two, that they’re not really all that witchy. If you’re gonna call yourself All Them Witches, you should try to be a bit more evil, really. That aside, their heavily blues-influenced swamp rock is infectious, and not afraid to go fast when the time is right. There’s more of the Desertfest 2019 dark Americana going on as well, and there’s something a little Mark Laneganny about the whole affair. They may not be very evil, but they are very good.
By the time tonight’s headliners, Fu Manchu, take the stage, a fair few more boozes have been sunk and I am totally ready for their skater-friendly take on desert rock. They crack open some more of that West Coast hardcore vibe that Witch brought to the venue, and come on like Suicidal Tendencies by way of (of course) Black Sabbath. This isn’t a unique combination, of course — Henry Rollins discovered the wonders that lie between the two years ago — but their spin on it is a righteous one and the crowd go wild. It’s the kind of music that makes you want to set light to stuff. Fortunately nobody does, but it’s still pretty damn hot. They’re a perfect end to a wonderful day.And that’s me all rocked out. Time to go home and sleep until halfway through Monday.
Goodbye, Desertfest. Can’t fucking wait until we meet again.
-Words: Gary Parsons and Justin Farrington-
-Pictures: Dave Pettit and Gary Parsons-
