Meanwhile back at the eyesore stage So hideous present us with their awesome take on Post-Black Metal/Shoegaze. It’s massively atmospheric, a luscious full sound, and truly epic. The floods of dry-ice off the stage mash with the abundance of pastel lights and strobes to allow us to completely immerse ourselves in their wonderful world. The New Yorkers play their album ‘None But a Pure Heart Can Sing’ through in full for us Playing new album straight through. There is something of everything instrumentally here, with piano/orchestral/jazz meandering building to intense soundscapes layered with blackened hardcore vocals sporadically screaming and shouting over the top. The drumming in particular is mesmerizingly intricate and never lets-up. It feels chaotic, alive and exciting from start to finish.

Full of Hell, sound like two trash cans being thrown down a long flight of stairs. And that is meant as a compliment as this is a fantastic example of the potent power of nihilistic anarchistic noise. There is no subtlety here and no room for some anything as vulgar as melody. Instead, this is grindcore at its antisocial best. Full of Hell are not here to do anything as conventional as make friends or expand their fan base. If you like your music (and we really are pushing the term as far as we can) nasty, disruptive and aggressive then this is the place for you, if not then there is always a food queue you can join. The brevity of the tracks makes The Ramones look like Pink Floyd. Every song is short, loud, and repugnant but just also utterly cathartic. This afternoon they demonstrate the utter beauty of extreme music You just lose yourself in the swell of unrepentant noise. Primal and raw it still manages to be bloody brilliant.

What makes Damnation so unique is that you veer from the crunching pessimism of Full of Hell to the euphoric beauty of We Lost the Sea. The latter emerge as conquering heroes after having owned the previous evening's ‘Night of Salvation’. There are certainly many in today's crowd that are here simply because they were so bewitched the night before. We get a completely different set and they take the opportunity to showcase their less contemplative and heavier side. Yes, it still is full of delicate beauty but there is much more the heft on offer today and they certainly showcase the diversity that they offer as a band. 

What they elegantly manage to do is to create sheer escapism. When done right post-rock has the ability to remove you completely from the present and transport you to another world. We Lost the Sea conjure up portals to ethereal worlds and all we can do is close your eyes and let yourself be enveloped by the wonderment. It may seem impossible yesterday because of the faultless nature of their rendition of “Departure Songs” but this afternoon they are even better and even more emotive. It is like everything else doesn't exist and our reality is nothing more than a projection of the perfection of the music that they are creating. Astounding.

Back on the second stage, Incantation are a completely different proposition. John McEntee leads his death metal team triumphantly as they power through their variety of textures and tempos. It’s that varied approach, and notably the death-doom sludgy slow tempo passages, that give them their uniqueness and have set them apart over the three decades John has led them. There’s no doubting the influence and importance of this band to an array of death metal bands, and the punters at the festival lap up every change of pace with glee and frenzy.

It's hard to put into words just how special Pig Destroyer’s set actually is. In hindsight, this is probably the time to go and get something to eat as every bugger seems to have congregated in the main room to witness “Prowler in the Yard” played in full. There is something quite astonishing about watching music this granular and primordial played in an arena setting. Freed from the confines of dingy basement clubs it takes on a whole different aesthetic. The energy that pulsates from the stage is utterly majestic. All twenty-two tracks are dispensed with in less than forty minutes and it is like being subjected to a tsunami of coarse oppressive noise. 

The place unsurprisingly goes ballistic, and you end up watching the swells of the convulsing crowd as much as you do the stage itself. This is the pure definition of unfiltered euphoria. For forty short minutes, Pig Destroyer capture everything that is wonderful about difficult and extreme music. As I said above the atmosphere and reaction make this feel like the evening's finale, as opposed to its midway point. Unashamedly uncommercial and inaccessible but also simultaneously utterly perfect.

The positive point of Pig Destroyer’s set being so concise is that it allows plenty of time to make it over to the Holy Goat stage for the return of transcendental black metal royalty Wolves in the Throne Room. In the opinion of this humble scribe, they have single-handedly reinvented a genre that can be, let's be honest, a little self-obsessed and convoluted. By removing all the silliness about Satan, they have managed to cultivate an intense and emotive sound that is simultaneously euphoric and insular. Wolves in the Throne Room don't do short, so over forty minutes we get just four tracks (as opposed to Pig Destroyer’s impressive twenty-two).

The plumes of smoke and atmospheric red lighting make this feel more ornate art installation than a gig and for large swathes of the set the band are pretty much invisible to the naked eye. This makes the heavenly noise that they create even more poignant and persuasive. It comes across in great crashing waves, engulfing the audience in the grinding churn of repetitive riffs. There is something incredibly uplifting and transcendental about what Wolves in the Throne Room are doing. The flagrant pessimism of black metal is no longer there, instead it has been replaced by a message of hope and redemption. There is still a level of impenetrability but in the middle of all that swirling sound, there are indeed fragments of light.

Meanwhile Green Lung’s milkshake seems to have brought everyone to the yard. The Eyesore Stage is packed side-to-side and front to the very back of the room from start to finish. The Londoners are the perfect balance of 70’s British metal and stoner rock. If it’s possible to sound like a vintage metal band creating the soundtrack for a folk-horror film, then that’s what they’ve captured. Large banners with raised goats adorn either side of the stage, and afford the crowd an insight into the Satanic and Pagan-inspired aspects of the band’s aesthetic. Tom Templar's vocals are a soaring but equally evil sounding Ozzy-esque offering, and playfully dance over the top of some dirty, distorted riffs and head-bobbing rattling drums. The crowd is enthralled throughout and there is quite clearly as equally big an already established following as buzz around this band.

My Dying Bride are the very definition of cult concern. Their audience accounts for less than half the people who not an hour ago witnessed the might of Pig Destroyer. Yet the reception that each track get is even more fevered and shrilled. This is not a curious crowd checking them out on the off chance that they may quite like them. Basically, if you're not a My Dying Bride devotee then you're not here. This is a froth of long-term evangelists, enjoying having the masters of the morose back on British soil. Whilst they may well be considered living legends over on the continent, in this country they have never got the due that they deserved. Every band that has flirted with a combination of Goth and metal owe them a debt, yet this is only their sixth British show since they last played Damnation a decade ago. 

But let's put the laments to one side and just revel in the utter gorgeousness of their slow methodical take on our genre. The sound might not be great but frankly, we do not care. We are watching My Dying Bride and they are doing an old skool set. In fact, opener ‘To Shiver in Empty Halls’ is the only track to hail from this century. Everything else is of a particular vintage and the cries of joy when they crash into ‘Your River’ will have been heard in Damnation's old home of Leeds. This is a band that knows what their fans want and have no problems in giving it to them. A self-indulgent wander down memory lane, this was a fan-friendly set to be savoured and as the last notes of ‘Turn Loose the Swans’ unfurl into the night you can tell there are some very very happy Goths in the building.

There is always a conversation to be had at ROCKFLESH towers about what is or isn't metal and why a certain band should be on our radar and why another should be avoided and ignored. To the uninitiated, they may struggle to see where 40 Watt Sun fits into our world. It's delicate, soft, lilted acoustica after all. Well, the answer is twofold. Firstly, Patrick Walker is the man that wrote the masterpiece that is “Watching from a Distance”, so after that, he can do what the fuck he wants. Secondly, there is metal here, but you have to listen very carefully. It's subtle and in many places is very carefully hidden but it is indeed there. 40 Watt Sun specialises in stark, heart-wrenching ballads. Highly emotive, this is music stripped down to its core. Their songs slowly unfold, revealing their beauty gradually piece by piece. This is not an ornate or pretty sort of beauty. It is weather-beaten and brittle but still capable of making you cry. For fifty minutes Patrick and co keep a respectively full room in utter rapture. Grainy and earthy, these are tales of life laid bare. Utterly enthralling.

Whilst 40 Watt Sun are bringing the quiet, in the next room Misery Index are doing anything but. They unleash a heady mix of death metal, hardcore and grindcore on the Holy Goat Stage punters, and they in turn lap it up eagerly. Their recent release “Complete Control” and pre-pandemic album ‘Rituals of Power’ brought the band back into focus for many, and their reputation as a phenomenal live and touring band is only further cemented with this thrashy high-adrenaline death metal set. Special mention has to go to Adam Jarvis, who manages to somehow finish this set alive having already blasted through the Pig Destroyer set on drums too. The things people do for their art.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos and and the We Lost The Sea interview here!

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