Desertfest London 2023

London
5-7 May 2023

Friday

Click! Brrrrzzzzz! Crunch! Fuzz! Clang! Crash!

It’s Friday and the beginning of a bank holiday weekend and the sounds above can mean only one thing, that I’m about to have my ears pummelled once again by three days of music at London’s Desertfest, held across five venues in Camden Town.

While some guy sits on a chair to have the world’s most expensive hat put on his head, there will be thousands of others shaking theirs to some of the finest metal music from throughout the world.

I arrive at the start to try and catch Margarita Witchcult, and as per usual the line to collect our wristbands moves quickly and efficiently. One of the remarkable things about Desertfest is how it’s run, from people manning the doors to the guys making sure that all the bands hit the stage at exactly the right time (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band be delayed). This mammoth feat is worth praise on its own as they make it seem so effortless, knowing full well all the hard work involved.

I walk into The Black Heart, only to be greeted by a queue to the venue that snakes its way downstairs and almost outside the pub with a one-in, one-out policy. Fridays tended to be the quieter day at the festival, but now it seems that more people want to start the party early. With little chance of getting into the tiny venue, I make my way to The Underworld to make sure I catch Terror Cosmico, making a mental note to get to different venues early to make sure I can get in to see the bands.

Terror Cosmico are a two-piece from Mexico; big heavy chords hang in the air like the gardens of Babylon while expert drumming pushes the sound forever forward using a variety of sounds on the percussion. For a two-piece, the sound is massively full and a rammed Underworld is enjoying every second of their blisteringly heavy sound. Elements of Rush-style sci-fi mix with tantric om sounds to produce some wonderful original riffs. They are an exciting way to start the festival.

Next up is a band I’ve wanted to see for quite some time, so I head for The Electric Ballroom. Poland’s Spaceslug are one of those bands where I had ordered t-shirts and records from their Bandcamp when they first started and have always admired their blend of spacerock sprinkled over with some heavy sludge riffs. The three piece seem to be in their element and enjoying every moment of playing to a packed London crowd. Guitar and bass duel with each other as big slabs of sound come crashing down over the audience’s head. The band keep proceedings in a cosmic vein as they produce music for some lonely voyage to Mars.

I manage to rush back to The Black Heart to catch a few moments of Tuscany’s finest Mr Bison, whose music verges more on the progressive rock side of psych; which is no bad thing in my opinion. The Black Heart is as hot and sticky as an oven, with people squeezed in making me realise just how much I need a drink. Also, I am clock-watching because of getting back to The Electric Ballroom to see the next band on my list — and also get some air as well.  Hopefully one day I will get to see a full set from Mr Bison as their sound was quite diverse.

Valley Of The Sun are a band I knew very little about, but they obviously have quite a following judging by the amount of fans in front of me who apparently know every word of their songs. The band really do seem to bring a bit of psychedelic North American sunshine to proceedings, with a laid-back air that seemed to drip of dancing in the park to the Grateful Dead-type vibes to it. Yes, the riffs are there; but the lead guitar work is both subtle and beautiful at the same time.

Bass lines tumble over each other and the vocals ooze with melodious cosmic cool that would help chase any blues away. I find myself thinking at one point that they would be the perfect band to listen too while reading old copies of the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics. The drums drive the songs onwards, being both powerful and giving off a mellow feeling at the same time. They are a wonderful surprise and seem to be having a great time.

It is time now for a beer break and to enjoy the coolness of the outside area of The Black Heart and meet some friends for a very quick catch-up before heading back to the Ballroom. Japan’s Church Of Misery are a band I’ve seen many times live and they never fail to deliver or excite. Their big infectious Sabbath-style riffs created by Tatsu Mikami and their exploration of various serial killers over the years means that they always create an atmosphere of both power and brutality at their gigs. Kazuhiro Asaeda‘s vocals perfectly soar above the smash onslaught of riffage behind him; he is a great front man, bringing that extra rock’n’roll singer vibe to the performance. A mixture of new and old classics are performed tonight, giving us a taster of the new album.

Obviously the crowd-surfing audience were never going to let the band leave the stage without hearing the big riff to “Spahn Ranch”. For me, Church Of Misery are one of the founding fathers of (new) doom, seeing as their career is slowly creeping towards its thirtieth anniversary. They know how to give the audience what they want, but do it with an immense skull-crushing powerhouse of sound that would turn John Wayne Gacy’s clown smile in to one of shock. Let’s hope they will do a full UK tour soon.

Next I rush back to The Black Heart to see what turns out to be my big surprise favourite of the day. I have heard Mexico’s Vinnum Sabbathi before, but have never caught them live before. Of course the venue is full to oven-ready capacity and the four-piece band seem to have even hit the stage a bit early.

The sonic assault is a marvel of psychedelic oddness, sampled voices and the kind of bludgeoning chord sequences that leave you reeling. Tracks build up in a slow, pounding manner before hitting their mighty stride like a giant walking across the landscape. The sound is all-consuming, leaving the wreckage of civilisations behind it, the relentless riffs that sometimes ease to let the synths speak and allow a drone to hang in the air make for an incredible aural experience. My advice is catch them live if you can.

Sadly I leave Vinnum Sabbathi’s set slightly early so that I can head back to the Ballroom to catch my final two acts of the day. Both bands I have seen before, so I thought I would ease myself into the last couple of hours by having the comfort of some old favourites. Berlin’s Kadavar mix the sound of early ’70s rock with a big punch of stoner riffs that is an intoxicating blend of wigged-out psychedelia and the forearm smash of big power chords. They are a band whose first album I grabbed as soon as it was released and then had to wait what felt like forever to see them play.

The bass plays big thundering Chris Squire-type riffs and the drums have a touch of John Bonham‘s heavy bass pounding to them, the lead guitar spirals around as do the vocals, to take you on a trip to the other side of consciousness. Kadavar always deliver a fantastic performance and seem to be energised tonight by a Ballroom bursting at the seams.

Graveyard are a band who I saw their first ever London (and maybe UK?) performance supporting Witch at The Underworld, and a few months later they were supporting Witchcraft, a band that they had spawned from in Sweden. They are a breath of fresh air for my last act tonight, their wonderful heavy rock clearly sees them as being more influenced by the seventies than anything else. Their debut album (which I purchased back in 2008) is still one of my absolute favourite records. Their set tonight is a mixture of early classics and newer tracks from their last release.

The galloping Sabbath style remains, as does the melodic chord sequence with tracks that rise and fall like ocean waves over the crowd; and after a hard day of ear-splitting riffs, their music is almost a balm or a beautiful lullaby that makes your head nod in time to the wonderful constructions of their songs. It’s great to see the band reformed again after splitting up and lets hope we will see a new album soon, a long overdue follow up to 2018’s Peace. For me though, I have to start clock-watching as their set draws to a close, because I have to travel back to darkest Kent.

The tube on the way is full of other metal travellers who have also done the first day, many chatting about the bands or letting it all sink in — along with the amount of pints consumed. There are two more days left yet, but Friday was a spectacular firework opening foray into weekend; and not a single gold coach in sight.

-Gary Parsons-

Saturday

So it’s Coronation Day, and the king has the most English weather possible to help him celebrate getting a new hat — drizzle with intermittent showers. Not a good day to be out on the streets at a festival of royalist bootlickery, but an EXCELLENT one to be indoors watching a variety of some of the finest heavy music around. Because more importantly than being Coronation Day, it’s Saturday at motherfuckin’ Desertfest!

Due to the difficulties in getting a dogsitter, because everyone’s busy doing awesome stuff so they can avoid thinking about the rich man’s hat, I miss some of the early acts; which is a shame, but I am in time to catch my first must-see of the day, North Carolina’s Weedeater, who are back at Desertfest again to dish up their Southern-fried weed metal and to deliver a celebration of the riff, as well as all things marijuanal. And very bad puns.

And they’re every bit as bowel-shakingly awesome as they were the last time I saw them here, in this very venue, The Electric Ballroom. Forcing everyone to bang their heads with their epically low and slow tunes, they kick it up to something a little more grungy when the mood takes them, Dixie‘s howling and growling vocals topping the seamlessly dirty low-end sludge of his bass and Shep‘s guitar.

This is not just, as the name would suggest, music for eating weed to, it’s more specifically music for eating weed to and then driving a big fuck-off truck with a couple of dogs in it. Which is a course of behaviour that, while undoubtedly really fun, is obviously not recommended on a Saturday afternoon in central London, so drinking the day’s first beer of many and headbanging slowly to it is probably a safer course of action.

They are in many ways the quintessential Desertfest band — while the variety and eclecticism of the weekend ranges from Dawn Ray’d‘s Antifa black metal (which was yesterday, so sadly I missed it, but I bet they were bangin’) to Church Of The Cosmic Skull (of whom more later), if you were to ask “what kind of festival is it?” and someone just banged on some Weedeater, you’d very quickly get the general gist.

Next there’s a choice to be made. Over a beer, I peruse the programme and decide on Grave Lines, who are playing at The Underworld, another classic Desertfest venue, because after all the gleeful annihilation of Weedeater, I quite fancy something a bit darker and doomier. And it’s not a bad choice at all; as I arrive, The Underworld is rocking to a bassline that sounds like nothing so much as a goth Om, which evolves into something more akin to a goth Sleep. But doom metal is where they really live, in a musical tree with roots in the primal blues of Black Sabbath (of course) and “Cathedral” scratched into the side by a stoned teenager.

There’s plenty here to rock out to, but there’s also a nice brooding atmosphere you could cut with a knife, and the odd wiry Sisters-esque riff thrown in with a spot of wah-wah. Proper doom, in other words. And suitably heavy, because that’s what it’s all about, with vocalist Jake Harding (accompanied at one point by an excellent female vocalist whose name I don’t catch) moving, as the saying goes, from a whisper to a scream, and becomes pleasantly Dave Gahan-esque in between. Really excellent stuff. Especially if, like me, you have a history of eyeliner and dyed hair, but have since moved on to pastures heavier.

After Grave Lines, I decide to take a punt on Plainride, who are playing upstairs at The Black Heart. The Black Heart is the heart and soul of the festival, and it would be extremely remiss of me not to catch one of the bands they’ve got on in their little upstairs room. Which is absolutely RAMMED. Plainride start off promisingly, coming on something like a slightly less glossy Danzig, but then it gets weird, and they become something I can only really describe as a cross between Danzig and Lenny Kravitz.

I mean, they’re really good at it, and everyone seems to be having fun, but I don’t think I’m really their audience. It’s kind of an unexplored niche, though, so fair play and good luck to them with it. I can, for example, think of an old flatmate from about a quarter of a century ago who would have absolutely LOVED them.

Now there are many foundational bands in the “fire up the bong, lads, this one’s heavy as fuck” canon. Sabbath, obviously, without whom none of this would be possible, but also Swans, Earth, Kyuss, Sleep and Melvins, the last of whose book Slomatics have clearly taken a page or two from (and Boris, who will play tomorrow, took their actual name from).

Their sludgy but slick rhythm section sounds like machinery for moving continents, proving yet again the old adage that very heavy things move very slowly, hanging on a single note for ages before a cathartic drop. But mixed into this is something a little more psychedelic, and The Underworld reverberates happily to their relentless sonic onslaught. Once they lock into a groove they become truly hypnotic, and are a headfuck in the best possible way, with something of a more organic Godflesh to the proceedings.

Then it’s time to make my way to the Powerhaus. Or Dingwalls, as it used to be VERY well-known. And which still has “Dingwall Building” painted on the side, still seems to be referred to as “Dingwalls” by most people I speak to, and is, to all intents and purposes, still the iconic Dingwalls that it always was, making this an utterly pointless piece of corporate rebranding. Just call it Dingwalls for fuck’s sake.

And why is it time to head to Dingwalls? Because Telekinetic Yeti are about to come on. Now, every Desertfest one of my favourite things is to find a band I’ve never heard of but have a cool name and check them out on that basis alone. This year it’s Telekinetic Yeti, but this year, because I couldn’t make it on Friday, I cheated a bit and spent Friday afternoon in the pub with a book and their albums Abominable and Primordial to get myself in the mood and take the edge off missing other bands. And they were fucking good, so I’m really looking forward to this.

And they do not disappoint, other than in only playing for about forty-five minutes of their hour-long slot. But they fill that time with some of the best music I’ve heard all day. And they are, and this is key, LOUD AS FUCK. They also take a more psychedelic approach to the stoner template, slipping into actual space rock (and even occasionally krautrock) territory, filter sweeps an’ all.

For two dudes they really do kick out an unholy racket. Alex Baumann‘s vocals are reminiscent of an angrier Perry Farrell, and put me in mind a little of Yob. Overall they’re pretty fucking brutal, blending the slow savagery of Conan with the cosmic exploration of Hawkwind. This is music for cavemen ripped to the tits on mushrooms, looking up at the sky, going “fuck that’s weird”, building a spaceship out of rocks and bits of bison and conquering the stars, punching a few ancient gods in the dick on the way.

For a self-styled “religious organisation”, Church Of The Cosmic Skull take an unholy amount of time setting up; but that’s cool, they’re not supposed to be on yet anyway and the time has come to take the advice of the first band I saw today, and break out the edibles I’ve been staunchly resisting all day. Just as they’re kicking, in I get into a very intense conversation with a rather drunk man which keeps SEEMING like it’s going to get horrifically racist and then always takes a turn and becomes the opposite and actually very wholesome if clumsily expressed.

Which is quite heartwarming, but also a bit much just as the weed and booze are starting to make sweet music together. But it underscores something I find myself saying every year, that the Desertfest crowd is one of the nicest in metal (which already has the reputation for being generally pretty fucking sound, give or take your actual Nazi bands and their followings, none of whom are really in Desertfest’s wheelhouse, thankfully).

And Church of the Cosmic Skull are AMAZING. This was my must-see band for the day, and they do indeed live up to expectations. They’re a band for anyone who, like me, thinks that the absolute coolest thing about the Process Church Of The Final Judgment was that they used to hang out with Funkadelic (and hilariously failed to get a grumpy Miles Davis on board).

Playing as a six-piece tonight, with frontman and ostensible cult leader Bill Fisher taking centre stage behind the drumkit, they’re what the cult’s band in Mandy would have sounded like if that movie had been directed by Matt Berry. Or you could imagine hearing them on your car radio in Far Cry 5, if you’re more into videogame analogies. They may not be so heavy in the sonic sense, but they’re more about laying down the heavy wisdom, with a mission statement of “putting the ABBA into Sabbath”.

The white-clad sextet start with “Mountain Heart” from their debut Is Satan Real? and its revivalist evangelicism pretty much works as a statement of intent for their harmony-laden prog-pop. Live, the lower-end passages of “Black Slug” truly reveal their inner Sabbath, and we get a great set drawing from all their albums, going through “Everybody’s Going To Die” until the last notes of “Cold Sweat” fade away, by which time they’ve delighted their old fans (identifiable by their white clothing) and seemingly made a lot of new converts to their gleeful apocalypticism.

So another fantastic Desertfest (albeit just for the day for me) — still the best weekend London has to offer for fans of all things heavy and stoned. Roll on (or “up”, even) next year.

-Justin Farrington-

Sunday

This is your photographer speaking. Or writing. Due to a set of circumstances that is too boring to go into here, I was not photographing Desertfest this year (boo) but volunteered instead to write some reviews, and as by luck would have it got lumped with the Sunday line-up. Which is just as well, as Sunday’s line-up was pretty much all killer and not a lot of filler.

But before I start, I have to mention Friday’s headliner at The Underworld, whom I managed to see, and my colleagues didn’t, the mighty Discharge. Not  100% sure what they were doing at Desertfest, and neither were they, but they didn’t disappoint. A hot and sweaty Underworld was treated to what must have been about twenty-five classic songs in their allotted hour plus, culminating in noisy, breakneck performances of “Hell On Earth”, “Decontrol” and “The Possibility Of Life’s Destruction”.

As usual, The Underworld’s posters prohibiting stage diving and crowd surfing were happily ignored, despite JJ’s claim that the venue had brought in extra security “especially for us”. Couldn’t think of a better band to go and see on the eve of the coronation really, and a great start to the weekend.

Blimey. And anyway, on to Sunday… First off were Acid Mammoth, also at The Underworld, at the un-demonly hour of 2.30pm. What a band this good with three albums under their belts were doing playing so early is anyone’s guess; maybe they had a plane to catch (they hail from Athens, Greece), but the venue was packed. I’ve seen headliners here who have had smaller crowds.

If you haven’t heard them before, these guys are proper old-school doom metal, very loud, occasionally faster, but mostly slow, crushing, pachyderm-heavy riffs. And they’re really, really good. And the two guitarists (Chris and Chris Babalis) are father and son, which is both adorable and mental. Standouts were “Berzerker”, “Tree Of Woe” and “They Live”.

Next up, at The Black Heart, were Blood Swamp, an Anglo-French (I think) blackened sludge / doom four-piece out of London. These guys looked very young, I’ll be honest, and seemed like they’d just come out of the science library at UCL. But looks can be very deceptive, I certainly wouldn’t be taking them around my grandmother’s for tea. These guys are very heavy indeed (I do wonder if the name is from the Boris / Sunn O))) track? It would be appropriate).

Layering black metal snarls and growls over the sludgiest riffs this side of New Orleans they certainly didn’t disappoint. But they didn’t stop there. Once I thought I had them figured out, they began to crawl out of the swamp, boarded a rocket ship, and headed skywards into an intense extended psych freakout that initially sounded as if it was about to break into Hawkwind’s “Spirit Of The Age”, but quickly left that behind and accelerated up, into and through the ionosphere.

I became convinced at one point that I could hear a choir of screaming angels emerging through the sonic maelstrom as guitar riffs, feedback, electronics (and probably my ears disintegrating) combined to take the sound into a realm beyond. The track in question (I believe) was called “Analogy “(and is the closer on their debut album Daylight Illuminates A Miserable World which I heartily recommend). Fucking blistering stuff and very impressive for a band that only started out as the world went into lockdown. Far, far out. Man.

Leaving The Black Heart, and feeling a bit peckish, I grabbed some chips from the place outside The Electric Ballroom and headed up Chalk Farm Road towards The Roundhouse to catch a bit of Nebula. No mean feat, considering Camden Town was heaving with people, and I mean heaving. Coronation tourists maybe? Anyway, good to see the Lock Bridge still has a resident postcard punk in attendance. Tradition innit?

Getting to The Roundhouse early also had the benefit of getting to the Boris merch stand before everything went, a mistake I’ve made at pretty much every Desertfest I’ve been to before. Yay me (and see below for more on Boris). And Nebula were rocking and a very pleasant change of pace from the sludge / doom that was still ringing in my ears.

Perhaps weirdly, I’m not really as familiar with their stuff as maybe I should be, as I am very much a fan of singer / guitarist Eddie Glass’s previous band Fu Manchu and this is very much in the same vein. I’m also surprised that The Roundhouse wasn’t fuller than it was, because these guys are very good indeed and I’ll be making amends for my previous lack of attention by checking out their last album, Transmission From Mother Earth, as soon as I get the chance (or get paid, to be frank).

Prior to Desertfest, I’d checked out a few of the bands that were playing on the Sunday online (preparation and planning people! We don’t just make this shit up!) and one that caught my eye were Everest Queen, possibly for no other reason than I’d been listening to a bit of Mountain recently. Giving them a listen on Bandcamp, I thought they’d be well worth checking out live. As a result I headed off on the short trip to Dingwalls (or Powerhaus as it is named on the itinerary, but I believe the name has now officially reverted to Dingwalls again).

Grabbing a pint from the bar, I turned round to witness what Everest Queen had to offer. From Bandcamp I knew these guys were no proto-metallers, in fact the Stevenage four-piece were ploughing a sludgy doom furrow with definite progressive elements. Very interesting, very good. Their last number almost started off in math-rock territory before ending in a pit of blackened crust. I wish I had caught the name of the track and I’ve been unable to recognise it in their recorded stuff, but I’ll keep trying as it was brilliant. Odd band, but odd in a good way.

After Everest Queen and with a little time to kill before Boris, I headed over to the much-anticipated Mars Red Sky (I’m assuming from the number of t-shirts I’d seen), over from France, who were playing at The Underworld. I admit that I am unfamiliar with their stuff, but knew they were in the fuzzy stoner / doom bracket and looked forward to getting my ears pleasantly melted.

Unfortunately they didn’t do it for me though. Maybe I was in the wrong frame of mind, but they sounded too clean, too proggy and just a little bit bland for my tastes. Probably just me, as everyone else seemed to be having a hell of a good time. I am more than happy to be proved wrong in the future. Anyway, I headed off after a couple of numbers and made my way back to The Roundhouse.

In the spring of 2023, the only place you’ll hear people chanting for Boris is at The Roundhouse on the final night of Desertfest. And so they do. I’m not too proud to say that I took the opportunity of taking my place front and centre of the balcony for this one. Three days of standing and my back was starting to give me shit and I didn’t want to be distracted by that for the band I was most excited to see of the entire weekend. With Boris, you’re never quite sure what you are going to get.

This is a band that do a lot of different things and do them all extremely well. Would it be their thrashy d-beat influenced proto-metal of the Heavy Rocks albums, centred around last year’s leopard-skin cover iteration; or doomy ambient drone metal, typified by this year’s Fade? Or something else, shoegaze or super-heavy sludge? Or a bit of everything? I’d have been happy with anything to be honest. Well, as far as I can tell it was (more or less) the Heavy Rocks stuff, minus the jazzy elements of the last release, though nothing Boris do live quite sounds like what it does on record. They took to the stage under a plume of smoke with a simple plain drape backdrop (no DS logo for them).

As usual, Wata was on the left, her black Les Paul at her hip, and de rigeur Orange amp and cabs behind. Takeshi took his usual place on the right, twin-necked guitar / bass gunslinger-low. And Atsuo? Well, Atsuo forsook his usual place behind the drums, assuming the role of singer and goth-rock ‘n’ roll front-man par excellence, darting round the stage like a deranged satyr and demanding audience participation at every opportunity. Please forgive me for not providing song titles, their back catalog is extensive, and full knowledge should probably earn you a university degree; and like I mentioned before it’s all different live.

One number had a middle-eastern influenced vibe, almost invoking Dead Can Dance, and included, from beneath another smoke cloud, the presence of a sinuous wrist-dancing belly dancer. With anyone else, it may have been a somewhat clichéd addition, but the dancer reminded me of Hawkwind’s Stacia of the early seventies, and she fitted in very well.

The rest of the set was never less than awesome, Atsuo continuing to wail over the two guitarists’ riffs, squalls and coruscating solos. The audience were loving every second, Boris instigating only the second of the weekend’s moshpits (with accompanied crowd surfing) that I saw, after Discharge on the first night. Their penultimate song was (I believe) an excellent performance of (not) “The Last Song”, the final track from last year’s Heavy Rocks album, with Wata switching to ‘piano’ (actually a pink keyboard). The final number had her switching back to guitar for a noise-drenched finale.

Absolutely brilliant set. If I didn’t get my brain melted earlier, I sure as hell did here. If there was one complaint, it was only that they could have played longer; but better to leave the party on a high right?

And talking about parties, I had decided in advance I’d be finishing 2023’s Desertfest at The Black Heart to the sound of Cambridge band Celestial Sanctuary’s old-school death metal. Yeah, you’re probably thinking that’s an odd name for a death metal band, right? Maybe, but I really don’t think they give a flying fuck; these guys are just out to have a blistering fast good time, upping our collective tempos as they themselves said “by about 700%”.

If you’re thinking (and you should be) they’re somewhere in the realm of late Bolt Thrower, early Carcass and a bit of Municipal Waste you’d be 100% spot-on. And that is high praise indeed. Hell knows what the song titles were, every song was called “BLEEUEEURGGHBLAARGH” according to the singer. One song he described thus: “this one is about being sick then eating all your sick then exploding and killing everyone in the world!!!” Or at least that is what I gathered. Cue lots of moshing.

Very, very enjoyable way to end the weekend. If this is the New Wave of British Death Metal (as they proclaim), then I for one am signing up. And if this sounds like your thing, then do check out their recently re-released album Soul Diminished on Bandcamp as it’s very good.

And that’s it, Desertfest over for another year. It was a blast and sincere thanks to everyone involved. Can’t wait for the next one!

-Dave Pettit-