Live Review : Damnation Festival on November 2th 2024 (Part II)

Fuming mouth are a dark twisted entity slamming together sludge and doom and then shoving it into a blender with a big handful of unrepentant crust punk. They crackle with raw energy and hum with disenfranchised righteous anger.  Their riffs brim with bile and belligerence and it has an unconformity to it that feels refreshing and different. It's like they know the rules of metal but have decided that they don't quite apply to them. Instead, they are using it well-worn clichés to tread a different path and that sense of individualistic endeavour shines through.

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Live Review : Damnation Festival on November 2th 2024 (Part I)

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.

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Live Review : Damnation Festival 'A Night Of Salvation' on November 1st 2024

There is something ornamental and ritualistic about an album playing in full. Usually sets are a Russian roulette of endless probabilities. For a band with a healthy back catalogue there is an existential dread that the next song is either going to be one that you don't like or even worse the dreaded "one from the new album”. A playback of a legendary album takes away all of that uncertainty and instead becomes a musical installation, an art form frozen in time. You are plunged into a warm bath of familiarity where you know exactly what's coming next. This comfort blanket approach is especially true of albums that are very much of their time or define a specific moment, era or movement. Hearing those songs again in exact order that you would have listened to them on vinyl/CD/minidisk/personal stereo (delete as applicable) offers a gateway into the past allowing the listener to reconnect with their younger selves.

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Live Review : Voodoofest on October 19th 2024

Tonight is something of a bittersweet experience. Yes, it’s a carefully curated evening of local and international bands to delight and entertain us, but it’s also the last-ever show from headliners King Voodoo. After several years of touring, including with some pretty big names, the Lads From The Vood are going their separate ways. It won’t be the last we see of the individual members but for now, it’s a farewell party. King Voodoo being the band that they are means that farewell or not it will be a hell of a party!

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Live Review : No Play Festival on September 7th 2024

No Play Festival 2024 comes at a perfect time—hovering right on the cusp of summer’s end and autumn’s first cool breeze. Held across three venues in Liverpool centre, it provides a fittingly chaotic yet immersive experience, with acts ranging from brutal hardcore to dreamy post-hardcore, all set against the backdrop of dimly lit rooms filled with the buzz of underground music culture.

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Live Review : Bloodstock Festival 2024 - New Blood & EMP Stages

Bloodstock Festival, more than any other, promotes and showcases best new and rising talent. 2024 was no different and ROCKFLESH managed to watch a number of impressive bands across both the New Blood and EMP Stages. Here's a short summary of some of the bands that stood out to us, and for many of these acts you can find interviews (HERE) and live photos (HERE) on our site as well.

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Live Review : Bloodstock Festival on August 11th 2024

And just like that it is Sunday and the big yellow ball of heat in the sky is doing its best job to burn us all to buggery. It's 2022 all over again, including those joyful yelps from the crowd when any cloud cover is forthcoming. Needless to say everything is all a little more laid back today as a collective lethargy emerges from the heat. 

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Live Review : Bloodstock Festival on August 10th 2024

It's raining. Not much rain, but it's still raining. Cauldron kick things off in the Sophie stage. Those who hope the name conjures up sword and sorcery inspired power metal will be bitterly disappointed. This is classic early-era metal core with an emphasis firmly on the core. Hailing from Birmingham they have gone for the nostalgia vote hard.

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Live Review : Bloodstock Festival on August 9th 2024

Friday beckons fourth with almost perfect Festival weather. Warm, but also enough breeze and cloud cover to stop the place becoming a perpetual oven. Friday may well be packed with many musical gems, but really it is all about one band, who aren’t even playing, Motörhead. Today is the day that Lemmy becomes a permanent part of Bloodstock lore, with a proportion of his ashes placed on site in a specially commissioned bust. The ceremony to invest the final resting place for some of his remains is an emotional affair.

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Live Review : Bloodstock Festival on August 8th 2024

In years to come, 2024 will be known as the year Bloodstock came of age. It's previously spacious set up for the first time ever feels consistently busy. The step up to a stable and constant 20,000 capacity feels very obvious in the sheer amount of people around the place at any given point, but it is still dealt with with Bloodstock’s usual level of finesse and honesty. This was the year that Bloodstock no longer felt like a small concern.

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Bloodstock Festival 2024 : New Blood & EMP Stages Preview

Bloodstock Festival 2024 is set to showcase an impressive array of rising talent on both the New Blood and EMP Stages. From the ethereal sounds of post-metal to the raw aggression of hardcore and thrash, this year’s lineup promises a diverse and electrifying experience. Here's a look at some of the bands that have stood out to us here at ROCKFLESH and we think you should checkout.

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Bloodstock Festival Countdown : 30 Bands Not To Miss

A modern criticism of Bloodstock is where is the power metal? Well in the shape of Unleash the Archers and Beast in Black it is well and truly in the house. Choruses you could house the royal airforce on? Check. Keyboard flourishes that would make Liberarchie question the level of decadence? Check. Obsessions with fantasy and a tendency to hit the dressing up box hard? Check.

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Live Review : RADAR on July 28th 2024

RADAR Festival 2024 at the O2 Victoria Warehouse is a vibrant and diverse showcase of progressive and alternative metal/rock acts, featuring both established names and rising stars in the genre. The festival not only covers progressive/technical metal and rock though, it also pushes those boundaries and often breaks them with genre-spanning and unexpected acts that positively challenge the way we look at music and performance.

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