Hyperblasts: Fortress & Mystic Festivals 2025

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
Hello, everybody, Welcome to That's not Metal, Welcome back. We
had a week off last week, but we are indeed
back and we're back here with an episode of Hyperblast,
which is usually a quite short show. I don't think
today's will be quite so much because I've been everywhere man.
In the words of Johnny Cash, my name's paren Haish.
Hello everyone. The reason there was not a TNM last

(00:50):
week is I have had the busiest ten days or
so in my recent lifetime where I was at Fortresses
in Scarborough, I guess two weekends ago now, and then
with great swiftness, I turned around and I went to
Mystic Festival in Poland. So didn't have time for a

(01:13):
podcast last week. And as we get back into this one,
I'm just gonna give you a little kind of report
and a round up, and you know, just chat some
shit about all the stuff that I saw in my
impressions of these various festivals and so on. So we're
going to give you your Hyperblast release round up and
stuff like that, and then obviously we'll get T and
M fully back in the swing of things. But that
is that's the aim of the game today. So thanks

(01:37):
for joining us with me across from me, mainly because
I find it easier to and talk to someone rather
than stare into the unforgiving black void for two hours
or whatever. Well like you know, explaining my adventures. But
Mark Sanderson is across from me in the the sit
and smile politely role today. Hello, Mark, how are we?

Speaker 2 (01:59):
I'm good. I've often listened back to the show and thought,
this Mark guy's good. But he's much better at not
talking than he is talking, so this is perfect.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
I can see your lovely face in the cameras, so
we're all good.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
Hell yeah, like You've had such an action packed a
couple of weeks. I've seen one band, my lovely The
get Up Kids, which just quickly like it was lovely.
It was my one time seeing The get Up Kids,
probably my last, because they've played Something to Write Home
About in full, and it was lovely. That album's just

(02:32):
like a security blanket to me and all the like
forty year old men surrounding me. It was a lovely time.
And you know, I'm very critical of nostalgia, but it's
different when it's my lovely emo nostalgia.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
Yeah, have you heard the have you heard the new
Lil Wayne? Album. No I've heard anything about it. No,
so you're not aware that there's a track on the
new Little Wayne album, The cart of Six, which is
basically like a heavily autotude interpolation of Island in the
Sun by Weezer, where he goes sip sip instead of

(03:08):
the hey hey, and there's a random bit where he goes,
how what Weezer the band on this one? And I
don't know what it is? Where it's like over fifteen
years from it's wheezy and it's Weezer. He's still got
Weezer on the brain, which I think is incredible. He's
just like me.

Speaker 2 (03:21):
Weezer are never leaving my fucking rotted brain either way.
And I get you.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, if you can remember it a couple of hours
time where we've done here, you should go and listen to.
It's called Island Holiday by Wayne. It's mind blowing. Yeah,
so hyperblast stuff. Obviously, a couple of weeks off, there's
been a you know, more than enough news to talk about.
I figure we'll just kind of like roll on and
talk about things as they come. But there is a

(03:46):
couple of little things that I want to mention. I
guess we'll just get out of the way, you know,
before we get underway. The first is you probably already know,
but we have to talk about it. Of course, Creeper
played their you know, much heralded show at Coco and Everything,
and at that they announced that rather than the changing
era or shape shifting as we've known Creeper to do,

(04:07):
there's going to be a Sangua of War two album,
which I guess of all the albums that they've done
to do a sequel to, they're just having such fun
with the Sangua War stuff, and it seems so them
that I'm not at all surprised really to see them
playing around in this world a little bit more. I
think it's around Halloween they're gonna We're gonna be getting
the sangle War two album. And in the week that

(04:29):
I was away, we released a lead single from it
called Headstones and Mark. You know again I was, I
was away somewhere, but you would have been all over
this the moment it dropped. I caught up with it.
It's a fun time, isn't it is.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
A fun time. It's funny. Is the first time I've
listened to a new weap brain Worms listen to a
new creeper song for the first time and been a
bit disappointed. But as soon as the guitar soul all
kicked in, I was like, oh, I get it, which
is the most marked fucking thing ever. As soon as

(05:03):
the hair metal so lokicked in, I'm like, oh no,
actually I like this song.

Speaker 1 (05:07):
Yeah, you know, it's not again a mind blowing you know,
new transformation ravers. We're maybe used to them from it,
but it's got a kind of speed metally vibe in
the riff, which you know, hell yeah, I'm dalv more
of that. And the fact that the chorus is give
us head stones is the most is the most current
creeper thing like that came in and I went, yeah, okay,

(05:28):
I see what you're doing here. I understand the joke.
Understand the joke here once again, and yeah, and I'm
all for it. So Sangle War two, you know, the
first Sangle of War was I believe I'm right in
saying it was the TNM audience voted album of the
Year for that year. So yeah, we're obviously we're looking
ahead at what all the ones might be this year
that get people really, you know, rallied and I imagine

(05:49):
a lot of you guys listening are going to be
all over Sangle War two when that comes out. So yeah,
exciting for that. And then I was gonna leave just
the news there for that, But there is something else
that's come up that I feel we shouldn't leve acknowledge,
and I guess there's not much better time to do
it when you're here, Mark, with the news that Brian
Wilson from The Beach Boys passed away this week. And

(06:09):
the Beach Boys are you know there of course, they're
one of those bands who are far far bigger than us, right,
you know, they're not strictly a T and M band,
They are beyond that. They are one of those the
very fabric of popular music type bands, and Brian Wilson
as the you know, the kind of the popular figurehead

(06:29):
of that band is one of the most Like when
people list off like, oh, who are the geniuses in
popular music, and they'll go like David Bowie, Prince whatever,
like Brian Wilson was in that group, and the Beach
Boys are I'd say that they're, you know, maybe one
of the most popular, you know, important bands who I

(06:51):
am kind of ignorant of most of their you know, catalog. Really,
I you know, I have not yet really properly done
the plunge or anything on the Beach Boys. But not
only are they, you know, so celebrated where you know,
it's that thing of like in the I don't know,
in the popular just sort of establishment, like the Beatles

(07:14):
are like the greatest band, right, I feel like pet
Sounds is like the greatest album. Like, yeah, maybe at
some time it might have been you know, Sergeant Pepper's
or something as well, but like the most commonly just like, yeah,
that's the best album ever. I feel like pet Sounds
comes up so much. But looking at the inspiration on
our world again, you can go to your really obvious
ones like of course Weezer, you know, But just like

(07:36):
I saw Mirai from CI post on Instagram today saying,
like one of the biggest inspirations on SI talking about
the fucking Beach Boys, right, and like I can I
can imagine that you know, and Mark, I trust that
you are, you know, a bit more in the know
about the Beach Boys and have more of a relationship
with their actual music than I do. So what was

(07:57):
your reaction to the news that Brian Wilson.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Let us just gutted man, like it's it is such
a loss. The Beach Boys. You can trace them to
so much in our world. I know we're saying, like
not strictly part of our rock world, but the even
just to take one fraction of it, the Ramones, tons

(08:22):
of Beach Boys and Themones. True, how many bands did
the Ramones influence? Almost all of them? Like, it's crazy
just how far the roots of the Beach Boys go.
And that's just talking about like the fun poppy summary
like throwaway pop song stuff, as a producer, as a songwriter,

(08:45):
just as a figure, as a person who existed and
who has that story. Brown Wilson is just one of
the most I don't know, iconic and monumental musicians we've
ever had. And it's so bizarre that he's gonna be gone.

Speaker 1 (09:04):
You know.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
He's like a reference point, a constant reference point to
anything you talk you talk about Weezer, like you say
Rivers's constantly. He's the Brian Wilson of our generation.

Speaker 1 (09:20):
It's the Beach Boys turn up as the Beach Boys
actually enjoy.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
A song that sounds nothing like the Beach Boys.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
But the spirit is there. You know the intent that counts.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
Yeah, it's a song about listening to the Beach Boys.
I think we all love to do, you know. Yeah,
it's just it's one of those losses that is so
big that I don't even know. I haven't listened to
Pets Sounds yet. Like usually when these things happen, you
listen to you listen to Rain and Blood when Jeff
Hannaman dies. I haven't faked. I haven't been able to

(09:57):
face pet Sounds yet, but I maybe later on. I
just I just need to process it.

Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah. Again, you will. You will read so much, you know,
in years to come, in the way we have with
you know, again, these huge monumental figures. You will continue
to read so much about Brian Wilson's passing and his
innovations and his talent and his ear for melody and
arrangements and all these things, and the impacts of the

(10:24):
influence of that left. But certainly, you know, in our little
corner of the music ecosystem, it is one that we
have to acknowledge as well. So again, the Beach Boys,
Brian Wilson rest in peace, one of the the absolute,
you know, kind of like overbearing overlord figures. On all
that we you know, kind of have enjoyed since. So yeah,

(10:48):
acknowledgment of course to Brian Wilson right in terms of
the Hyperblast stuff, like I said, I've got a lot
that I'm just gonna waffle about for a while. So
what we're gonna do straight away after talking about that,
you know, kind of a couple of pieces of news
there is, I'm going to give you your release round
up for this edition of Hype of Blasts, and then
I can move on and talk about you know, everything else.

(11:09):
So firstly, last week, the week that we did not
have a show, let's talk about a few of those.
I'm sure that everybody will be aware that the new
Ternstyle album Never Enough came out last week. It's been
quite interesting, you know, observing again from me at first,
from kind of afar with actually hearing it for a
bit a while, you know, the the reactions to it.

(11:32):
Obviously we will give our proper you know, informed reactions
or whatever in our upcoming reviews episode. Then we had
the new volt Beat album called God of Angels. Trust.
It's a very busy period. As again, our upcoming reviews
episode will reflect very busy for hardcore at the moment,
because last week we had another a full length album

(11:54):
from a band who propped uite a number of EPs
last year, Kaya Nashy released an album called I Want
to Go Home. Then there is a much heavier, more
metallic hardcore band called Orthodox who released I think a
quite buzzy album as well, called A Door Left Open.
Then there is some kind of like two thousand style
metalcore from a band that Sam brought to my attention

(12:14):
called View from the Sawyers, called Ubiquitous. Then we're going
to move over to the new Catatonia album which was
released last week called Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State.
This comes very hot on the heels of the Sky
Void of Stars album that I was huge on. I
think that's my favorite Catatonia record of their last like

(12:35):
you know, decade or so, and then this came very
hot on its heels, but also with the departure of
Anders Nistro and one of their kind of two like
primary members leaving the band before this record, so you know,
kind of notable in that sense. So the new Catatonia
record there is out. Then we have Ozzie grindcore I

(12:56):
guess you call them King Parrot released a record called
A Young Person's Guide to featuring song titles such as
cunning as a Dry Rat. I believe it's one on there,
so you know, usual King Parrot Antics. Then there is
these sort of death tribute act Gruesome, who've released an
album called Silent Echoes, and they're a funny thing because

(13:18):
they started off doing you know, kind of scream bloody
gore leprosy style death and it was all kind of
like gory and fun, and now they're doing human stuff
and it's very cerebral and very technical, so it's quite
you know, as death went. It's quite a way away
on from what you initially might have known Gruesome to be.
But that's out. Then Gahal's Word the I guess at
some cent of its core it's black metal, but it's

(13:39):
much more kind of, you know, sort of open minded
than just the core of that band from obviously black metal.
Legend Gal released I think the second full length from
that project called Braiding the Stories. Then there's a band
who actually saw at Fortress. I might name nottrim the
a little while, but a band called Autumn Nostalgia released

(13:59):
a record called Meta Nooia, which is there like in
that very like kind of indie rock influenced black metal,
like quite pleasant, actually quite lightweight, more sort of depressive
style black metal. There's austerea with the stillness of dissolution.
And here in the UK there is a post metal
band called dim Skua who released I believe this is

(14:19):
categorized as an EP even though it's like thirty minutes,
because you know it's post metal. They'll probably go longer.
But they rease an EP called dust Eater, and that's
a band who are again kind of early days with them,
So if you want to jump on that one early,
there you go. Moving on to today's releases, the big
one is, of course buck Cherry are coming back with

(14:40):
buck Cherry are back with an album called Raw Like Thunder.
Then Falloojjah, the kind of you know, progressive technical death
motal band. They've got a record called Xena Taff. Then
the album that I am maybe most looking forward to,
you know, kind of this this month, the new Hex
Vessel album called Nocturn, which is the follow up to

(15:03):
again not very long ago, the Polar Veil record. But
again we're going to review this one and go broader
on it because there's kind of more elements to it
than that. But if you enjoyed the lastex Vessel album,
then there is another one here for your enjoyment called Nocturn.
Then there is a band called DOLVN, which is kind
of like they style it as like acoustic doom, Like
it's slow, dreary, melancholic, but heavily based around acoustic guitars

(15:26):
and stuff like that, with a sort of like medieval,
you know, ren fair sort of aesthetic. That record is
called in My Grave Silence. And then for some reason,
today is like the absolute event week of the year
for like remasters and remixes and you know, re recordings
and all such re stuff. So if you remember when

(15:47):
let Live released the Blackest Beautiful with a sort of
like new mix and everything last year, apparently I think
that was an only vinyl affair. That Blackest Beautiful revisited
is apparently to be like available on streaming for everybody
to hear, you know, today, So there you go. Then
there is some speaking of them earlier. They have re

(16:08):
recorded one of their two thousands album, the album Hangman's Hymn.
They've kind of given that another go because they felt
like the original one is a bit more low fire,
maybe you know, not what they fully envisioned for that album,
so they've kind of given that another crack. It's now
titled I Saw the World's End Hangman's Hymn mmxx V.
Then there is the new sort of remix album from

(16:29):
The Cure called Mixes of a Lost World, which The
Cure will often when they've got an album, they'll have
like a sort of remixing type, you know, with different
artists and so, and you will see some familiar names
from the T and M world appearing on this track list,
remixing tracks from that really strong last Cure album. There
was a live album that I'm curious to hear from
Queens the Stone Age, who recently recorded They're Alive in

(16:51):
the Catacombs of Paris, sort of stripped back performance that
I believe is going to be available to hear now.
And then, you know, I wouldn't normally clue just a
normal kind of remaster, but it's these things have been
such kind of large events, and there are so many
extra discs of extra material that people might want to
hear that it feels, I guess notable at least that

(17:12):
Metallica are releasing Load again. With the many many discs,
as I said, of extra stuff, live albums, demos, whatever
you want to hear. Metallica's Load Remastered is out today.
So that concludes the you know, the kind of housekeeping
stuff for this hyperblasts. From here, I am going to
talk about my last couple of weeks and why I

(17:34):
wasn't here last week because as said, I have been
a very very busy boy. To recap, I went to
Fortress Festival in Scarborough, which is a dedicated black metal
festival that has started. I think this is the third
year of Fortress Festival. Was my second year of going.
I went last year and I had such an absolutely
fantastic time. I was like, this is a festival that

(17:57):
time permitting and everything. I can absolutely see my elf
just being at every year because not only is the
lineup very catered to my interests, but the whole the
kind of event of it already feels quite special to me.
And then the following weekend I went to Mystic Festival
in Poland, which was kind of a more last minute

(18:19):
sort of you know plan drafted up. I was basically
I was sent out there to cover it for Metal
Hammer with my good friend and Collie Rich Hobson. So
the two of us went over to Mystic about kind
of you know, sort of like a month or sorry
before the event. It was like, do you want to
go to Mystic and see this stuff? And I looked
at the lineup and I was like, behar it are
playing fuck yeah off. So, you know, I've had a

(18:41):
very you know, a quick turnaround of go one place
and then go in another. And I have seen and
done so much. I have so many bands just bands
alone before anything else around the festivals to talk about.
I'm gonna I haven't written many notes or anything for this.
I'm gonna try and do this sort of fairly off
the dome my memory and stuff, and try not to

(19:03):
dedicate like five minutes plus to every single band. Else
this will be a very long episode. But there was
a lot to say and there was a lot of interest.
So and you know, again kind of my my experience
going back here is I was worried that I would
just be absolutely shattered, you know, because like one weekend
at any camping festival, right like a bloodstock or something,

(19:24):
I'm shattered by the last day of it. But I
came back from you know, this sort of double Whammy,
and I was just so like jazzed up and just
so fired up on like I love met Yeah, I
just like I love metal. Metal is so good and
I love when metal like provides me the ability to

(19:46):
travel and go and see things but also see metal
in new places and again even my like, I think
there are two things that really do help here. One
is staying in actual hotel beds rather than like a
sleeping bag in a tent, and the other, as anyone
who goes to European festivals compared to the UK will
tell you actual ample seating area where you can have

(20:10):
a normal ass sit down between bands and stuff. There
are even benches by the main stage at Mystic, and
I was like watching the like stuff while sat down
having a beer, like it was wondrous. So I'm considering
I have walked more steps again in the last sort
of ten days or so than probably any comparable period
in you know, my recent history, because not only was

(20:32):
at these two festivals, but we went and did all
the tourist stuff in Gadanskin, went and saw like every
single thing that we wanted to see. I walked so
fucking much, but I was like alive by the end
of it, and I was like, isn't that good that
I can go and function at a place like this
because I don't know the layout or the facilities or whatever.

(20:53):
Were kind of you know, considerate of that very thing.
So I had just the most fantastic time across both
of these festivals as a sort of combined you know
a little period of running around everywhere seeing everything.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (21:09):
And so I'm gonna, as said, gonna try and quickly
recap them. Let's go back to Fortress Festival. Fortress Festival,
as said in Scarborough, I this is my favorite like
festival weekend in the UK that I go to. And
there are other festivals that are obviously you know consideration

(21:30):
as well. I love Damnation so much. I think Damnation
probably pound for pound, I would say, gets the best
lineups in the UK, and it is it's always you know,
it's it's a mates fest, it's a great time, YadA YadA.
Bloodstock obviously is like the the kind of outdoor, big
camping type one that I will regularly go to, so
that has a very particular thing. But what Fortress has

(21:54):
is again the sort of destination aspect to it, which
is again any like Yorkshire Local would just be kind
of like chuckling at this because it's like, what do
you mean, it's just you know, Scarbados or whatever. But
like the idea of actually getting on a what if
for me, like a three four hour train or something
to not the capital city of London or like a

(22:16):
warehouse in Manchester or something like. God love them and
I'll do them again. But a lot of the black
metal festivals in the UK all center around the same
handful of venues in Camden, right. It's like I just
did Incineration it was fantastic, you know, and I've done
Cosmic Void and I'll probably go back and all of
this stuff, but it's it's a different thing actually going

(22:40):
somewhere that has a sense of like atmosphere and location
to it. So you know Scarborough again, it's it's the
English seaside, but there's like a fucking castle on the hill.
I went to visit Anne Bronte's grave in the shadow
of the castle, like proper like black metal benefits from

(23:01):
I went to so they have like little talks, like
little panel type things that I had went to a
couple of them last year. I went to one this year.
With the guy from Fen just talking about stuff, and
he was talking about how like black metal more than
any other genre of heavy music, benefits from the sense
of like leaving your own world and you know, transferring

(23:23):
into another, and of like actually going somewhere else. And
it sounds really pretentious, but it does make a difference,
you know. It benefits like making the effort to go
out there into the world, to a place that has
some kind of natural beauty to it or something or
some sense of history and watch black metal bands there
rather than watch them in the electric ballroom or the

(23:45):
underworld or whatever, which I love and I will do
them again, as I've said, but there is just something
special and different about this kind of experience and because
of that, the overall vibe of going to Fortress, which
also just has very dedicated, very niche This is four
black metal people. It's not even the black metal crossover
stuff that will get kind of token booked at like

(24:07):
a Bloodstock or a Damnation or whatever. It is one
hundred percent stuff that black metal people care about that
no one else will and it's for us that nowhere
else will book And you can see that in the
headliner and they put for next year and all that
kind of stuff, and I just that combination of things
I really love, so going and being a Fortress again.

(24:30):
What was the first thing that I saw. I saw
a band called Nemerous, who formed out of like Foign
members of Woden Throne and stuff. They were the very
first band on and they were playing their upcoming new
album that hasn't been heard in full. That's the sort
of like thing that you'll just get at Fortress or something.
I feel like only a road bird would do something similar,

(24:51):
but they were there. I saw a band called Aquilas
who had come from Australia, and that was very like
you know Naturrey had like a violinist and stuff on stage,
very sort of you know, quite tranquil. And then over
in the theater stage, as I mentioned, there's like a
theater in the Scarborough kind of spa pavilion thing where

(25:13):
last year they had like the panel talks and stuff.
This year, on one of the days they had the
quite good idea of turning it into like a folk
theater stage. So there was about three or four like
almost like you know, sort of you know, more stripped
back acoustic whatever type performances which really fit at a
black metal festival, you know, because obviously you know, black metal,

(25:36):
very extreme music and all of that, but there is
that there's a similar wavelength between like I'm enjoying some
quite nice folk music and again that sense of you
know transferl and and you know entering some kind of
other or whatever the black metal benefits from. And I
saw a couple of shows and that I saw the

(25:56):
darker uh, the kind of like doomy folk like English
you know, singer songwriter type act I like a lot,
and she was the first thing on in that stage,
and it was like very It's like this is dreary
Northern England to its absolute like fullest, like the bleakness
and the kind of gloomy drama of that just very

(26:17):
perfect for that. And then later on I saw this
band called Ocean the Jupiter, which is again like literally
just like a neofolk band like three guys and ladies
with you know, acoustic guitars and double bass and stuff
like that. It was like, yeah, this is like, you know,
quite cool to just be seeing at a black metal
festival in terms of the slightly you know, larger draws

(26:37):
in terms of the black metal stuff. I think the
first one for me was this band called Spirit Possession,
who are a US black metal two piece, which is
already very noisy, and it's really like it's it's quite
first wavy type black metal like it's very aggressive. I'd
say primitive that it's it's very bar Barrick. The reason

(26:59):
I halt at the word kind of primitivism, even though
it is very just full on and aggressive, is the
guitarist is an absolute freak because he it's it's all,
it's entirely like finger picked. So so he's doing like
these really far and we were like right near the
front and just watching his fingers and it's nuts. It's

(27:20):
just this absolute freaky like you know, like all over
the threat ball black metal stuff, but rather than tremlo
picking it, he's finger picking it like and it's crazy.
It's one of the most like bizarre and it's got
a really unique sound as a result, you know, and
it's one of the most just bizarre like individual displays musicianship.

(27:42):
I think you can see in something like black metal
moment just seeing this guy do like you know, punky, nasty,
widdly threat board black metal riffs but finger picking the
whole thing. It's really intense, so that was fun. And
then the drummer as well. She makes like her own
power electronic stuff like like synths and shit and like

(28:03):
noise I don't know what you call them, noise blocks
or whatever, and they're just selling them at the merch
So it's like one hundred dollars for a fucking like
a giant noise container that I made. It's like, yeah,
you know, go on awesome, proper underground music shit. Then
the Great Old Ones were on who We reviewed their
new record at the start of this year. It's one

(28:23):
of my favorite extreme records of the year so far.
They were one of the big drawbands for me because
I love them very much. I've been a fan for
eleven years since the twenty fourteen album to kille Lee,
and I had not seen them. I guess they hadn't
come over to the UK that much. All the times
they have, they weren't at places that I was. I
was around, so it was a really nice finally like yeah,

(28:46):
I can tick you off, and you know, Cuthulhu Lovecraft
black Metal by the seaside with a giant like bay outside.
You know, it was fucking great and like they I think.
They played like three songs off the new record, and
it's all like the ones that I just really like
direct and like actually really catchy and powerful and stuff

(29:08):
like that. They played one song off of the previous album,
one from like twenty nineteen, and they played the song
Antarctica from to Kelly Lee, which is like I would
I would imagine. I guess that's like their signature tune
because the opening riff on it is just an absolute motherfucker,
like the sludgiest thing at this festival, because it is
the Black Mittal Festival, right, but having that real just

(29:29):
like du you know, kind of post metally inspired thing.
The singer from the Great Old Ones as well, not
including you know something else that I'll get onto and
explain in a bit, but maybe the most French sounding
person I've ever heard in my life, like legitimately, he
was like, we are going doing duct the girl. It's like, yes, great,
I'm there, We're absolutely there. But that was great. I

(29:51):
really enjoyed seeing that. And then I saw Ruim, who
are a band I don't know if I mentioned before.
Ruim is the newer project from a guy called Blasphema
who used to be in Mayhem. He's in lots of bands.
He's like, I'm actually gonna mention him again with something
in this very episode. But he is, you know, kind

(30:15):
of so he's in the band Ultimus with David Vincent.
He was banned in that band Twilight the Gods with
Ana from Primordial, doing like epic heavy mettle stuff. But
he's most known, I suppose, for he's basically the guy
who replaced Uronymous in Mayhem, so the like nineteen ninety
seven through two thousand and seven era Mayhem. He is

(30:36):
like the primary music writer and stuff, and if you
know your Mayhem catalog, that's a fucking mental run of
records like Grand Declaration of War, Ordo ad Ko, Like
what are you doing? This is the most freak stuff
and I love it. And his new band Ruin is
kind of the almost like a modern kind of picking

(30:58):
up the baton from the kind of stuff he was
doing in Mayhem, Like it's that kind of quite recognizable
black metally core progressions and stuff like that. But he
came out and he's wearing like a big cloak, you know,
looking very devilish. They had like like fiery braziers and
stuff like either side of him, so it looked like,

(31:19):
you know, the whole the whole black metal ritual thing
was there and that was good. And he was playing
songs from the new you know, the Ruined record he made,
which basically sounds like again, it sounds like his riffs
and stuff, so it's good. I like it. And then weirdly,
there's one song on that record, which is a re
recording of a Mayhem song from The Wolfslair abyss Ep,

(31:41):
the song Fall of Seraph's, which is one of my
favorite like mid period Mayhem songs. It's brilliant, and I
have seen they were playing that live at certain dates
and stuff. They didn't do that, which I was a
bit disappointed about, but they did do a different song
from the wolfs Lair abyss EP. They did Iron the
Labyrinth with Raven from thirteen forty nine, who were headlining afterwards,

(32:02):
so he came out and did vocals and it was like, yeah, well,
you know, awesome, I'm watching a really old but also
not the most popular era of Mayhem, so kind of like,
you know, I don't think I've seen Mayhem play that
song with these kind of icons of you know, the
Norwegian black metal scene and stuff. It was just like
a really that was one of the kind of like
cool Eye was there sort of moments of Fortress that

(32:23):
was really good. And then thirteen forty nine headlined that day,
which was kind of straightforward because that's what thirteen forty
nine are. They came out and just like breathed literal
fire into the crowd at first, like just because they
do full on like actual like fire breathing stunt stuff.
Just did that at the beginning and then just went right,
We're just gonna blast beat for an hour and just

(32:43):
off off they go, and you know, evil blasty, kind
of very nouse, you know, black metal. Not the most
like I guess dynamic of the bands who headline Fortress, right.
I think sometimes they lean towards maybe more immersive black metal,
as we very much see with who the other headliner was.

(33:04):
This was just very gnaudic and very like ah and
very blasty, as I say, but you know, at like
thirteen forty nine or not, So it's cool to see
them doing that thing with again a bit of bit
of fire and stuff like that. The next day I
saw a little bit of a band called Abduction, who
are a kind of very quite heavily positioned within the

(33:24):
moment UK black metal band. I think they're kind of okay,
Like I've seen them. They I see a lot at
like UK black metal shows and stuff, and I've not
been bowled over by their records, but they are quite
popular in the UK underground at the moment. So they
kind of opened and they were doing one of their
records and stuff, and then the next band I saw
on the second day was one of my must see

(33:46):
bands of the festival because it was Dodds Reaped, who
were they were gonna play last year and then they
had to pull out, So this was like them, you know, fulfilling,
like we're going to come back and do it. So
it'd been quite a while of like waiting to see
odd because if you're a regular listener, you'll know how
like very keen and very big on their albums. I

(34:08):
have been the one last year I think impressed a
lot more people. And the thing I liked about Dodds
Rey Here was I could kind of sense that where
there was a lot of people talking about like how
they were one of the highlights of the fest than
people who maybe didn't even who they were, being like
that band were fucking awesome, and I hope that that's
enough for like someone else, like a Damnation or someone

(34:31):
to book them as well, because I think it would
work there because they stood out on the Fortress bill
because it's a like massive Iron Maiden guitar melodies now,
but also with this sort of foundation in like the
Swedish cross punk scene. And them doing like massive Iron

(34:51):
Maiden black metal epics with d beats and like you know,
jumping around the stage and stuff with the energy of
like a Swedish crosspunk band was just fucking awesome. Like
it really again at a different personality to anything that
was on the Fortress bill. And they did like maybe
three or four songs from that newest record, a couple

(35:14):
from the one one before, and like I mean that
song I Yalla the first song on it, and it's
got the dune in a new meaning new new. Yeah, unbelievable,
And like I said, like they really early on on
the main stage, but like they properly they filled it,
you know, and they were one of the talks of
the weekend.

Speaker 2 (35:35):
Yeah, I'm not surprised because they're a band like you
could put them in front of event like among the
marth fans should love Dodge Yeah, because it's just that
classic heavy metal with a bit more of a black
metal edge. They're fucking great band. I'm glad to hear
they're great.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah. That was their it was their debut UK show
and I'm hoping that again, as I said, they do
come over and do more because they were fucking wicked.
Then was Oh that band I mentioned Autumn Nostalgia, which
saw a little bit of them, which, like I said,
it's kind of almost like chill beats to revise to
black metal, that kind of a little bit like if
you know that band and Autumn for Crippled Children, and

(36:14):
there's that kind of like slate Oh yeah, in the
post punky kind of feel. It's funny because they play
riffs and you go, this should not be at a
black metal festival, like that's you know, that's the get
up kids. But then the guy comes in and then
the guy comes in going and you go, oh, this
isn't the get up kids anymore. But you know, nice enough,
pleasant enough. Then after that was another you know, UK debut,

(36:38):
another TNM fave I think at Fortress because after that
was Moonlight Sorcery. One of the things I know, you
would have really liked to see Mark.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
I know I'm fuming about this.

Speaker 1 (36:50):
Yeah, this was I think it was their third live
show ever they've just started. Because sometimes in black metal
you almost get the opposite of what happens in hard,
where you know, a band will get kind of buzz
off live shows and then eventually they'll do like a
you know, an EP or something. This was like they
built up a few years of buzz off of studio
worked and then gone, let's get a live band together

(37:12):
and do this. So I think they did like one
or two shows in Finland, like immediately prior to coming
over and doing their UK debut Fortress, And it's basically
it's like it is on record, right. It's like, you know,
five dudes or five or six dudes in corpse Paint,
one of them on a massive keyboard, just like being

(37:33):
really high energy as you get bombarded with like endless
like wirdly you know, children Abode of Me, but you know,
kind of more Nordic black metal, afide guitar and keyboard
dueling solos. And they played you know, quite a number
of songs off the album they put out, also songs
from the Blue EP, the first one they did, which
I love those tracks, so that was really good and

(37:55):
yeah it was. It was really like dazzling, high energy.
It was fun.

Speaker 2 (37:59):
Man, that would all just come back to the UK.
Please Moonlight Sorcery. I want to see that. No wonder
you were feeling energized. That sounds like my life force.

Speaker 1 (38:09):
Yeah, it was fun as well. The merch situation they had,
so again, like obviously all these bands come in, they
all set up their merch tables. Some of them are
you know bands who you maybe I could see a
lot a lot of so people would like go and
you know black metal people collecting their shirts and their
records and patches or whatever. I think like dods like

(38:29):
cleared out most of what they had and stuff. But
there was a bit of a Moonlight Sorcery merch mishap
because their merch was like nowhere to be seen the
whole Like actually I should say the Agalock Merchque because
they were playing Sunday nights but they'd set up their
thing from Saturday morning and rivaled dragged the Sunlight a
damnation last year. It was just like people like queuing

(38:51):
for hours at the start to go and get their
like event exclusive our fortresses burning, you know, aglock T
shirts and stuff, but Moonlight Sorcery, their merch was nowhere
to be found, and then eventually they were only able
to set it up right after their set. So this
is about like five thirty or something on the second

(39:12):
day of the festival, and I saw this big line
form and then I heard from someone near the front
who I spoke to that they only had like twenty
or thirty T shirts or something with them, and I
looked at the line of people and I was like,
that's more than thirty people, you know, And they said afterwards,
they were like, yeah, so thank you everybody who came out,

(39:33):
and we'll try and make it up to you with
the merchanting because they would have cleared out right, they
would have absolutely sold a ton, but it was a
real like you had to get in there quick for
the slightly mythical movie. It's Sorcery merched that just appeared
and vanished instantaneously. But yeah, I hope they do come back, because,
you know, again one of the more fun distinct black

(39:54):
metal bands we have around at the moment. After that,
we got into maybe like the big Boy run of
the you know, the second day of the festival here
a sort of ulcer Rate for the first time on
my part. I think they've probably been to the UK before,
maybe played London or something, but my first time seeing
ulcer Rates, and they were magnificent, just unbelievably like athletic musicians,

(40:23):
where I'm watching them and going, what are you like,
are you real? Like what the fuck? Because I mean
the drummer alone, they sounded amazing, like they had the
best sound of the festival, I think, which really benefited
from again all the intricacies and stuff of that music,
but the drummer, like everything that we've said about that
guy on record, watching him do it and being sort

(40:44):
of like, you know, bombarded into pieces by those absolutely
alien like patterns that he does was crazy. I guess,
pound for pound the baldest band in the world. Three
members and not not a hair between them, but like
three like identical bold New Zealand men, just fully getting

(41:06):
into the death zone of it playing this just like
sickeningly heavy, but also really because again they were only
playing stuff from their last two records, which is their
current era of the kind of more melodic cleaning stuff
really like mournful and like transportative and quite a motive
as well songs. I really wanted them to play the

(41:28):
title track of Cutting the Throat of God, which is
maybe my favorite one. They didn't do that, but they
did end on the title track of the previous record
Stare to Death and Be Still, which was just like
monolithic and those like clean passages and stuff, the clean
guitars they do where you just feel like you're hanging
in some kind of like black, kind of soulless void,
just like you know, suspended in the air like it was.

(41:51):
They're amazing and I'm really glad that again got to
see them, and hope they come back sooner or later
rather you know, as well, because they were just fucking fantastic.
The next band, the I guess the sort of second
band on the main stage for Fortress this day, was
the quite aptly named Forterres who Forterre s are a.

(42:14):
They're not released an album in like nine years or something.
I don't really know what they're doing, but they are
one of the more I think, you know, kind of
like really beloved in the underground black metal bands of
let's say the late twenty early twenty tens or whatever.
They're from Quebec, and their whole thing is they're like
Quebec nationalists, right, They're like Quebec you know, separatists, not

(42:36):
wanting it to be part of kind of you know,
the English speaking Canada. It's a cause and stuff that
I I'm not the most educated about. Right, Like the
vibe is very nationalist. You know, they come out. He's
got a mic stand that literally has a giant Quebec
flag on it. You know, my favorite thing about watching
forter s is I swear to you the singer did

(42:58):
not say a single word to the crowd in English. No,
Quebec separatism is a full time job, no days off.
Will come and play, but we will not speak the
filthy language for them.

Speaker 2 (43:14):
It is a disgusting language. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (43:16):
So again, great old Ones guy was the most French
accented guy I've ever heard speaking in English. For the Wrestlinger.
He just came out yelled at the crowd in French
about some stuff about I don't know, I presume rebellion
or revolution or something, and then just powered through a
set of like just super like melodic Like their whole

(43:38):
thing is just like very almost like major key uplifting
fist in the air like anthemic black metal tremoloe melody
lead lines basically just powered through a set of that
while yelling in French at people, and people seem to
love it, so they go for to rest at Fortress
rather good. I watch the second stage headliner here in

(44:02):
between the two main stage bands because I wanted to
see Fenn, who are one of the like UK black
metal kind of I don't want to say ogs because
you obviously you go back and you've got Cradle of
Filth and you know, Cat and Thrones all this stuff,
but kind of the mid two thousands when the UK
black metal scene as we know it started to really form,

(44:23):
Fen or one of the kind of store waks have
been going, you know, from that time and really been
in consistent presence. They were done a special set where
they were playing their debut album, The Malediction Fields in full.
So this is like post black metal from the kind
of late two thousands. Really like it's very you know,
very gloomy, very like has a particular dreary sort of

(44:45):
beauty to it in a very English, you know, Fen
kind of way, but you know, uh interested if you
if you like kind of like more early days like shoegaze,
black metal whatever kind of like fusions and stuff. And
I was listening to it and you know, watching them
play it, and I was like, this is but you know,
that record came out before I was following Fen, but

(45:06):
I was like, this is quite nostalgic in a sense
of like I am in the zone of post black
metal pre Sunbathe. You know, it's like Alcest have got
like one album out, Amasurs Exist, Ultor of Plagues are
just starting out, and again, like you know, some bathere
is many a year away. This sort of very particular

(45:28):
late two thousand, quite early, more maybe more more naive,
more sort of like insular, kind of has a charm
to it, you know, a little period of post black metal.
And so I enjoyed watching Fen, who I've seen you
know many times at UK black metal shows, but having
that particular sort of like theming around it and immersing
yourself on a headspace that was good. And that led

(45:49):
into what I think was the main event for everybody
really at Fortress this year. The headline that they announced
at last year's event and immediately sold out all of
their like early tickets and stuff like that, Agalock returning
to the UK after ten years. Their last UK show
I did not see. I have several friends who were

(46:10):
there and said, how weird it was when they opened
the main stage at Bloodstock in twenty fifteen and played
like half an hour or something, which is like three
songs at about twelve thirty in the afternoon in the sun,
and it's like, that's like, that's the last time Aglock
played the UK. I'm okay having not seen that really

(46:31):
because that's on the moment for Agaloque. But they did
that and then very promptly after that they broke up,
and then you know, we've done the whole Agaloque discussion
and stuff. We did an album club on the Mantle
about a year ago. When I was at that point,
I was basically wishing for Agaloc to come and do
a UK show because they quite freshly reunited. So getting

(46:52):
the I think this is maybe the actual biggest deal
headline of Fortress can get like without upgrading the capacity
and becoming a different event or whatever, which I don't
think it is in the business of wanting to do.
I actually I can't think of any Fortress headliner that
that would be like as big a drawer and as
big an event as Agaloq play in the UK for

(47:16):
the first time in a decade. I mean it was
it was a European exclusive and there were people from
like all over Europe, even some people from you know,
further Afield who had like flown here to see Agalock
right in Scarborough. But Agalock was huge, right, and they
had like a you know, a full nighty something minute
you know, headline set. I was like, yes, cool, that's
what I want to see from from from Agalock. And

(47:40):
they are just that, they're such icons and legends of
their time within that scene, a very different vibe to
most of the rest of it because again, after a
weekend of hearing people either talk to the crowd in like,
you know, kind of corpse paint speech or yell them
in French or whatever. Having John been like, hey, we're Agalak,

(48:04):
It's so good to be back. Was like it was
this little you know, Portland Dork or whatever, like just
coming at the end of this. But they played a
wonderful set of some of the best black metal music
probably ever made right but quite Korea spanning. They opened
with the song Ghosts of the Midwinter Fires, which is

(48:25):
from the twenty ten Marrow the Spirit record, and it's
like twelve minutes long, and it just builds up like
beautiful guitar line after beautiful guitar line, and it was
just like washing over me. Glorious leaned quite heavily on.
They're doing a lot of like twentieth anniversary ashes against
the grain stuff at the moment, like they had like

(48:47):
a again like an exclusive tea, and they had their
reissue of the record and stuff, and there are shows
in America where they're playing that record in full at
the moment. They didn't do that here, which is again
I was thankful for because I wanted just to see
as much as I could because it was agaloc. But
they did play a lot off that record, like a
good four or five whatever tracks from it. Not necessarily
a Mantle heavy set list they played. They did like

(49:10):
the weird little instrumental track odal as like a kind
of interlude to one song on another. The one proper
song they played from it is You Were a Ghost
in My Arms, which was really nice. I was hoping
they were doing the Shadow of Upel companion, but you know,
can't have them all. But the stuff from ashes against
the Grain, veering from Not Unlike the Waves, which is
the most like Viking era Bathory song that Agaloque ever do,

(49:33):
like really mighty like fist pumping stuff through to fire
Above Ice Below, which is just the most beautiful fucking
guitar lines. The MVP of the Agalot Live show, it
turns out, is Don Anderson, the lead guitarist, because not
only are those lead guitar melodies like the things that
are just hitting you and like lifting your soul and

(49:54):
people are just like sobbing around you or whatever, but
he also is like rocking out and he like jumps
and like almost it almost did a knee slide at
one point, and I was like, you're in Agalog, this
is this is mad, but he was having a great time.
They did. They played one song from the last record,
The Serpent and the Sphere. They played the song Darkmount
of Gods, and I love that record. It is, in

(50:15):
my opinion, the most underrated Agalock record. I have genuinely
no idea why that record doesn't get spoken about the
way every other Agalog record does. But in one song
of it and John introed off it was like, this
is a song from our new album that came out
eleven years ago, and it was like you little scamp, you,
but I'm quite quite a few from the Pale Folklore

(50:37):
record as well, which was just like really quite hard
rocking like songs that really just like the backbeat of
them and again like quite uplifting, very stirring guitar lines
and stuff. Uh It, Seeing Agalock finally is one I
can tick off. Seeing them in like a beautiful again

(50:58):
old Victorian theater and stuff at a proper headline show.
I really hope that again we get more agalog shows
or something. But like that was, like I said, probably
the biggest thing that could happen at Fortress, right, Like
who else is as legendary with that kind of period
away or whatever? Who has that like really strong like

(51:21):
like you know, fans of that kind of music have
the most strong connection to Agalot music, Like it's stuff
they've been waiting their fucking lives to hear tracks off
the Mantle or Lashes against the Grain or whatever. And yeah,
it was, it was. It was really really lovely. Even
if again, there are many more songs where I'd be like,
I would love to see you do that one but
there wasn't a second or a note, which wasn't just

(51:43):
like fulfilling, you know. And also they announced for next
year Old Man's Child as the first headliner of twenty
twenty six, which if you've been very much paying attention
to your TNM news stuff, you know with a guy
mark because it's Golder from Demi Borgear who, Yeah, so

(52:06):
Golder who was the little bold one in Demyborgear, the
little goblin guy. He earlier, either earlier this year or
last year or something, but he's very recently he's left
Demi Borgear after like a long time of playing with
them to reactivate his earlier nineties style symphonic black metal band,
Old Man's Child, and they've just started playing shows and

(52:26):
stuff again for the first time in however many years.
They haven't played in the UK since like the mid nineties.
So them getting them as the headline, this is that
thing I was saying about Fortress, right, most people, most places,
most festivals would look at that and got Old Man's
Who like, we're not going to book that. No one cares, like,
you know, we'll sell two tickets from it, because they

(52:47):
don't respect black metal and they have no knowledge about it,
but somewhere like Fortress, right, that's the only place I'm
gonna get to see Old Man's Child. And I am
a fan of symphonic, keyboard heavy black metal from the
late nineties, right, like those records rip and are we
very happy to see Golder get up there and tear
out those tunes and stuff like. If you again, if

(53:08):
you don't know anything about Old Man's Child and you
like that kind of music, if you like, like you know,
sort of Turn of the two Thousands, Demu and you know,
Cradle and into your Limbonic Arts or whatever, your emperors
that kind of stuff, it's great and so having that already,
but again it's not it won't be an agalogue style draw,
but it is a raw for a very very specific

(53:29):
niche of people, which is what Fortress caters for. So good.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'd never heard of that band before,
but I mean it sounds absolutely up my street.

Speaker 1 (53:41):
I guarantee you you will like it.

Speaker 2 (53:43):
Yeah, God's I'm a black metal fan and I had
no idea.

Speaker 1 (53:48):
That's the thing. It is an endless it's an endless
pit black metal. But it's it's nice to have some festival,
you know, perusing that pit right and digging the stuff
out with it. And so yeah, last year when Aglock
were announced, it was like, oh my god, the tickets
are flying, You've got to get it immediately. But I

(54:09):
very much trust that, you know, whatever else they pile
onto that I'll be interested. Fortress, like I said, it
is again in that talk I went to with the
guy from Fenn, he was saying it was like, it's
kind of like we finally got our version of like
Beyond the Gates or like Inferno Festival or something, which
are those things in Norway that are As a black

(54:30):
metal fan, you look at them very enviously and the
kind of bookings and the kind of events and stuff
you get, and it's lovely to have one on the
Yorkshire coastline doing that stuff. So Fortress was tremendous as ever.
Ulcerate and Agalocke and Dodd's read in particular were all
just outstanding. Then I got back and then within about

(54:52):
forty eight hours of that ending, I was on a
plane to Poland because, as I said, for a festival
over there that I have been eyeing up for a
few years because I had some really cool stuff in
the previous couple of years called Mystic Festival, which I
feel like it's a festival that I guess technically has
existed for a long time, but then we were looking
at some of the stuff from like the you know,
two thousands or whatever. But for whatever reason, this is

(55:14):
one of those festivals that where the profile of it
has like rocketed a lot, like post COVID, like their
like last few editions. I don't know, if it's just
become more internationally prominent. Maybe it was just before in Poland.
I don't know, but I certainly I didn't know what
it was and prior to about twenty twenty two, and
then suddenly every year it's like, oh shit, Mystic looks great.

(55:36):
And I heard stuff about you know, people I knew
or work with or whatever who were going out and
talking about it, talking about what a great festival was.
And you know, people are interested in different festivals abroad.
Tips on different ones you can kind of hit up.
You know, we've not got anyone at download this year,
but I have got a report from a site, you know,

(55:57):
not that size, but sizable enough festival in another country
might be interested in. So I'm gonna tell you a
little bit about Mystic, and I guess, first off, obviously
because it's not a festival that is in the UK
that maybe every UK fan will be familiar with. I'll
tell you a little bit about it. It is in
the city of Gadansk in Poland, Northern Poland, which is

(56:18):
of course the former free city of Danzig, which I
think explains why Danzig decided to play one of his
only like European shows of the last several years at
Mystic a couple of years ago. I genuinely believe he went, well,
I have to play in Danzig before I retire, right
like Danzig, and Danzig is far too good an opportunity

(56:38):
to miss. But Kadansk northern coastline of Poland and Mystic
takes place literally like on the shipyard of Gadansk, like
where the harbor is and stuff. I think apparently David Gilmore,
I think uh did like a either David Gilmour Roger Waters,

(57:00):
which would be a funny thing to mix up on
and I think it's David Gilmore did like a big
live DVD concert or something like live at a dance shipyard.
I was like, you know, looking up stuff that's happened there.
But Basically, what this means is it's in the city center, right,
like you're on the shipyard, but you're in the city.

(57:20):
So it's not a camping in a field festival like
a vacan or a grass pop or whatever, which meant
that we were in a hotel less than ten minute
walk from the actual festival site, which was so fucking perfect, right.
And the other benefit of that is it's one of

(57:41):
those where the bands they start at like half three,
four o'clock or something, and then they go on until
like half one am. But it meant that every morning
we wake up and we go, oh, first band are
on in like fucking i know, six seven hours or whatever.

(58:01):
We've got time to be in Gadance, right. And the
combination of being directly in the city center and the
band starting that lay because if you're at a camping
festival and the first band's on at four o'clock, then
it's like, for fox sake, I'm sweating me in my
tent and I got nothing to do. Terrible, But for
something like that set up perfect. So we got to
like explore Gadansk quite a lot, and like I'm you know,

(58:24):
I'm not going to extend this whole podcast into like
this is what I did on my holidays because it'd
be long enough as it is. But Goadance, it turns out,
is a really like fascinating, tremendous city. There's so much
like history and stuff to see. So, like we went
to the west of Platte, which is basically the site

(58:45):
where World War II started, because it's where it's where
the German invasion of Poland like began. So we went
to like the old like ruined bomb barracks and stuff
from like the first battle site of World War two
and like the cemetery memorial and stuff for like the
first like handful of like Polish defenders who were like,
you know, basically the first soldiers killed in like the

(59:08):
largest global conflict ever. It was mad. And then we
went to like you know huge like old like Catholic
churches and stuff like that. Walked up this insane fucking
tower with the steps which were the worst steps I've
ever been on in my goddamn life. They were so tight,
they were so steep, like proper medieval monk upper tower.
Like it was a nightmare. We went to like an

(59:30):
ossuary with like piles of skulls of like like Catholic
nuns where they like you know, deposited the remains of
the sisters of the church and stuff. So like if
you're into like you know, metal history tourism basically of
like just seeing you know, cool, slightly offbeat whatever interesting stuff.

(59:51):
Cau Dance had so much of it. It was so great.
It's a really beautiful city because it's really like proper
like old you know, Eastern European like architecture and and
stuff like that. And it was great because you'd be
walking around and you'd be like, oh, there's the singer
from Castle rat in like the church or whatever, or
like that English band Burner. We saw them around quite
a lot. It's like we're just a bunch of English

(01:00:13):
folks having our little you know, metal holiday around Kadansk.
Obviously Polish you know food and stuff like that. There's perogi,
there's at the festival. The fucking keel bassa van is
one of those things that I will miss. So basically
just like massive Polish sausages, like proper you know, Eastern

(01:00:36):
European style fat things. They were absolutely great. I had
a Tira masu canoli at the festivals, Like like this
is so nice. This is great. There was a wrestling
ring where they had like some kind of you know,
the whatever the Polish wrestling. I don't even know what
the fucking word is, federation, I don't know, but you know,

(01:00:57):
be walking around and there's two like greased up pol
just beating the shit out of each other, hitting each
other with chairs. It's one of those festivals where you'll
just be walking past somewhere and a sign will just
shoot fire and it's like, no one's on, no band
is playing, You're just walking path and it will just go,
you go. I don't know what that was for, how
much that will cost, but I'm glad that there's just

(01:01:18):
pirote going on like around the site. It's a magical
little place. And the thing that I like a lot
about European festivals is I think this is probably the
biggest metal festival in Poland. It's not the size of
a like a download obviously, you know, neighboring country in

(01:01:39):
Germany they'll have Vakan. It's the biggest fucking thing in
the world. The three the headliners for the main days
of Mystic were in Flames, King Diamond and Sepulcher, which
it's pretty good right, like that's a fun, good time.
It's a good time if you ask me, right, And
some of those are like you know, the there someone

(01:02:01):
like in Flames are probably gonna headline a festival in
Europe where they're not going to headline it in the UK. Generally,
i'd maybe compare it to something like a bloodstock Yeah yeah, yeah,
but but you know, you could walk around it maybe
slightly easier because it's just sort of like the straight
line of the shipyard basically. But the thing I like
about European festivals is they don't segregate genre quite so much.

(01:02:23):
Where for me, particularly right the extreme metal stuff and
like the cult metal stuff that was like at the
bottom of this bill on some of the smallest stages,
right at the same festival where I watched some bullets
for my Valentine and download, right, like Download's coming up,
and like a now the Thracker playing download And it's
kind of a novelty that a now a Thracker playing download, right,

(01:02:43):
Like everyone's going like, oh my god, go on an
ala thrack, like play you know, thirty minutes in the
tent and do fucking forward or whatever, and it's like, really,
it's a bit novelty, in a bit unique that someone
like Nathrak are doing download right. I literally I watched
four songs of Bullet. My Valentine walked over to another
stage watched Beherit. That is how like an hour of

(01:03:06):
my life went. And I was explaining this to some
like you know, some some poles and stuff were over there,
and they were like, oh, so, like if you want
to see black metal, you have to go to like
black metal festival. And I was like, yeah, like, we
can't do this here the idea of having like the
main stage. But again I didn't watch them, but bands
like Polaris and Landmarks and stuff were playing, and then
Archgoat are playing on the other side of there's like

(01:03:27):
it's just it's a wonderful like obviously, you know for
my interest. That's part of why I don't so much
go to the huge events like the download or whatever,
and I'd rather go to something like a fortress because
it's more for me. But these European ones they meld it.
And no matter what kind of era of metal you're into, really,
at like a huge event like this, you're kind of

(01:03:47):
catered for. And the thing that sums us up the
most is my favorite photo I took all weekend where
I was watching Bulletfi Valentine right and in front of
me was a guy wearing a steel Fest hoodie, which,
if you are in the know, right, steel Fest is
a festival. I believe it's like it in Finland. I don't.
It's not a Nazi festival right, like as in run By,

(01:04:11):
you know, like the a Nazi group or something. What
it is is a festival where the the the operators,
the bookers are They do not care about the politics
of the bands that they book, and as a result,
you get a lot of Like in the black metal community,
steel Fest is a little bit like a bit of
a you know, a punchline for like the idea of like,

(01:04:32):
you know, an NSBN type first of all, and you'll
get your very sketchy bands playing it along with bands
who aren't so sketchy. But a guy wearing a fucking
steel Fest hoodie with the lineup on the back, and
I took a photo and next to him on the
screen as Matt Tuck, and I was like, this is
only in Europe could I take this? This photo does
not exist in the United Kingdom. I just I just

(01:04:54):
it's a wonderful thing to get together a festival.

Speaker 2 (01:04:59):
Like that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:00):
So in terms of like you know, recommending the vibe
of mystic or whatever, absolutely like and you know, Poland's
pretty cheap as well. I uh again, I went on
a press trip, but I believe I'm writing saying a
four day like weekend pass equates to maybe about one
hundred and twenty quid or something like that, which is like, oh,

(01:05:20):
that's cheaper than that's cheaper than bloodstocks these days right down,
Like that's multi times that. It's it's obviously then you
book your flights or whatever as well, but you know
it's it's pretty cheap. Food and drinks cheap obviously, you know,
great Polish beer or whatever. We had like a tasting
board of vodka shots at one point and it was
like seven quid. It was like, it's a great time being.

(01:05:41):
I've got that kind of like travel like, oh I
missed Poland. It was so lowly over there kind of
spirit at the moment.

Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Not to make not to make you too jealous, mate,
but before the get up kids, me and my friend
Natay went to Matalan. You know, the UK is not
so bad.

Speaker 1 (01:05:57):
Did you eat anything in Matalan, No, I just sort
of looked at towels, the carpets, Yeah, fair enough, but yeah,
like in terms of the the vibe, the layout and everything.
It's five stages, three outdoors and two smaller ones indoors.
And those small ones they could get a little bit
like cramped and sweaty if it was something big in there.

(01:06:18):
You have to make sure you got in there. But
it was really tremendous, like the whole set up and
that feeling of just sort of walking into like a
little mini metal like town or something as you go
into like a big euro festival like that was great.
So buzzing through the many many bands that I saw again,

(01:06:38):
trying to you know, kind of cover them as quickly
as I can. The very first band I saw was
a band called Intrepid, who are a Estonian death metal band.
They sound a bit like sort of suffocation or decapitated
or something like kind of you know, sort of quite
clean but you know, groovy, techie type thing. So then
and then I remember that i'd actually seen them before
supporting Nail a couple of years ago, but you know,
they were much closer to her to home here. Then

(01:07:02):
the second band I saw right, this is good going
was ol Sest.

Speaker 2 (01:07:06):
Oh yeah, lovely, lovely.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
It was great outside, right, I would say about the
weather at Mystic, it wasn't great. We we had like
thunderstorms and like rain and stuff. It wasn't like constant rain.
It was that weird thing where it would just absolutely
shit it down for a few minutes and then everything
would just be soggy for like hours afterwards. So like

(01:07:30):
we weren't in a lot of rain, but the rain
definitely made its kind of presence felt. But you know, Outsest,
we were outside and it sounded great and I was like, ah,
I mean I'm in you know, the dance shipyard, I'm
watching Olsest. They sound great. They had their little birds
and stuff on stage. They played two songs from the
newest record I believe it was, what was it called

(01:07:53):
Amethyst and Flams you mel those two, oh right, yeah,
which were good. But they also played a Kdaloon Part two,
which is my favorite Alces song, which I only saw
them do for the first time a couple of years
ago when they did that album in full and them
doing that, I was just like, yeah, this is just
this is just wonderful, isn't it. And then at the
very end of Alcest we started to get our first

(01:08:14):
little bits of rain. It was like, oh, okay, but
Alcest was very, very nice, seeing those those lovely French
guys over there. I missed quite a lot of Castle
Rat because I had left my hoodie back at the
hotel and I was like, I we got the thunderstorm
warnings and stuff, and I was like, I've got bands,
I need to watch outside, I need to run and
get some protection. But again, you know, not too far

(01:08:35):
a walk got back for like a couple songs of
Castle Rat and I saw them doing the sword fight
and the Rat reporess with their waving her scythe around
and stuff. I'm gonna hope I can catch like more
of the set when they played dam Nation this year,
but that was fun, and as said, I just saw
those get quite recognizable people in that band, just sort
of around Kadansk the whole time. After that, I went

(01:08:58):
to see White Chapel playing for the first time I've
seen them since the new record came out. It was
quite heavy on that record, a good run of that
and then also like a few oldies and stuff like that.
This was when we started getting an actual thunderstorm, so
there was like legit lightning behind the stage. When Whitechapel playing,
it was pretty pretty metal, you know, that's what they

(01:09:24):
call them. That is what they call them. And there
was a band on during that on this very small
stage called Witch Club Satan Who yeah who again. My
friend Rich went to see. They're like an all female
black metal band and they sing a lot about kind
of like feminist causes and stuff like that. But there
was some mad like videos of them where they came

(01:09:45):
out dressed like full on like Harlequin's, like massive fucking
head pieces and stuff, and then halfway through just took
all their clothes off and just played the rest of
that naked. Like okay, fair enough, But you know, I
think they were gett quite a little bit of buzz
around for just being like very like, you know, visually
confrontational and aggressive kind of fbale black metal. But I
was watching Whitechapel and then I went into one of

(01:10:06):
the indoor stages and I saw Midnight, And one of
the best bands of the festival was Midnight because oh yeah,
not only was he just like Paul scam metal I
love it here in this Country, but opened with Satanic Royalty,
which is one of the best fucking songs ever into
fucking Speed and Darkness. Oh yes, into black rock and roll.

(01:10:30):
It was like absolutely killer. It was just everyone's going
mad the sickest, like you know, sort of black speed,
heavy metal songs, just all in a row, proper all killer,
no filler set list like fuck off and live just
somewhere in the middle, Like, yeah, absolutely brilliant. Really of

(01:10:51):
course I will always enjoy, but this was like a
particularly fun midnight set where that opening things the type
Royalty into fucking Speed and Darkness was like this is
the metal is the best thing in the world world,
Like I love this so much. After that, oh and
speaking of some of the best things. After that, I
saw Jerry Cantrell, Oh yeah, who was there with his
like solo band, right, and I'm I'm a bit of

(01:11:14):
a fan, right Like Jerry Cantrell is one of those
musicians out there who I would class as one of
my guys. Like if there's a column of my guys,
then Jerry Contrell met his name mix his way onto
that list. I still haven't seen Alis in Chains because
they haven't been around in a little while, so this
was kind of you know, like, oh, it's Jerry Cantrell.
You know, two things I hadn't considered with Jerry Cantrell.

(01:11:37):
One is that he would actually play any Alison Chain songs.
And two, I'd forgotten that Greg Picciato does the fucking
like co vocalist stuff within So his first song, his
first song of his set, I went to the keel bassavan.
I was getting my massive fucking sausage and I'm and
he was doing like one of his you know, kind
of slightly dronia solo ones, and I made my way forward.

(01:11:58):
And then second song of the set, Greg Pachato runs
out and hits the ah at the start of them bones,
and I almost catapulted my sausage into the air. It
was madness. I was like, Ah, what do I do here?
That was so fucking sick. The solo stuff, you know,
I like a lot of them, particularly the recent Jerry
Control solo stuff, and that was good. I really liked

(01:12:18):
the song on the last record he out last year.
I really liked the song after Glow. I think that's
one of the best songs that he's written in like
the last sort of ten years or so, And that
was really nice. To see. But also then later on
on the Alls and Chains front they did Wood and
then they ended on Rooster and again seeing Jerry ConTroll
play Rooster. Seeing Greg like Wood was Greg's moment because

(01:12:40):
Greg's many in the harmonies and stuff. But when like
doing the flood again, you know, Greg carrying that was
that was a magic moment. I absolutely loved seeing that
particular thing. Then when to go see, here's a mad
little booking a band called the Covenant right with a K.
So this again, this is like old Man's Child, right,

(01:13:01):
we're going into our very niche corners of like Norwegian
black male history. The Covenant used to be called just
Covenant right with a C. They made a record in
the late nineties of like keyboard y symphonic, you know,
early Emperor style black metal. Then they changed their name
to the Covenant with a K and turned into like

(01:13:22):
a daft industrial band as I don't know any Scandinavian
around the year nineteen ninety nine or whatever would be
like prone to doing. But recently they've been doing sets
playing the first like symphonic black metal style album, and
they were doing that and there's a few kind of

(01:13:43):
recognizable people there, so I think the keyboard this is
in Ucturus. Hell Hammer from Mayhem is on the drums,
and currently they have Sarah Jezebel Diva, who is the
Cradler filth nineties era, a female vocalist just standing there
on the side just doing her very recognizable oh that

(01:14:03):
you hear all over like Cruelly and Midian and stuff,
just standing in the corner whaling doing that. And then
a funny thing about the Covenant is on when we
arrived in Gdansk, we got picked up from the the
the airport in like a van by some of the
festival people and he was like, I've got to pick
up one of the artists as well. And so when
I got into this van, and in the back of

(01:14:25):
this van is one like just sort of stern man
with like with his bags and stuff, just like doesn't
know anyone. He's just standing there on his own like okay.
And I'm sat next this guy for the whole like
hotel ride, and then he gets out and leaves and
the driver goes that guy's in the Covenant, and I'm like,
no way. And I would have been mad if it

(01:14:45):
was like hell Hammer or in the I think it
was the front man because he was the only one
who didn't have long hair. But that was my little
relation to the Covenant. But oh yeah, I watched about
maybe half of their set doing the again old you know,
keyboardy black metal stuff. There's millions of bands from nineteen
ninety nine doing that thing, as we all know now already.
But that was cool. And so this is technically, by

(01:15:06):
the way, this is on Wednesday, that this is happening
because Wednesday was labeled the warm up day, which means
that essentially the main stage wasn't open, right the second stage,
the outdoor stage, was the biggest stage run in this day.
This is still a fucking massive warm up day, right,
Like man, most things, again, you'd imagine, oh, you know,
Bloodstock Thursday night or something. You're in the Sophie Tent.

(01:15:29):
I'm watching like Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons or something,
Whereas this was like, this is Wednesday, the so called
warm up day. And I've seen Jerry Cantrell Whitechapel like
Midnight alcest and there the headliner of this stage was
Exodus and just having a big thrash party. Right, it's
the first ti I've seen them because they've just got

(01:15:50):
Rob Dukes back in the band, who was the vocalist
from like the kind of the mid two thousands into
the very early twenty tens, and they had that weird
little vocalist swapped very recently, but he was back and
it was like, yeah, it's good to be back. And
so they played quite a few of like his era
songs of the band. But Exodus I think are one
of the most reliable live of that class of thrash band.
I've never seen a disappointing Exodus show. Like they just

(01:16:13):
come out and they kill it. They opened with Bonded
by Blood and it's like, this is just that's how
you do it. They've still got you know, the toxic
Waltz and all these like you know, classic festival made
pitste A type songs, all the Bonded by Blood stuff,
and that was great. And they got some like some
kid up at the very end to like strum the
guitar and like the very end of the thing, it

(01:16:33):
was like yeah, metal, lovely. And then right after that,
so this is like like one am or something at
this point or about midnight closing. One of the other
stages was in Human Nature the UK thrash band, and
this was the first of several like a you from
Home but here you know sets that we saw and

(01:16:54):
human Nature, really fun live very agro Londoners, which again
kind of set them out here to be like fuck off,
come on and you know stuff in the new record
just sounded a lot of fun, very very rowdy, very energetic.
So that was the warm up day of Mystic Festival.
Then we go on to the main three days. So
it goes Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and we came home on

(01:17:17):
the Sunday. The first thing that I saw on Thursday
was we took our time a little bit. We ended
up going to see Upha Mammot, who are the like
Italian psychedelic stoner doom band. I last saw them about
ten years ago. So they came out and they had
a bas tone and combined guitar tone just like tar
and it was very very heavy. Then I saw Turbine Negro,

(01:17:42):
who were there was a few like quite nasty little
clashes just because the lineup's great. They were on during
Nile and I was like, oh, but I went to
see turburn Negro because I'd never seen Turburigro and I
was like, this is a chance, right, and it made
a funny little joke where it was like, I've heard
that the singer of the Misfits is named after this place.
His name is Glen Gadansk, and I was like, that's
the historical I see what you've done. Their humor that

(01:18:04):
I appreciate, but Turbnegro really everything you'd imagine a turbn
Egro show to essentially be, which is like there's guys
in daft costume doing vaguely homo erotic stuff, playing sick
ass fucking rock and roll songs, and they're still playing
quite a bit off the most recent record, rock and
Roll Machine, so they're doing like, you know, like Hot

(01:18:25):
for Nature and stuff like that great tune. But obviously
then they got sort of the ending run and they
bust out like all my friends are dead, and the
place just kind of like goes up a notch and
you know, erupts from their and age of Pumperia self
destructive bust. I really enjoyed it, like being there, and
he goes like, is anyone looking for a rendezvous out there?

(01:18:47):
And I'm like, oh my god, it's rendezvous with anus,
just like the weird Things that go through your mind
during the Terminators set, and then they ended on I
Got Erection and everybody is. Everybody's loving it, So there
you go, turbinagor fun time there. Then here was as
I said, I watched four songs with my valentine. I
thought this was so I missed the tour when they

(01:19:09):
were doing you know, the poison thing with Trivian, which
as we know, came to an inauspicious end. I was
actually cured. Part of me was curious. I was like,
are they gonna do the poison? Like how they fucked
it off? And I was almost expecting to walk up
and then to open with knives or something, and I
maybe like, ah, I'm out of it, but they were,
you know, credit to them, they were still doing the poison,

(01:19:29):
which means I knew I would have to leave, you know,
a bit away into this set, and I was like,
if I can catch the first few songs of the poison, right,
that's like what her voice resides, four worth, choke on,
Tears Don't Fall, and then I left her in the
one after that that's.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
I mean, that's how you need it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:46):
Yeah, it was good, you know, like it's sure the
rest of the poisons good as well, but I had
better things to see, just going and being like, yeah,
I'll watch the fucking tears don't fall very very casually.
It's like almost an after fall of this whole festival.
And then have a guy in a steel Fest hoodie
stand in front of me during it was it's great.
It's a surreal little time. So it's awesome. Bullet. I

(01:20:08):
guess this was my you know, I saw the the
stage here that people were describing with the kind of
like the the visuals and stuff which are kind of,
you know, sort of okayish, but saw some of them.
The reason I left Bullet for my Valentine, you may
remember earlier I had to go and see beherrit now
beherit was one of like two or three things I

(01:20:29):
saw on this lineup when I got the offer to
go for it, and was like, what the fuck do
you mean? Because I guess Beher it needs some explaining
because they are a real cult band at yeah, and
well we've never done something on them in terms of
like and the album clubs from like the black metal
world that would make Sam go what the fuck is this?

(01:20:54):
That would be a real fun one to do, but Beherrit,
finish black metal band from the kind of early nineties.
They are part of that real like sort of bestial
black metal, sort of prototype war metal thing that at
the same time like Blasphemy is happening in Canada and
stuff like that, and then be hear It, you know,

(01:21:15):
then you get like arch Out and all those kind
of bands. So it's like very like proper primitive and
barbaric to a point of kind of like like total obnoxiousness,
to the point where like I have like I have
black metal friends who don't like Beherit, and Marx just
raised raise the hand that I've forgot what you thought
about the heart, but it's like it's the most like

(01:21:39):
gummy brained riffs. But yeah, the weird thing about Beherit
is that they then combine that with this strange kind
of like droning electronic like cyborg thing where the hear It.
They have like three records that are black metal records,
and then they have lots of dark ambient records like

(01:22:02):
electroc Records and stuff, and on their most classic black
metal record, Drawing Down the Moon, it's one of the
most idiosyncratic, strange as fuck things to come out of
what was one of the most radical movements in like
rock history, that being the second wave black metal thing,
because you've got the most primitive riffs, but it's like

(01:22:24):
hearing a black metal band play on the moon or
something like it's so cold and so kind of like
strange sounding and alien and kind of like cybernetic with
the you know, vocal filters and stuff like that. And
Beherit last year, I think it was very abruptly were like,

(01:22:45):
we're doing shows. The last time Beherit played shows as
a black metal band was nineteen ninety two. Enter Sandmand
was one year old when Beherit last black metal shows, right,
And then they just came back well like yeah, we're
doing some shows in Finland, We're doing something in Japan,
and people were like, what the fuck do you mean?

(01:23:07):
But heer It, oh man god, and they did. They've
announced a few shows in Europe right at European Festival stuff.
Obviously nothing in the UK. I don't know where even
would book them in the UK. But it was like
this was the larger of the two indoor stages but
was the most round. It was all weekend like spilling out,
people trying to get in to see Beherit, which meant

(01:23:29):
it was so warm, and it was one of those
where I was like, for periods I couldn't raise my
arms because they were like, you know, sandwiched with people
either side of me watching Beherit right, which they had
a guy with like the full on like like corpse
paint and the huge like spiked wrist bracers and stuff,
playing guitar doing the gut are all vocals like that stuff.

(01:23:51):
And then they had another guy who I it was
a bit dark so I could quite make it out,
but I think he was wearing a zip hoodie with
the hood up zip open, no shirt underneath, and shades
on indoors beneath the hood and he had like a
full like noise fucking deck thing and he was doing
this like power electronic stuff. And then he was walking

(01:24:13):
around the stage with another microphone doing the vocals with
like the robofilter on them, like the kind of a
like that whole thing with the robo thing, and it's
one of the craziest sounding things I've seen in my life.
Like they were. They were on a stage that most
of the time was not especially loud. They blew fucking

(01:24:36):
ear drums. They were it was the combination of the
most like again ignorant, just like dum dumb, dumb, dumb,
dumb dumb, like blast beats and stuff, but like with
this like power noise, fucking like support behind it. That
just it was like explosive and it was it was overwhelming,
and as one of the things that was like, yeah,

(01:24:57):
I need to go and see Beherritt. That's one of
the events because like they're back from nineteen ninety two
playing show and it was like, honestly, like me, maybe
not far off what we've said about seeing bands like
Dragon the Sunlight or whatever and being like my head
is going to explode. It was not seeing Beherit a

(01:25:17):
bad who like what one of them who advanced kind
of extremity in some way in the early nineties, but
then to still just come back and still be like
that on the harshness and the intensity and everything and
the real just like overwhelming like black metalness of all,
you know, like fucking spiked silhouettes in front of you.
And then that at the end, they did a song
called the Gate of Nana, which is maybe the biggest

(01:25:41):
Beheit song and it has this chance bit of ah
they say and ah they Luisifer, and I swear everyone
around me just went fucking mental, like ah say, like
arms in the air chanting this fucking stupid Beherit song.
It was. It was crazed. That was an early like

(01:26:03):
bar of the maddest stuff at Mystic. But yeah, I
mean maybe Cosmic Void or something will book them in
the UK. But like Beherit live was somehow wilder than
I thought it would be from the record already thoughts
on behear It sounds horrid, It was proper. Then I

(01:26:27):
walked past to a Tendency who are on the same
time as Beherit. They seem to have about four thousand
people on stage they like gathered up from the crowd.
I went over to, of course, the in Flames, headlining
the main stage on the Thursday of the Full Thing
the Thursday. I had to leave about halfway through this
as well, but it was cool seeing in Flames again
headline a big festival. You know, they had like a

(01:26:50):
big light show and stuff, like a cool kind of
production there. Whenever you see them live, they're a very slick,
professional kind of like proper, you know, big touring outfit
type band, And I was just hoping that early days
kind of the first half of the set, they put
in a bunch of stuff that I really like, you know,

(01:27:10):
and so they open with Pinball Map from claim Man
and I was like, yeah, cool, that'll do. Early on
they played deliver Us, which is one of our favorite
like yeah, comparatively more recent Inflame songs, Massive Chorus, so
that was good. And then I watched like a run
of like, you know, good kind of classic stuff where
they played Coerce Coexistence from Colony, played a couple songs

(01:27:34):
from Rewrap to Remain, so we had like cloud connected
into Trigger. And then I left when they were playing
only for the week, so you know, like perfect good
stuff in Flames Big. The reason I left is I
had to go back to my weird finish shit because
of Rancy PEZUZI were playing and a Rancizu. I guess

(01:27:55):
I won't say too much about their live show because
me and you were going to see them together in
a few months. Well, they played with Blood and Canantations,
so you know, put just a little taste of it.
It was cool seeing them after Beheit because in my
mind they're almost like some of the airs to Pherit
in terms of like that, but like what Beherit were
in the nineties of like very weird genre melding like

(01:28:17):
primitive but trippy and you know, kind of black metal
that is of a variant that some people will just
like absolutely sink into it, and some people will be like,
what the fuck is this? There's a real Beherit spirit
in around Yeahzuozoo, I think just obviously they've brought in
a lot more other kind of sonic touchdowns and stuff.
So it was cool seeing those bands one after the other.

(01:28:39):
And then I came out from that and Perturbator was
playing on the second stage, and I saw the second
half of Perturbator and that was so heavy and so loud,
right I could full on just outdoor rave set basically
of him, just like I got there. And not long
after that he burst into playing Neotokyo, the first track
from the Uncanny Valley, and it's just like and the

(01:28:59):
thing about it, because it's in the city, you can
kind of hear when you're walking around, like if you
were like by our hotel for example, which like I said,
it was like a ten minute walk away and a
band had started, you can kind of hear it faintly.
But next to the second stage was a building of
what I can only assume we're like apartments, and there
were people on like balconies and shit, just watching the

(01:29:20):
fucking stage from outside of the festival ground like or
like on the roof. And in the middle of the
day you're watching Jerry ken trail or something. It's like, okay, right,
But I was like, what's what's the noise permissioning? This
is something I was like, this would never happen in
the UK, Like you could not have pertor going at
one th am in the middle of a city next

(01:29:40):
to fucking like the building. I was like, what I
don't understand again the whole festival permission thing in other
countries compared to ours. But I was like that you
can't see this. But day was again really like one
of the heaviest things at the festival, just in pure
like Sonnic wait and he's just like headbagging and stuff.

(01:30:03):
And I'm really looking forward to seeing like a a
whole set of it again when he plays Damnation at
the end of this year. But it being out loud
and just having like the full on light again, you know,
like big bass just like pounding out into the night.
Was like, yeah, what a great end to another day. Friday.
The following day, first man I sold Straight from the Path.

(01:30:23):
Who this is obviously one of the news things that
we haven't spoken about because it was during our little
you know week off Straight from the Path and that's
that they're going on hiatus. Well not even actually they're
breaking up, aren't they. Hiatus would suggest they're coming back.
They're disbanding, and they put out their surprise record of course,
which we're you know, we're going to review the new
record on the next review show, which I think will
be next week, so we'll talk more about Straight from

(01:30:44):
the Path and their kind of decision to you know,
kind of call it there there. But I saw this
and I was like, well, I guess this is my
chance to see Straight from the Path on the you know,
the farewell thing. So and maybe not like a home
crowd or anything like that, but you know, they put
on a respective will come out and just make people
fucking bounce and you know, have a lot of high
energy and yell angry shit and good yeah, nice straight

(01:31:08):
through the Path. That was my, as said, my chance
to be like, yeah, straight from the Path, you're going out.
I'll catch you here, nice cheers for all cheers for
all the good stuff over the years. Then opening the
main stage on this day was a lot of band
called Green Lung, which was oh yes, which was interesting
again to be like, you know, okay, they've gigged the
shit out of the UK, Like I I think the

(01:31:30):
amount of times I've seen Green Lung on this one
album cycle is one of the most times I've seen
a band on one album cycle in recent memory, right, Like,
I've seen these songs now so many fucking times. But
it was cool to be like, Okay, how does this
go over at a big festival crowd in Europe? Right,
because it's it's very English, you know, it's old English
mushroom eating heavy metal, but it is classic heavy metal

(01:31:52):
that you know, you would imagine doing pretty well. And
that's what happened, you know. The only difference was they
didn't have the big head behind them. I presume he
was too expensive to fly over, so he's stuck in
England somewhere. But Green Lung came out. They did the
Green Lung songs you know em you love them lots
from the new record, like one or two off the
you know, previous ones. But this was the thing where
we were watching them and it had that that extra

(01:32:13):
element of like when they're doing you know, like was
it like from Subterranean or to the Moors or whatever.
We were like, yeah, tell them about the moors. Go on,
tell them about the Moors back home and then playing
like Song of the Stones and you know, can you
feel the Stones calling you back home? We're like, yes,
we can. But they were really good. You know, how

(01:32:34):
do you expect them to be, but like, you know,
looking really confident, opening up, you know, a foreign main stage,
huge songs, big rock, star energy, all the stuff you
know about Green Lung, but like seeing it translated in
that current environment was very apt, very very nice, very cool.
Then I went to see Hate Breed. Sorry Hell Ripper Boys,
who are on at the same time with them. They

(01:32:54):
were in the very very smallest venue and you were
not getting in that thing. That place was ram let
me tell you. But I watched Hate Breed. Hate Breed
played with one of the most stupid out of this
world festival set lists I have seen in recent time,
because he right, Hatebred They're always great, right, And like

(01:33:16):
I think I've only seen hatebrid at festival so it's
always like they turn up and they play hits and
they smash it and they're brilliant. But there was something
about the ordering of this one which was just like, ah,
because I don't know if this will be the same
as like the the UK, you know, summer shows are doing,
like I know they're paying the ones with a slayer
and stuff like that. So if you don't want to
hear any hate breeds, setless things or anything, and then

(01:33:38):
you know, like close your ears for thirty seconds or something.
But I just have to lay this out right. They
opened with I Will be Heard, So I'm there and
it was the time to rise to my feet, the
tears roy eyes. It was like what And then they
went into what's it called empty Promises? The first song

(01:33:59):
was faction, so they finished I'll be Heard and you
go damn dumb, dumn dumb, that fucking drum thing. And
I was like, oh my god, what an amazing one too.
Into this is now into proven, into perseverance, into you
fucking bleed, now into looking down the barrel of today.

(01:34:21):
This is like the first seven songs and it did
not stop. It was absolutely craze, just the amount of like, yeah,
we Hate Breed, we can do this.

Speaker 2 (01:34:32):
Fuck me, that's a wicked holy shit.

Speaker 1 (01:34:37):
I ship myself. It was mental. And then they like
ending obviously played lots of other stuff, but they still
ended on in ashes they shall reap into destroy everything
to finish, and then the very final like bit of
destroy everything, they just started playing rain and Blood just
so Hate Breed on pure like wallop hip Power was

(01:35:01):
genuinely like, what do you mean you're opening will I
will be heard?

Speaker 2 (01:35:04):
Man? I mean if they're bringing that sort of like
confidence to the kill Switch Engage support slot, then all
the blood is going to be rushing to my polish sausage.
Let's put it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:35:17):
Yeah. And then obviously Jasta doing is like, you know,
because he's such a such a fan of everything, he'll
do his like shout outs for other bands and stuff.
I was like that Jasta hardcore bands, they'll mainly shout
at the other hardcore bands, right, Jasta does everything Cradle
of Filter on this stage afterwards, and he was like,
Cradle of Filth. But it got it meant the best
thing because this was the day that King Diamond headlined,

(01:35:38):
so he was like, are you excited for King Diamond?
It's time for tea, and hearing that in the jast
voice He's like fist in the air was like a
really special moment, but like it is type of tea.
You're right, Jie, But yeah, that set list was fucking ridiculous.

(01:36:00):
It was still like like last breath into the Threshold
and just it would non stop it. But that opening
run was absolutely crazed. I mentioned that they would ending
and story everything, and then at the very end they
did a little bit of rain Blood. Me and a
friend who I saw over there, we were like, okay,
we're going to go to the small venue now because
Archcote were coming up next in there and we really

(01:36:20):
wanted to see arch Coat, so like we're going to
get in there right as hell ripper of finishing and
we'll you know, get a spot in there. Turned around,
the most instantaneous not to one thousand rain downpour I've
ever experienced happens where I was watching Hate Breed. I
turned around to go and a million, like a millisecond later,

(01:36:41):
I was drenched. I don't know what happened. It was
so immediate, but and then we started like running to
this other thing as Hate Breed behind us are playing
rain and Blood, so it's like, well, we're pegging it
to a different venue. It was crazed. I was in
this rain for maybe like ninety seconds, but I was
like fully so through it. And then we were in
this tiny venue for arch Goat and it was so

(01:37:03):
rammdom there of everyone having the same idea that it
was like the rain started evaporating off people and it
was so like humid in there. It was like the
most extreme turd around of like sensations. So Arch Goat
was colored by that and being like, oh my god,
but I love Arch Goat. Speaking of the stupid stuff
that was around the hero, right, you know, you remove

(01:37:24):
the kind of like weird you know, uh German fucking
expressionism like Metropolis rogo thing that got on just have
like goat riffs. Then they delivered on them three you know,
burly looking satanic finish men. Watched made about half of
this setup because I had to get to get out again.
But hand seen Arch Gooat since about twenty seventeen, and

(01:37:48):
I like that shit. I left. I think before they
were doing the big ones like your nuns cunts and
darkness and stuff. But there's a song that like one
of their last albums is like really like a speed
metal song, just like very much like oh shit, this
is suddenly like a hell Ripper rif, which is unusual
for them. I saw that one, but that was cool
arch goat big dumb goatey fun. Then what was after that? Oh?
Of course the reason I then went out again was

(01:38:10):
Cradler Filth are playing. As I said, I don't think
Cradler Filth are like an outdoor festival type band like that.
They're good and they manage it, but I always watch
it and go like, yeah, cool. You know, I love
you guys. I've seen you do like better shows, you know,
elsewhere indoors at your own thing or whatever. But I
liked seeing Cradleler Filth, of course I did. I like

(01:38:31):
seeing Danny do his little air boxing they has. There
was like a drone camera like flying around the stages
like the whole time, like film the crowd and stuff,
but it get really up close and personal with like
the musicians, so it would like fly around, you know.
I remember watching Craig from Straight for the Path like drumming,
and this drone is just like spinning around him in
this three sixty angle thing. But Danny like almost I

(01:38:53):
swear like patted this fucking drone out of the air,
like just full on like boxing and swatting this thing
flying around him. My main thing with Cradle here was
obviously the las time I saw them was when they
were doing Damnation. It was all the old school stuff.
It was nice seing them do some some newer stuff
again and being like, oh, yeah, you know, Heartbreaking Seance
and some of these newer songs, and then seeing some
of the tracks from the new record, like to Live

(01:39:14):
Deliciously and what's the other one, Malignant Perfection the Halloween
song they did, and I was like, yeah, these are
all the good tunes like that record has. You know,
it kind of continues to grow on me, a bit
of a sleeper hit in the Craidle catalog. Fun stuff
to see. And then they end obviously on you know,
his Cruelty brought the Orchids and her Gohotro the fog

(01:39:35):
and Ninfeta me and it's like, yeah, cool, nice. Then
it turned into U actually no before it turned into
shock rock. Friday Night. Speaking of the brutal clashes, there
was the choice of opethel I Hate God. Actually I
went to go see I Hate God because I had
been assigned them, but I was in the mood for
I Hate God anyway, I Hate God. Playing on the

(01:39:55):
smaller outdoor stage, but as I mentioned from that downpour earlier,
there were just puddles around, like enormous fucking mud puddles,
and this was perfect for I Hate God because they're
swamp creatures and they were there doing these stinky, rubbery,
you know, heroin adult fucking gross sludge songs while I'm

(01:40:17):
standing in a bog and I'm like, at the very least,
Goadansk is now very representative of you know, Nola, and
they've got that song New Orleans is the new Vietnam,
and it's like, well, Goadance is the new New Orleans.
By by the look at this love I Hate God great.
After this it turned into, as I was saying, Shock
Rock Friday seemed to be the the theming of the

(01:40:40):
last run of this. I guess you could throw in
Cradle of Filth fac if you want, But the last
like three things I saw on this day, it had
that continuity with them where it's like different eras and
different you know, kind of realms of what you could
imagine as sort of shock rock stuff, and the first
one of that is everybody's favorite Republicans WASP who Wasp

(01:41:05):
were doing as they have been doing the debut album
as a show, and as we know from an album
club that we did this about this time last year,
a perfect heavy metal album out of ten, no skips
apps a fucking lutely, and that track list I saw

(01:41:28):
was of the first couple of years ago, and I
had so much fun just seeing all those songs because
they are like one of my favorite heavy metal bands
of the eighties honestly. But when it came to like, okay,
now we're doing the first album, some of those songs
they only did almost like medley form. When I saw
them last I was like, yeah, I'm in And weirdly

(01:41:49):
they didn't do fuck like a Beast because I guess
it's not on the album because it was originally it's
the whole thing of like it was it. I always
think of being track one on the album because I
listened to it in that order, but it's technically not
on the original release because of how it was removed
from the controversy and stuff. But they did it on
the last tour and it was almost like you had
one fuck like a Beast as a treat. But yeah,
they did the album in its initial running order, right,

(01:42:12):
which means they opened with I Want to be Somebody
into Love Machine pretty good that it is pretty good
in it. Uh, And you know, they had the whole
the usual kind of WASP set up, except now he's
retired his like weird springy fucking hr ggory like, uh,
what's the word. I'm the pogo stick like microphone that

(01:42:32):
he used to swing back and forth on. I'm like, no,
wonder you did your back out man, But he was there.
But my, my, my comfort maga of seeing the first
Wasp album was quite staggeringly fun. I will be totally
you know there with it. Made friends were just some
Lithuanian girl and she was just like when they were

(01:42:53):
getting to like the torture never stops and tormentor and
stuff at the back end, she was just like, yeah
the ones, I was like, yes, I am in your
up watching Wasp. This is brilliant. And of course in
the middle of that record there's on your Knees the
greatest song ever written, which is an absolute fucking rager
of a tune. He did say he was like back

(01:43:14):
in the day. We used to open every one of
our shows with this, and I was like, yeah, because
testing was what a rager it is. If you've heard
the album Club we did last year on it, there's
a bit of controversy with Sam, you know, doing down
the value of that particular song, but because I think
I love a nice little video in of just going
mental on your knees and just giving Sam the finger
because it was ripping. Yeah, just and then they did

(01:43:37):
an encore. They did some stuff in the Headless Children,
which didn't necessarily maintain the energy in the same way,
But then they came back and did like wild Child
and Blinding Textas and it's like, yeah, cool, good. But
that album set in particular of you know, fucking I
want to be somebody love machine. I forgot all about
bad and I was like, yeah, bad school days. I'm
attending Hell High. I've mentioned like Tormento and the talking

(01:44:00):
never stops and stuff. What what fucking records.

Speaker 2 (01:44:05):
That's the thing I'm most jealous of just that. I mean,
seeing Wasp anyway, but particularly that record I love and
you know, yeah, it's misogynist, but everyone's allowed one their
comfort misogyny. Mine Just what happens to be every single
hair metal song.

Speaker 1 (01:44:23):
Unfortunately they didn't do the Animal. If I ever saw
him do the Manimal, we're reaching the next level toxic
masculinity on.

Speaker 2 (01:44:35):
The spot officer. I'm not responsible for what I'm doing
during the Animal.

Speaker 1 (01:44:41):
Mammals one and all, but yeah, first fucking amazing and
then after that right shock Crock Friday. Continue because the
main stage headliner, King Diamond. What my my first of
two King Diamond shows I'm seeing this month, because I'm
also hitting up the UK dates when You've got Paradise
and done to others with him, which is just in

(01:45:04):
my mind, that's like, yeah, perfect heavy metal night. But
seeing King Diamond, I saw a merciful fate. A few
years ago. I hadn't seen King Diamonds in you know,
about a decade or so. Maybe I saw him when
he did the Abigail album in full as like a show,
but this was just a you know, i'd say, a
festival hits King Diamond set. Obviously, there's a couple of
new songs in the mix as well, because there's this

(01:45:26):
mythical seemingly has been recorded for like six years straight
new King Diamond album where he so he played Masquerade
of Madness, which is a song I've enjoyed for like
six years now. But then also there's another song you
put out I think maybe end of last year called
Spider Lily, and that was really good as well. And
they're both like good tunes, and I'm like, yeah, these

(01:45:47):
are great. And he has a stage show where he like,
so the whole new record is going to be themed
about like a kind of like a the Institute and
like this kind of like I think, like a mental
hospital type of thing. So that's like the whole setup
and stuff. And he was doing these characters like you
put on this weird like rubbery old man mask, was like,
it's me the doctor from you know, Saint Lucifer Hospital

(01:46:08):
or whatever, and I'm like, this is this is great.
I wish the album was out so I could know
who the fuck this guy is, you know, I don't.
I don't really understand the role of the doctor Quint yet.
So there was this weird sort of incongruousness about him,
like again doing this new album stuff while not actually
having the album there. But the new songs are great

(01:46:28):
and otherwise, right, So he opened with again, so this
I imagine will be very similar, if not identical, to
the show that comes around to the UK in June.
So if you don't want to know, there's your warning.
I would just say it was a really great like
all Fire basically, setlist opens with the opening kind of

(01:46:49):
pair on Abigail, so we get the intro with like
the spooky intro of Abigail, and the King appears with
the Abigail like little doll and like knife sit and
stuff where it's like you know who will be the
first that whole thing into obviously arrival and then into
a mansion in darkness, so you're in abigail Land and
then you go, he just goes, oh, it's Halloween. Then

(01:47:11):
suddenly Halloween kicks in on the set and we just
get this wonderful little tour through obviously the first like
few King Diamond records of the classic run, with a
couple of later one throwing as well of the really
strong variety, so I was quite excited. We got the
track Voodoo, the title track from the album Voodoo, which
is like the best like mid period King Diamond album,

(01:47:33):
and that track seeing that live as type for a
little Voodoo, and then the drums kicking and stuff again,
probably vaguely problematic in a kind of, you know, stereotypical
sort of way, but massive riff in that fucking song.
And then you know, halfway through he wheels out Grandma
as a little grandma, you know, like tussle and stuff

(01:47:53):
with Welcome Home Aya the witch Burn and then the
last song ended on the title track Abigail Aha, and
it's just it's macabre, heavy metal fear to delight, right,
It's everything you want from something like King Diamond. Obviously
the most impressive elaborate staging of the festival, with the

(01:48:15):
kind of actor woman who's stumbling around behind him on
like the big staircase thing he has erected on the
stage and stuff like that. Sounds incredible vocally, like he
always does, he does not miss a note of anything
he does again. Gonna see King Diamond again in a
couple of weeks, and I'm sure that at least some
people listening will be going to those dates as well.

(01:48:39):
But let me just say, rest assured, fucking great show.

Speaker 2 (01:48:43):
I'm furious. I'm so jealous you're getting two of the shows,
your cheeky fucker.

Speaker 1 (01:48:52):
I know I don't normally do that. I don't normally
get multiple shows of a run, but I'll take it
for the King.

Speaker 2 (01:48:59):
God. The courses of that King Diamond tour is the
same night I'm seeing Aarron Maiden and I just I'm
so annoyed.

Speaker 1 (01:49:08):
Yeah it's brutal, but yeah, King Diamond. It was the
one of the headline, mainstage, headline sets I watched in
its entirety m and it was nice, you know, to
be like, Yeah, European Festival, King Diamond's fucking playing. There
are people down the front painted in like the different
eras of King Diamond, like face makeup and stuff. People
are loving it. Lovely time. Then I went to go

(01:49:30):
see for the again after the thing after King Diamond.
Do you know who Arthur Brown is? I do, Yes,
he was playing, and there's this wonderful I love when
there's like artists who aren't like metal, right they in
some cases they might even predate metal culture really existing,

(01:49:52):
but we've adopted them because they somehow like are relevant
to us. You know, Goblin is a great example, Like
I've seen Goblin play several all extreme metal festivals because
extreme metal fans love Dario Argento films and they love
going Demons Demons and all that stuff. It's like, yeah,
your ours now, we'll take you. Arthur Brown because he
is like one of like the godfathers of elaborate shock rock, right, yeah,

(01:50:17):
maybe like in The Godfather. Yeah, it's from like, you know,
like nineteen sixty eight or something was when he was
doing that shit, So we're talking pre metal. He plays
Mystic Festival and places like that as like an after
act thing, and Arthur Brown is eighty two years old, right,

(01:50:37):
and he was, you know, flying out there to poland
coming out annoyingly. He So his set started a bit
before the end of King Diamond, so we watched the
second half of his set. We missed him doing fire Dude,
which is like the one you know, that's the that's
the one Arthur Brown song that I really know. It's

(01:50:58):
the really popular one. It's kind of the one you
always see of like the historical clips of him wearing
the giant fucking flaming hat stuff, which I saw photos
of him wearing that missed it doing that song annoyingly.
We missed that song, and we saw him doing these
very very like lengthy, chilled out like psych rock jams
and stuff, and at the end he did a cover
of I put a spell on you from a screaming

(01:51:20):
Jay Hawkins. But it words great to be I've just
watched Wasp right, who again who I've described before as
being like the Wattean or the gorge Off of their
day in terms of flaming, fucking rotten meat whatever into
King Diamond right as perfect an example of heavy metal
the carb theater, as I said, you can imagine. And
then afterwards, here's Arthur fucking Brown right. He did so

(01:51:43):
many even though we saw half the set, he did
so many costume changes. He had multiple capes. Well yeah,
he had multiple like pieces of like mad headgear. I
was like, yeah, fucking fair play the.

Speaker 2 (01:51:57):
Brown That sounds mystic to me.

Speaker 1 (01:52:00):
It was very mystic. And so then onto the final
day of Mystic Festival, this was the day that we had.
We just had our fucking like tasting board of like
vodka shots placed down the road and then we're like,
oh shit, Employed to Server on in half an hour,
We've got to run. So we got to the festive.

(01:52:21):
We were quite excited. We saw Employed to Serve and
my first time seeing them since Fallen Star came out,
so you know them doing you know, atonement with the
big choruses and stuff. Again, as we're saying, not a
home crowd, but good enough to be watching out there.
Employee to Serve. I was curious to see them, you know,
kind of do like one of these like big euro

(01:52:44):
festivals and stuff. I didn't have any pyro, whereas I
feel like the last few times i've seen them in
the UK they've had piro, but I think they I
think I'm right in saying it was the live debut
of Treachery, the first song on the new record, because
they go out and open with that and smashed their
played a good view of the newer ones. They did
the one with Jesse Leach on it and Sammy was
singing the chorus and I was like that sound good,

(01:53:05):
you know, well done, good good version of it. But
obviously that was very much one where we felt the
need to do the kind of like hometown crowd, like
you know me and again who we were with just
in the middle singing those choruses, force faired and all that,
and I think that they appreciated that. So nice to
see Employed to serve, always pleasure. Then I had a

(01:53:28):
bit of a just to sit in a wander around
to be honest, I went to it again watch some
people fucking like wrestling or whatever, seeing you know, different
things that were around the festival site. There was a
Vader museum there of just like various bits, so I'll
talk about them in a bit actually, but there was
a memorabilia thing for like forty years of Vader. It's
just like end, It's like, what a great things to

(01:53:49):
have at the fest, the Vader Museum. I saw Dark
Tranquility on the main stage, which was you know, all right,
you know fine, because they've just now it's the tour
where they're doing the gallery or at least songs from
the gallery for it's like thirtieth anniversary, and annoyingly that
starts after these dates and it's just like I just

(01:54:11):
want to see you do Punish my Heaven, Like you've
got a song that good and I just want to
see you play it. But you know, Dark Tranquility was
all right. After that was Vader who Vader. If you're
not familiar, I guess they are like some of the
closest things to like Poland's original metal icons, because they

(01:54:35):
are a death metal band who started in like the
mid eighties, right, and obviously I think they've been superseded
in terms of the biggest Polish metal band because then
we had Decapitated, and then we had Behemoth and so on.
But I was really curious to see Vader, you know,
on Polish soil where there were so many Vader t

(01:54:57):
shirts around, and as I said, they had like the
dea dedicated Vader memorabilia museum. And if you may remember
from a couple of hyperblasts ago, the release round up stuff,
they put an EP with a song that was labeled
the official anthem of Mystic Festival twenty twenty five, and
they were selling it on seven inch at the like
at like the official festival merch like where you get

(01:55:20):
your festival poster shirts and stuff. They're also like, here's
e Vader seven inch with the official anthem twenty twenty five.
No I love, I don't know, the sort of un uncynical,
just sort of you know, celebratory tie in factor of
all of that. We've got our local legends in They've
done the official anthem and they played a massive show.

(01:55:41):
Well I've seen Vader before, like Damnation and stuff, but
this was like, oh fuck, you're enormous here and you've
got pyro and smoke just going everywhere while you were
playing these like generally quite interchangeable, just very fast, brutal,
thrashy death metal songs. But while you know, he's just
going fire and it's going and you know, all the
poles around me are going crazy. Obviously spoke to the

(01:56:03):
crowd exclusively in polist. I don't know what they were saying,
but everybody seemed very very excited, but whatever was going on. Yeah,
massive Vader show. Great. Then after that I went to
see a ghoul that you and I may know, a
certain creep creepy gul. I saw a Pentagram, the viral

(01:56:27):
Menace of the Moment. You know, that guy is a
fucking weirdn't he.

Speaker 2 (01:56:32):
I mean, he is a weirdo. Looks like a weirdo.
Like God bless.

Speaker 1 (01:56:41):
It does what it says in the tin. He's not
fooling anyone.

Speaker 2 (01:56:44):
Yeah, you look at that and you're getting a shiver
down your spine.

Speaker 1 (01:56:48):
Yeah. And he didn't even beat up his mum on stage,
so that was a bonus. That was a nice thing
to have. But obviously Pentagram weirdly, you know, being thrust
into the limelight in twenty twenty five, I'd never seen Pentagram.
I was like, I probably won't pay at this stage
to go and see a Pentagram show, so I'll wander
over while they're playing a festival set here. They've got

(01:57:10):
a new album out. They were playing some stuff from it.
It's fine, but every now and then they dip into
one from like the first album, like ah, yes, Sign
of the Wolf, the Pentagram and all that stuff, because
I love early Pentagram, like it's properly some of the
most menacing shit from around that time. And he was
just sort of like I don't know, like draping himself
over like the fucking speakers or whatever. There was one

(01:57:30):
point where we're like Granddad's dead, like these notes have
killed him, and then suddenly you just look up like like,
oh god, he's He's back again. But obviously they did,
you know, the Ghouls as their current you know, moment
has detailed. But Big Riff and I wanted to catch
Forever my Queen when they were doing that, and they
did that towards the end, and I was like, yeah, nice,
I've had my little Pentagram experience. Went over to see Okay,

(01:57:56):
Blood Fire Death was the next thing that was up.
This was the thing that I was like most looking
forward to leading up to the fest, Like when again
I saw the poster and it was like, beharit are
playing and the Blood Fire Death thing is happening. I'm
in there is something that hangs over this. Unfortunately, that
means I can't just come in and kind of unequivocally

(01:58:18):
celebrate this, and we have to get you know, during
this general festival round up thing where I've been quite
just having a lot of fun, have to get serious
for this moment. I've thought about whether it would even
be the right thing for me to talk about this,
but I think it maybe is better to at least
have the conversation and kind of acknowledge it and again
state what we might like to see out of this,
and it was a huge event at the festival. Blood

(01:58:39):
Fire Death just to explain the kind of band concept
to what this is is basically a kind of supergroup
black metal tribute to the music of Bathory, named after
the album and song Blood Fire Death from Bathory. They
were formed. I think maybe they've done it long ago,
but they certainly they regrouped last year for the twentieth
anniversary of Quorthon's passing and uh Bathory Uh. The music

(01:59:06):
of Bathory is like it's arguably the most influential, important
black metal music ever made. It is like baked into
the kind of the religion of black metal. Is this
music they were doing. And in terms of the supergroup
kind of you know, set up of who's playing it.
Eric from Watteng is the usual kind of front man.

(01:59:27):
Ivar from Enslaved plays guitar. Blasphema from Mayhem and Ruin
who I mentioned earlier, so I saw him two weekends
on the trop He plays guitar as well. Apollion who
used to be in a Mortal. He's the front man
in Awa and Noir Uh. He plays bass in it uh.
And they'll have like guests and stuff. So some of
those guys will do, you know, vocals on different songs,

(01:59:50):
and the very few. This is not a wise touring act.
This is like they will do a festival here or
there and it's a big deal. And I'd watched them
doing a set from like Beyond the Gates in Norway
maybe last year, and they were bringing out people who
were there at the festival with other bands. They brought
up like Ghal to sing Bathory songs and they brought
out like Setar from Satira con to sing Bathory songs

(02:00:13):
and stuff. So it's like all of these you know,
like black metal icons coming together, swapping in and out
to do these, you know, again the most formative songs.
And if you are a black metal fan, it's a
massive deal, right, Like you can't overstate what a huge
sort of tribute concert type atmosphere these things have. The

(02:00:34):
thing that does you know, Sully this somewhat that was
it was a nasty realization when I remembered that it
was involved, is that Faust is on the drums. So
we've had this conversation before. I'm sure that many of
you know who I mean when I say that, if
you don't, the early days drama of Emperor who in
nineteen ninety two when he was about eighteen years old,

(02:00:56):
stabbed a gay man named Magnea andresen to death. Then
when he went to prison and was eventually released, and
he's just around right like he is present within the scene.
I think it's for some people who can almost kind
of forget he exists until suddenly there'll be a new
headline where he appears. But he's like consistently a presence right,
Like I've been at festivals where he's been playing with

(02:01:18):
some band or another and I've just walked past him
at the bar. Like we tend to talk about him
when he does a prominent gig, like making an appearance
with Emperor or something, and his name gets in the
headlines again for this discussion, but he's pretty much aways
just around playing music. You know, he's been in black
metal for a long long time. And this obviously comes
with the very painful conversation about, you know, what to

(02:01:41):
do with that, and it's one that you know, I
certainly I acknowledge. I'm looking at it from the privileged
position of not belonging to the identity who suffered most here.
But the conversation around should a guy who committed a
crime like that, even if he then served a prison
sentence and then professes to be a reform man whatever,

(02:02:01):
should he be celebrated as a musician after that point.
And that is the problem that kind of you know
arises here, because like I don't personally even really like
the prison system as we know it anyway, but if
it is for anything, I believe it should be for
reform and to allow people to better themselves. And that is,
you know, if you ask, you know as Esan has been.

(02:02:22):
For example, if you ask these people who now play
in bands with Faust again Esan, now is you know
the guys are enslaved or whatever. You know, these kind
of people who are really looked up to a lot
of the time. That's what they will tell you. Right,
they'll go, he served a sentence, and the fifty something
year old man is not the eighteen year old who
committed that murder. I've spoken about seeing other bands at

(02:02:42):
this festival and stuff who've had flare ups recently, and
I imagine there will be musicians I've spoken about whose
current views are likely more you know, Bigot is an
antagonistic than his right now. But the way that I
understand the issue, and the thing that that argument from
those guys kind of overlooks and kind of simplifies, is
it's not really about like Faust the person and how

(02:03:03):
dangerous or hateful he might be in twenty twenty five,
It's about the message it sends out by putting him
on a pedestal and celebrating a guy who once committed
a crime like that. The message that that sends to
particularly LGBTQ plus audiences and how you know, valued they
might feel within you know, metal spaces. If someone who

(02:03:24):
murdered someone like them can go and get the heroes
welcome and at the very least, even if he has
like privately worked on himself as an individual, as people
say he has done that, there should be some kind
of like public acknowledgment of you know, what he did,
and kind of effort through you know, whether it be
pledges or statements of support or whatever, like some kind

(02:03:46):
of effort to make shows like this more inclusive. And
this huge bathory show like that is music that means
a lot to a lot of people, Like it is
the very fabric of black metal having brought together all
these different players who are a part of this, but
that there are you know, likely LGBTQ plus people who

(02:04:07):
would love to see that show because they love that music,
but who feel that they can't really go and enjoy
it and that it's not for them because of who
is on the drums. That is really fucking sad. So
I don't want to come on here, you know, like
during Pride no less and just kind of like unquestionably
celebrate something that he is involved in. I don't think

(02:04:27):
Faust is going anywhere as a musician because the industry
has deemed that he has served his punishment and because
of that he should be allowed back onto the scene again.
He's been here for like twenty years or something.

Speaker 2 (02:04:37):
Now.

Speaker 1 (02:04:37):
On the other side of this thing, I just I
do really wish that it could be used to send
a more positive message when it comes to the queer
community within metal and how safe they might feel, or
even send the message about personal reform, prison reform, whatever,
if like more was kind of made of it. To
really really make the effort.

Speaker 2 (02:04:59):
It's tough because you don't in obviously representing the queer
community here, there is sort of people don't really owe
you their personal like if something's entirely personal to someone,
they don't really owe you that. But if you've committed

(02:05:20):
something as heinous as he has, it would be nice
to just attempt to be a part of the community
or at least be an ally. And I guess at
this point it would be a bit like, well, this
was decades ago. Why randomly in twenty twenty five would

(02:05:42):
I suddenly be really outspoken about this thing that happened
when I was eighteen? But as a you know, a
queer man. I have so many gay friends. I have
two gay brothers. Like, if I would really appreciate just
a little little bit of effort, just a little bit
of remorse, I just because if you're if he's still

(02:06:09):
going to be kicking around and he's still going to
be popping up these places where queer people are going
to be existing, it would be nice to just, I
don't know, have him on our side, like definitively on
our side.

Speaker 1 (02:06:26):
Yeah, because, like I said, again, I'm coming at this
from the position of like not being you know, a
member of the gay community or anything like that. But
it's the the balance and the struggle between wanting to
see someone reform right and and be better and wanting

(02:06:49):
to allow someone that opportunity to not be defined by
a fucking horrible thing they did when they were eighteen
years old. But also the flip side of that is
the not thinking about the message that it might send,
as we've said, and that's that's the important thing I

(02:07:10):
wanted to get across about this right again, I didn't
want to not acknowledge the fact that this huge fucking
event happened, but that that guy once again was present
as a part of it. The show itself was like massive,
big pyro production, fiery braziers, big Bathory schedules everywhere. We
had Grutel from Enslaved singing a Fine Day to Die

(02:07:31):
to begin with. We had again Eric from Wattein sort
of like chairs the revolving door of guests and then
sings of the stuff himself. And then as I was saying,
they come up with the more like date to date surprises,
we had the local boy from down the road Nogel
appeared running up. One thing about this is no one's
wearing like they're big over the top corpse paint get up.
They wearing their own bands. They're also wearing like leather

(02:07:52):
jackets and kind of just like running out. But Nurgle
runs out like again hypes the crowd up in Polish
because again Behemoth I think from goa dance like their
local band there and he did Raise the Dead from
the first Bathory album. And then at the other surprise
was Attila Chiha from Mayhem, which I don't even know
what he was doing there, coming out doing Born for Burning,
the man with the weirdest fucking hairline, and he gets

(02:08:14):
handed the microphone and does the most immediately disgusting gurgle
and does the most twisted, fucking version of that song
I could ever imagine, and you know, the bathory music
on stage with that kind of production and everything for
anyone who feels like black metal is like a part
of their DNA, which I feel like black metal, of
all heavy music genres, is the most like if you

(02:08:37):
like black metal, it is part of you, you know,
like it is you are in some sense black metal.
It's kind of like a pipe dream seeing something like that,
provided of course you aren't a gay fan who gets
left out in the cold by all the stuff we
just mentioned, So I won't spend any more time on
it than that, but again, I just wanted to kind
of acknowledge that that was, you know, around and at
a presence. After that was the main Sage headliner for

(02:08:58):
the last day, which was Sepultair, which was kind of
a bonus surprise for me, basically because I felt like
I had already seen my last SEPULTURER show. You know,
It's like I'd gone to the tour in the UK
at the end of last year, which was fucking amazing,
like the best time I'd ever seen, you know, Sepulchurer
SEPULTURER because it felt like a big deal and like,

(02:09:20):
how many times have I said Sepulchers should headline Bloodstock
or whatever. It's a travesty that that band are not
in the kind of position to be even subheadliner at Bloodstock,
Like they never fucking did that. So seeing them headliner
festival was like, yeah, this is this is finally what
this should have always been, you know, really like drastic

(02:09:41):
difference in stage show from anything else, because even in
Flames had like big lights and stuff, and obviously the King,
you know, the King is the King Sepultura. It's four
guys and like a bit of a screen behind them,
but it's just like it looks really empty on stage
because they've not even got a second guitarist, right, it's
just Andreas doing all that shit. But they just rock
it because they're Sepultura. And so, like I said, I

(02:10:04):
already had the whole like last Sepultura show kind of experience.
I figure with this one again, I was going to
run away during the second half of it, so I
didn't see the whole closing run of like Arise and Roots,
Bloody Roots and Rata Mahatta and they moved so the
tour last year they opened with Refused Resistance to Territory.
They'd move those back into like the ending run here,

(02:10:25):
so all like the huge SEPULTURER hits I didn't actually
see this time, which I said, I would have loved
to have see that stuff headlining a festival. Finally, I
just figured I've got something else I really want to see.
I've had my last Sepultier show I did see at
the start. When I saw the show last year, I
was like, there are two songs that weren't in that
set list that I really wish were had been as

(02:10:46):
part of it, and here they were right at the beginning, right.
They opened with Beneath the Remains like the intro tape
is like the acoustic you know intro of that record,
and then kind of Dilly do, who has won? Who
has died? And then they went from there straight into

(02:11:07):
inner Self as it is on the record, right the
one two of opening the booth remains, and then third
song of the set was the other song that I
wanted last time, and they've added back here Desperate Cry
from a Rise. So I was like, even though I'm
not going to see the ending run. I've seen this
shit and now I'm getting this just little extra you know,
more sorts of like and now they've done Beneath the

(02:11:29):
Remains for the last time and Desperate Cry for the
last time, and then obviously you know, doing a lot
of the Derek stuff as well, like I saw them
do like Phantom Self and and that kind of shit
and just really great. I just seem to be propaganda
from one of all the oldies. Well and it's like, yeah,
what amazing tune. I think. The last Sepulturis song I
saw was Escape to the Void from Schizophrenia, which rips
and then and then I started walking away as they

(02:11:49):
were doing the kiawas jam thing. So Sepultura fantastic the
reason I left. And the last thing I saw at
Mystic Festival was I Am Morbid which I have never
seen Morbid Angel because the main band, Morbid Angel is
too dysfunctional to tour properly and does not come to

(02:12:10):
the UK. It doesn't come anywhere at the moment these days.
But I have never seen Morbid Angel. But for those reasons,
I don't know if I ever will see Morbid Angel.
And of those like classic tier death metal bands. They
are like my one that I have never seen, you know,
of the ones are obviously currently still active, but they're
the one that I'm like, I don't know if I
will see Morbid Angel, so the closest I will get

(02:12:33):
is seeing David Vincent's band doing Morbid Angel stuff. Right,
And this was weird. This was labeled as a Domination
set for the thirtieth anniversary of that record. Didn't actually
do the album in full. I guess it just like
had slightly more Domination songs in the set than usual, right,
But yeah, Domination I would have always told you is

(02:12:56):
my favorite Morbid Angel record. I think it's It's I
almost can't choose between and not was of Madness, but
like I'm either way, those records would be some of
my favorite death metal some netle ever records really, And
I Am Morbid is a lot more accessible than Morbid Angel.
He has his stuff together a bit more, he Taurus
a bit more. But I hadn't yet seen it, and

(02:13:17):
I was like, I am Morbid closing the fucking thing
doing maybe again Domination stuff. I'm in. This is like
death metal Valhalla. This was the set, So, like I said,
they didn't do Dimasion in full, but they did do
you know, a few songs off it and then other
Morbid Angel songs, right, and this is where I go.

(02:13:38):
This was next to Hate Breed as the Ah My
God set list of the festival because a set of
only the first four Morbid Angel our but unfortunately did
not do Radical ah or to It or two Extreme,
but a set of only the first four Morbid Angel

(02:13:59):
album songs. He's perfect, right, and David Vincent, God fucking
blessed that man. He is such a ridiculous character. If
you've never heard our I think it was a Halloween
album Roulette discussion on Elie de vinim in Sadness from
a year or two ago. One of the funniest discussions

(02:14:23):
that we've ever had, and a lot of it comes
from the mind of David Vincent. And he speaks like
a cowboy, right. He's like, hey, everybody, we're more burd
I'm really happy to be here with the Mystic first
of all, and here we all we're gonna play some
song for a record ord Domination and you can sing
a lot with us. And he's like this proper gene,
like that's the guy. He does the country songs, right,
but he's this genial cowboy frontly right, and that's the vibe.

(02:14:51):
I'm just gonna read you this set list because as
a will Be Angel fan, you will appreciate this. So
they opened with again so Domination theme set. They opened
with Dominate, Domed, Dominate, straight into as it is on
the record where the Slime Live.

Speaker 2 (02:15:05):
Mean, dude, whoo.

Speaker 1 (02:15:10):
When that riff transitioned from dominat was just like it
was such a good decision to come and see this set.
Then they played Dawn of the Angry from Domination, which
is maybe a contender for the best morb An Angel
song in my opinion. But then we deviated away from
Domination and I'm looking to read the rest of this
set list for you. World of Shit, the Promised Land
from Covenant, Fall from Grace, from Blessed Are the Sick,

(02:15:34):
Blessed Are the Sick, And then we had a run
of Bottles of Madness stuff. So we had a Mortal
Rights maze of torment visions from the dark Side, and
then we had a little bit more Domination. We had
eyes to See, ears to hear. Then we go back
to Covenant, We have Rapture, We have Pain Divine and
then he ends on Chapel of Ghoules. Oh my god,

(02:15:57):
where is the break for anything? In that set list?
The only thing that was missing was God of Emptiness,
And I was surprised didn't do that because one thing
that he loves to do is sing all over the
Morbon Angel songs and the rifts that are like vaguely singable.
So the big example in Immortal Rights, the wit that

(02:16:17):
whole part, he's like, come on, everybody, whoa, whoa, whoa,
it's mad to be like in an in like again
in a little fucking aircraft hanger looking thing, seeing Morebon
Angel songs, but with the crowd of people go like whoa,
Like it's an Iron Maiden show. But I thought, considering
the amount of rifts he would love to sing, I
was like the Morbon Angel song from the era where

(02:16:39):
you actually can sing a little bit. I'm surprised that
you haven't done God of Emptiness. But ending on Chapel
of Ghouls.

Speaker 2 (02:16:46):
Dougg the Judge that sounds amazing. I feel I must
have known this project existed, but until right now, I
don't think I'd processed.

Speaker 1 (02:16:55):
That it just happened. It. Yeah, I'd wanted to say
it for a but I wasn't prepared for actually, how
just fucking like overwhelming seeing a setlist of those songs
in that order, Like arguably, you know, many people would
say the greatest death metal catalog of all time, and
seeing like you know, I love you know, I love
a lot, I was gonna say all the Morbid Angel
I do quite like some mood. I would say, I

(02:17:17):
love a great deal of Morbid Angel. I love the
Steve Tucker stuff. I love that, you know, mid nineties
run of Morbid Angel records, but the most classic period,
the first four David Vincent front of Morbid Angel records.
Just that with those songs that I've just mentioned was
oh again for me for the first time, not knowing
if I ever actually will see like proper whatever Morbid Angel,

(02:17:40):
David Vincent being a flamboyant queening around cowboy going oh
singing o them was like the best way I could
have ended the festival.

Speaker 2 (02:17:52):
Ah. I mean, the next time I see that I'm
morbid anywhere, I need to see it. I just I
need to see Chapeli Ghules.

Speaker 1 (02:18:01):
What do you mean? Yeah? When he did cut Chapel
the Guls at the end, he was like, we haven't
done this song for quite a long time, so I
don't know if they don't normally play Chapel of Guls,
but I was stoked. I was like, yeah, because attack
the church Man. You gotta do it perfect, a perfect
song to sing in your sleep. So that was, like
I said, the last thing I saw at Mystic, and

(02:18:22):
it was a pretty incredible run of stuff as I'm
sure you can gather there, like I was saying earlier,
the festival itself I totally recommend, like if you can
sort out you know, flying an accommodation and all the
stuff you've got to do when you go into going
to abroad. But the fest for itself not that expensive.
The food is nice for not very much money, and
the sites around the city if you're interested in history

(02:18:45):
and culture and stuff, there's a lot to take in.
And you get to see bills like this where you
can see bullet for my Valentine in one minute and
fucking beherit doing the most like head crushing set the next.
I loved it so much, And again not going to
download or whatever, but this will totally say my like

(02:19:07):
that was a fantastic festival. Weekend type experience for a
little while, even though obviously we do have a lot
more going up because gosh, June and July, as we said,
there's a lot going on, but yeah missed it Festival,
Fantastic Place, Fortress Festival as well, where it was the
weekend before. We spoke about that earlier, also Fantastic Place.

(02:19:27):
Thank you everybody who you know decided to stick around
to listen to that little spiel of all the fantastic
stuff that happens. We will be back now, you know.
TNM will obviously be a weekly affair again. I think
we're going to do the review show next week and
obviously Turnstile fronted. But of course there's a lot going on,
particularly in hardcore. But we have other records to be
talking about as well. We are going to come to those.

(02:19:49):
We will have album club packs, we will have when
we actually get the fucking moment, you know, we will
get more specials underweight as well. But right now, that
is your edition of you know, a bumper Festival, a
fied hyperblasts. Thank you everybody for listening. We will see
you next time. Bye bye,

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