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.

FleshtivalsAuthor : Stewart Lucas4 November 2024BEC ArenaDecapitated, Cult Of Fire, LLNN, The Ocean, Mizmor, A Swarm Of The Sun, Employed To Serve, Morne, A Burial At Sea, Discharge, Fen, Sugar Horse, Underdark, NornaComment

Live Review : Damnation Festival @ Leeds University Students Union on November 3rd 2018

Damnation is like a choose your own adventure experience for Metalheads. Four stages spread across the bewildering labyrinth that is Leeds University Students Union (the Citadel of Chaos ain’t got nothing on here) provides access to some of the finest morsels of black, doom, death and post metal available. With twenty-seven acts spread over twelve hours simply remember which band you wanted to see next (never mind which stage they are on) is a chore all in itself, hence the reason you see plenty of confused looking people wandering around with spreadsheets and maps wondering why the keep ending up back at the pasty shop.