By Rich Hobson
Quick – what’s the best thing about winter festivals? If you said “they’re indoors and there’s no fucking mud” you’d be about 80 per cent correct, but also a little wrong when considering the kinds of sludgy filth premier metal fest Damnation Festival has managed to swing over the past few years (just check out Inter Arma from this year’s line-up if you don’t believe us). The latest announcement for the Leeds based festival trades in the mud and filth of the summer for more arctic fury and bleak foreboding with the addition of a further four bands to the line-up.
French blackgaze maestros Alcest join the bill fresh from their appearance at Download festival, moving from an all-too small tent to a stage more befitting a band of their grand sound. New York’s A Pale Horse Named Death – who have just released a video for ‘Fell In My Hole’, from current album ‘When The World becomes Undone’ – bring a tinge of doom to proceedings, making their UK festival debut at the perfect time of year to lay fans souls to waste.
On the out-and-out heavier scale of things, furious northerners Raging Speedhorn will be bringing their destructive beatdown to show why they are the UK’s granddaddies of howling genre-fluid action. And finally, its all about the darkness for Norwegian black metal project Mork – a curio as the project is wholly masterminded by musician Thomas Eriksen.
Returning to Leeds University on Saturday 2 November, Damnation has long been the one-stop shop for the UK’s extreme metal needs, putting on an event which combines the sweaty intensity of club gigs with the enormous communal feel of your everyday festival. You really can’t say fairer than that, nor in seeing the likes of Opeth, Venom Prison and Mayhem lay waste to audiences.
With another four bands still to be announced, tickets are on sale now – get in soon before they sell out!