Last year's Damnation Festival was pretty much perfect and I'm sure that would be the opinion of almost everyone. The single dissenting voice you would find are probably the organisers as the uncomfortable fact is whilst it was a faultless affair for those attending, it just about scraped itself to breakeven and another year of negative growth would potentially spell the end of this miraculous experiment in putting extreme metal in an arena. Needless to say the thousand plus tickets that flew out the door on the Monday after last year's event showed that there definitely was a market for witnessing insular bands in a widescreen environment.

The 2024 edition is packed, not quite sold out but still healthily in the black bank account wise. Aside from sore knees and probably sore heads there is very little if anything to complain about. The infrastructure, honed to perfection last year, copes admirably with 2000 more people straining upon it. Each performance is a singular life changing experience, it just depends on whose life you are talking about. The day turns into a revolving door of standout shows and life affirming recitals. No sooner have you exited one incendiary experience then you are faced with another band happy to roll up their sleeves, state hold my pint and play merry hell with your senses. Even the decision to let Cradle Of Filth headline, which if we are honest had many of us scratching our heads, turned out to not just be right but to be utterly utterly perfect. Basically Damnation 2024 is a wondrous display of left of centre altruism and the sheer clout of independence. So let our retrospective begin.

Mancunian post-rock perennials Pijn are given the honour of starting up the smallest stage. We say small but they are still able to pack in a good 2000 people to see them casually rewrite the post-rock rulebook. They filter in an urgency and level of aggression that post-rock usually forgoes. Their song structures are built around northern grittiness. There is beauty to be found but it is a scuffed and lived in variant with the optimism distinctly dial down. The use of cello sets both the tone and the precedent for the varied multi-instrumentation we will encounter during the day. It also gives their music a distinctly dark and foreboding texture. File very much under “and why haven’t they played before?”

During the day there are points where the two simultaneous stages feel musically very aligned and for the discerning punter the easiest way of choosing their destination is to a toss a coin. However this is one instant when the two inhabitants are light years apart in both style and performance etiquette. Pijn choose to be shrouded in smoke with dim lighting providing haunting silhouettes. Enforced have gone for the supernova school of lighting and you can see every cavorting muscle and pearls of perspiration as they bunny hop around the stage. This is thrash as grandma played. Urgent, boisterous and as meaty as a 800g tomahawk steak (vegetarian and vegan options are available). This is 30 minutes of crash, bang and wallop as they happily dispense hurtling riff after riff. For those seeking pure unadulterated metal they provide the perfect beginning to the day.

A.A. Williams, worried about fitting all her songs in, elects to start her slot early. With both side stages still in full pelt this means she is initially playing to a small but dedicated following made up exclusively of those who arrived early to claim their spots. As contrived as it sounds A.A. Williams is metal adjacent. Her music shares the same emotionally wrought DNA as metal but it is delivered in a much more reserved, refined and vulnerable packaging. Since the easing of pandemic protocols, she has been constantly on the road honing her stagecraft and cultivating her very particular brand of pent-up passion. She is as ever wonderful and her sound creeps over the audience in a furore of deadly hush. Her presence is deliberately dialled back creating a minimalism that is both striking and cathartic. She has been much fêted over on the festivals forums and it feels distinctly fitting that she finally gets a berth. By the time she finishes the room is both packed and reverentially appreciative.

As a regular attendee she is forthrightly honest that being given the chance to play Damnation is a bucket list moment for her. This is her sole UK show of the year and she uses the opportunity to showcase a new track in a moment of both pride and also perilous determination. If the truth be told the apple hasn't fallen that far from the tree and it continues in the vein of her dark, waiflike confessionals. Putting her on at this early juncture is a genius move as it eases the audience into the day but simultaneously puts down a marker that your dance card will be as full of intelligent dollops of thinking person's mental as it will be of nihilistic noise.

High Parasite managed to occupy that little known musical ledge entitled pop goth. It's as though somebody has slammed together Sisters of Mercy with “Draconian Times" era Paradise Lost and then for good measure sprinkled on a bit of Kylie. There is a spirited kick to their songs combined with jaunty choruses and an almost infectious level of catchiness. After years in My Dying Bride of looking like he was about to burst into tears about spilt milk, Aaron Stainthorpe has suddenly burst out of a chrysalis and displays the mannerisms of a man having an absolute ball. Delightful commercial fodder for those who like to dabble in a bit of eyeliner.

Gillian Carter come into this is a bit of an unknown quantity. It is probably an honest conclusion that they were on nobody’s wish list, in fact is unlikely that anybody had heard of them before Gavin made the booking. What we get is an interesting live proposition. There is definitely something here, something probably quite special but is quite difficult to pinpoint what it actually is. There are swirls of frothy lightness and then they head into a cascade of obscure and obscene white noise. It's spirited and it's quaintly intriguing but it lacks any real substance or connectivity. The collective points are all their (fantastic drummer – check, hyperactive front man – check, throbbing bass – bass) but it fails to converge into a solid whole. An acquired taste within a whole festival of acquired tastes.

For the last decade the most interesting metal has been coming exclusively from our neighbours across the Channel in France. Celeste are case in point. Emerging in Lyon 20 years ago from the cities hardcore punk scene they create a stunning variation of black metal whilst refusing to adhere to any of its conformities. Live they are a maelstrom of claustrophobic intensity. Any fears that their level of concentrated oppression would be lost on a big scale are immediately put to rest. They are extraordinary in the way that the four musicians interact, intersecting with each other to construct impervious walls of sound. 

Their visual gimmick is simple but highly effective. On each member's forehead they wear a band adorned with piercing red light. As the mist descends around them those evocative beams cut through the smoke creating an utterly effective and entrancing lattice. The videos playing behind them also add to the enclosed unsettling nature of the show. Before they descend into ‘Le Cœur Noir Charbon’ a trigger warning appears on the screen but that in no way prepares us for the traumatic nature of the images that accompany their transcendingly corrosive music. An utterly immersive affair, walking away from them feels distinctly like coming up for air after being trapped underwater.

Damnation makes a virtue out of having difficult but ultimately highly enriching acts. Both of the bands simultaneously appearing on the Holy Goat brewing and the Eyesore Merch stage fit that billing but from very different perspectives. REZN hails from Chicago and bring free-form jazz to the party by way of a very psychedelic take on doom. This is music that swirls, constantly changing shape. A kaleidoscopic nonconformist array of different textures that wrap around each other. One of the main reasons for their ever-shifting sensory bombardment is the use of unorthodox instruments by Spencer Ouellete and his cohorts. He whips out the sax early on in the set and then proceeds to do all sorts of unspeakable things with a number of decaying modular synthesisers. And that's all before we have mentioned the Sitar's brought on by Patrick Dunn and Rob McWilliams. It all feels distinctly at odds with everything else going on in the other rooms, but it works proving to be both entrancing and highly enjoyable.

Enjoyable is probably not the adjective to use for Hexis. They are brilliant and they are astonishing but the emotion that they unleash from the listener is not one of enjoyment. The smoke machines have been heavily abused meaning that you see just slivers of the musicians on stage. The music is insular, extreme and highly claustrophobic. Watching them is akin to being in a circular room with the walls, concaving in around you. The guitars are tight and taut meaning that the music has very little room to breathe. Everything comes out in undulating waves slamming against the listener and putting even the most fearless soul on edge. It's a wondrous experience but probably not one to play to your Gran.

Gatecreeper are the first of today's big pulls and the vast acreage of the Pin and Knuckles stage is filled to the brim. There are people all the way back to the bars and the makeshift cloakroom. Suddenly it becomes blindingly obvious why it wasn't possible to put tables and chairs at the back of the room this time around. Whilst death metal has spent its 40 years of existence haunting decaying clubs and damp basements, actually really comes into its own when it allowed to prowl around a large room. Gatecreeper are exquisite, heavy and pendulous but also irreverent and playful. Death metal was never designed to take itself too seriously, and there is a wonderful level of idiosyncrasy to their performance. 

The pit, which this point had been a little bit to sedate, now burst into a wonderful life and the security suddenly have their work cut out as the limbs flail and the bodies fly. It is a beautiful sight to behold as the mayhem unfurls in the pit. Hundreds of bodies slamming against each other and just revelling in the pure unadulterated primacy of old school minimalistic death metal. Gatecreeper career through a set as an almighty pace. They rightly concentrate on the newly released "Dark Superstition" but manage to slip in enough older stuff to keep the undulating hordes upfront happy. Chase Mason uses the space that the vast stage importing well, marching to and from like some deranged general parading his unconventional troops. People keep meddling with death metal but over 40 minutes Gatecreeper prove that it is at its best and its most essential when it is kept simple and malignantly brutal.

As stated there are points in the day where the two adjacent stages provide massive contrast operating as day and night in terms of juxtaposing styles. But there are other times, as of now, where it is really just a case of variance on heaviness. Black Tusk are heavy. Massively, unrelentingly and unapologetically heavy. The riffs weigh tones, and they rain down on the audience like lumps of stone being launched from a trebuchet. Within metal there is many different types of heaviness and that employed by black Tusk is a world away from the heaviness of death metal. This is a slow and penetrative heaviness that rumbles in the very bowels of your being. It is organic and feels like it's being summoned up from the soil beneath us. Teeth rattling brilliant.

200 Stab Wounds are death metal distilled. They take everything that is wonderful about the genre and then they filter it into 40 minutes and 11 tracks of just utter magic. They understand that death metal is at its most wonderful when it is at its most simple. They strip away all the trappings of the last four decades and bring it back to the brutal simplicity that arose in the mid-80s in Florida. Death metal can be a life affirming force were good and that happens when the power of the hurtling riffs are allowed to breath. There is so much space in 200 stab wound songs. They are immaculately constructed packed with all righteous anger but also a deep-seated love of life. Understandably the room goes beyond heaving and into unheard-of levels of full. It is an outstanding communal moment as as one the assembled hordes realise just how good this band actually is. An astonishing performance that just sets the bar for everything else this evening.

It seems that most of the 6000+ people present have collectively decided that 4.30 in the afternoon is the perfect point for lunch/dinner. This means the crowds that gather for Australian prog metal band Ne Obliviscaris is drastically reduced. Those who are off noshing on Thai goodies or patiently waiting in line to purchase Dragged Into Sunlight Merch miss an absolute peach of a performance and you can tell there are plenty of "well I'm glad I stayed” looks from those who plumped for an earlier lunch or later dinner. At the heart of their sound and of this afternoon's performance is the jaunty violin of clean vocalist Tim Charles. Rather than the usual mournful sound he uses instrumental like a folk fiddle creating a joyful, brisk and sprightly noise that drives the band along.

We get the whole of their 2014 masterpiece "Citadel" and as they have been playing it in full every night for nearly a month on their European tour it has reached the point where it flows with perfection. Nihilism is great but they provide a perfect anecdote to some of the more primal miserabilism that is on offer. This is prog metal at its most expensive and also its most euphoric. It is full of grandeur and opulence and the music just builds in its majestic wonderfulness. Yet another standout amongst the standouts.

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!

Ne Obliviscaris + 200 Stab Wounds + Black Tusk + Gatecreeper + Hexis + REZN + Celeste + Gillian Carter + High Parasite + A.A. Williams + Enforced + Pijn