(With this feature we welcome a new Seattle-based NCS contributor who goes by the moniker KAOS_Agent. What he has provided in his debut is an extensive report on the recently completed 20th anniversary installment of Damnation Fest in the UK, as well as lots of his photos from the event.)
“If you go, you might as well go big.”
I could not imagine a better way to put the mentality of this year’s Damnation Festival, celebrating its twentieth year of existence and fourth year of bringing the best of black, sludge, death, and post-metal to the Bowler’s Exhibition Center in Manchester, UK. This was my first time attending Damnation, following a few bucket list items of volunteering at Roadburn last year, as well as attending Ascension festival in Iceland, where I serendipitously met an unexpected amount of folks from the Seattle metal community, including the lovely proprietor of this site.
What impressed me about Damnation this year was its ability to maintain a small festival vibe while at the same time acknowledging their own success and gradual expansion. Organizer Gavin McInally and the extended team have gone through great lengths to create a roster that brought back long-standing repeat favorites along with emergent acts that tiptoe the line of underground appeal. And as far as a milestone year, Damnation has ensured the local scene was well-represented, with a coincidental 20 bands being based in the UK and Ireland.
Friday, Nov, 7 – Night of Salvation
I’ve always loved the idea of pre-festival opening shows as a way to ease into the ensuing chaos that a multi-day arena show affords. This year, the Night of Salvation opening show was moved from the regular 6,000 capacity BEC venue to a smaller, more intimate 400-person club. And considering I had flown in from Seattle the day before, I was amused to be reminded of home when arriving at The Bread Shed:
This year the lineup was also a secret, which made no difference to the broader Damnation set of attendees, with tickets selling out within 20 minutes. With much speculation on whether these were going to be special sets from bands performing at Damnation, or something else entirely, clues were dropped leading up to the festival via the 2 Promoters, 1 Pod podcast, where organizers Gavin and James Scarlett discuss their approach to festival organizing, amongst other topics. I caught an episode or two leading up to the festival, and the bill remained a secret to me even with the podcast clues due to Gavin’s distinctive and unintelligible Scottish accent.
After an opening set from Deadguy, the night really kicked into gear with Stampin’ Ground, who were coaxed out of retirement specifically to play Damnation. Singer Adam Frakes-Sime clearly had a decade of energy to put into the set, and there was even a brief guest vocalist and crowd surfing stint by Gavin:
In my informal polling of attendees this year, the two bands I heard an incredible amount of hype for were Amenra and Conjurer, who followed with an entire run through of their Mire debut album. The frenetic pace of the previous set was replaced with deep resonant riffs, and the flailing pit was replaced with headbanging and windmilling.
Overall, I loved the setup and contrast of having a smaller secret show to open things up before the main course of the festival. The venue also thoughtfully had an open-to-all front bar area for those who couldn’t get a ticket in time, or who wanted to catch up with old friends and new. As to not expend all my energy before the actual festival, I left shortly prior to Raging Speedhorn taking the stage.
Day 1 – Saturday Nov. 8
As the opener act, Devastator provided the intro music to my arrival and exploration of the Bowler’s Exhibition Center for the first day of festivities. I’ll admit I wasn’t too familiar with them beforehand, but I generally like my music blackened, and they certainly delivered on that front.
I actually thought that the Holy Goat Brewing stage that Devastator played on was considered the main stage, and took some time to navigate the various states and pathways to plot out my schedule. There was no sound bleed between the stages, and some clever corridors opened up to quickly get from one set to another. The actual “main,” Pins & Knuckles, stage opened up with Overhead, the Albatross with an expansive screen backdrop.
If I were to pigeonhole the roster for Damnation this year, I did detect heavy veins of black metal, sludge, and post-rock, which Overhead, the Albatross fell within. They certainly put on a cinematic show and took advantage of the visuals. For whatever reason, I remember particularly liking how the bass drum was tuned for a thumping effect. There was some discussion this year about the festival having an absence of pyrotechnics, but I thought the giant screen backdrops provided an effective alternate, and many bands throughout the day made good use of the screens.
After catching a bit of Necrot and showing up late to a packed hall, I made my way back to see Castle Rat, who won the award for “most costumed” band at Damnation.
It was clear that Castle Rat were going to be a hit based on their choreographed, borderline ren faire set. I’m a bit of a sucker for female-fronted vocals such as The Devil’s Blood, Blood Ceremony, and Christian Mistress, so seeing the Rat Queen in action managed to scratch that itch for a bit. They even managed to squeeze in a minute-long sword fight where each band member had a role to play, the outcomes of which I won’t spoil here. If you’re in Seattle, make sure to also catch them at the upcoming Holy Mountain Brewing’s 11th Anniversary party, coming up in January 2026.
An interesting anecdote I heard from some frequent attendees of Damnation is that it’s a “left of center,” festival, in terms of the composition of bands that have been assembled. I can’t claim to know what that exactly means, especially while standing in England, but what I do know is that Meryl Streek really hates landlords.
Meryl Streek was an intriguing discovery for me leading up to the festival, as you can think of him as incorporating a punk spoken-word aesthetic to a nearby Sisters of Mercy backdrop. Mr. Streek delivered an acerbic set, railing against injustice, dripping with political commentary, but also ending with a lighthearted appreciation for the crowd. It’s bizarrely comforting to know that some societal problems are constant from country to country.
It was at this point that I would have been checking out my other pre-festival recent discovery, Crippling Alcoholism, as a band outside of the norm of what I listen to, but with an incredible amount of ear-worm songs, particularly on their recent Camgirl album. Unfortunately they unceremoniously pulled out at the last minute, not only for Damnation, but their UK tour overall. Dimscûa filled their slot, with label mates Portrayal of Guilt also playing at the same time, which I did catch a bit of as a consolation prize.
Following me temporarily sulking from the last set, I had planned on seeing Afsky again, as they put on a great set that I had a hazy recollection of at last year’s Ascension Festival. However, a friend of mine convinced me to see Brodequin instead, as they rarely tour and I was in the mood for some no-nonsense brutality following the previous more experimental sets.
Brodequin took the stage, announced that they were from Tennessee, and immediately delivered a tight mix of guttural growls and blastbeats that woke me up and sent the crowd into a maelstrom. There was less straightforward death metal at Damnation than you may think, so I was glad to have seen this set as it was a UK exclusive. Sound balance was excellent.
Panzerfaust followed on the same stage, and was one of the four main bands at Damnation that was on my must-see list. The Ontario-based quartet has been putting out a steady stream of black metal for as long as the festival has been in existence, and played a fair amount from their The Suns of Perdition series. Competent performance, but I found myself a bit disappointed by the sound mix and the clarity of the guitars coming through. Both founding members are also the main vocalists of the band, so I wonder if there were just some minor issues in finding balance with the singing, which were frequently alternated between the two.
I was lucky enough to catch Singapore-based grindcore trio Wormrot at last year’s Northwest Terror Fest, and I’m glad I did, because it was one of the more crowded sets of the whole Damnation festival. In fact, Wormrot’s appearance was so successful, that apparently their merch sales surpassed their overall booking fee. Knowing that I was going to miss Napalm Death, I was glad to have seen some proper furious grind accentuated by balloons. Due to seeing them last year in a bit more of an intimate, up-front venue, I was happy to have seen them from a distance at the side bar, checking out the specially-made limited offerings from Holy Goat Brewing.
After leisurely sipping beers and hearing classics such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Grind, I headed back to the main stage to catch the synth sounds of Paris-based Perturbator, whom I originally came across years ago as a follower of the now-defunct Finnish record label, Blood Music. Being an electronic act, frontman James Kent made full use of the multimedia tools at his disposal, combining heavy synthwave sounds with a pulsing light show and futuristic video-loop background while being assisted by a live drummer playing an absolutely enormous kit.
The music was one thing, but I was enamoured with the spectacle of the crowd, as watching metalheads dance to electronic music is a strange and amusing thing. On that note, I will say that there was a bit of drama in my area of the floor with a person or two thinking that they were in a club to pick up women, but fortunately instances of unwanted attention were quickly stamped out by the broader crowd. Perturbator offered a nice metal-adjacent reprieve to the din of distorted guitars throughout the day, and I’m sure forced plenty of people to groove in ways they haven’t before.
Having expanded my horizons a bit from the Perturbator set, I finished out the night seeing the Portuguese artsy black metalish band, Gaerea, a band that has turned out to be a bit polarizing for reasons that escape me. There’s certainly a fair amount of emphasis placed on their aesthetic and image, and at the end of the day they’re a very polished band that combines high-production black metal with metalcore and post-rock elements.
There’s certainly a lot of pageantry when it comes to this band, and for me, this comes at the expense of the music itself being a bit unmemorable. Something I can’t fault though, is their live performance, which is as bombastic as their press releases. The energy they put into playing is undeniable, with frontman Guilherme Henriques spanning the stage, gesticulating wildly and having the stage presence of a spastic marionette. It’s an energetic performance, and you can’t but admire the heart, but again, much like their albums I found myself remembering the imagery and stage craft rather than the music itself. But then again, it’s very possible I was subject to a low battery at the end of the night after an eventful first day at Damnation.
Second Day – Sunday Nov. 9
Here it was, the band at the top of my list that warranted a 15-hour flight for a 35-minute set. Decades ago, I was volunteering at a radio station in Olympia, WA and came across Code’s Nouveau Gloaming album, which proceeded to kick my teeth in and helped develop a huge appreciation for the melancholic elements of black metal. Not only is Code a genre-defining band for me, but they almost never play live, so their presence at Damnation itself warranted the price of admission. And exactly like when I first heard them all those years ago, they began with the the first track from the first album, The Cotton Optic.
Going into the festival, I was naively thinking that Code would have a bigger following, especially as they’re from England, but kept hearing them billed as a bit of a cult band. It mattered very little to me, as with them being the second band for the day, I was more than happy to take in their performance with fresh eyes and energy in the morning. The setlist was almost entirely from their first two albums, which are among my favorites, and I spent the entire set fanboying, just happy to be there. Eleven years after their first appearance at Damnation, I was glad to have finally caught them.
Coilguns managed to be the sleeper hit of Damnation, in no small part due to frontman Louis Jucker’s politicking of the crowd, immediately shaking the hands of the entire front stage shortly after coming on stage. With elements of hardcore, noise-rock, and some Edward Sharpe-style whistling, Coilguns commanded the smaller Eyesore merch stage from every conceivable angle – on the stage, in the crowd, and even climbing on top of the speaker tower at one point.
Sharing members with German post-rock band The Ocean, Coilguns draws direct comparisons with At the Drive-In, and quickly won the crowd over with their frenetic pacing and positive energy. The singer was a floating particle who had some of the most audience engagement I’ve seen, at one point even stealing an audience member’s phone for an impromptu on-stage recording.
It did feel like their performance had a certain therapeutic element to it, punctuating each one of their songs with unprompted messaging around trans visibility and apologizing for the Swiss pharmaceutical industry, which certainly wasn’t a sponsor of the festival or anything. It was clear that Coilguns were having fun, and it rubbed off on the crowd.
Between Mistress and Anaal Nathrakh, vocalist Dave Hunt can probably be considered a special curator of Damnation, this year marking his 8th appearance across the two bands. Despite being a mainstay at the festival, Anaal Nathrakh was one of the main draws for me this year, and having never seen them live I was curious on how their unique blend of black, grind, death, and any other prefix to metal would translate live.
For many of the regular attendees I talked to, it was clear and confirmed that Anaal Nathrakh puts on an extreme show, but there was much speculation on which songs they’d be selecting from their expansive back catalogue. The setlist was a cross-section mainly from Desideratum, In the Constellation of the Black Widow, Endarkenment, and Vanitas, with some others thrown in. A particular crowd favorite was “Forward!” from A New Kind of Horror, which almost certainly was picked to goad the crowd into handing a steady stream of crowd surfers forward to security. Damnation bills itself as one of Europe’s largest “extreme” metal festivals, and I can think of no better band that would make better use of that adjective based on how their performance went.
For the second day of Damnation, I certainly went for quality over quantity, and subsequently butterflied between Nordic Giants, The Haunted, Spectral Wound and Amenra before the final band on my must-see list, Wiegedood. I didn’t absorb enough in bouncing between these sets to write anything notable, but will say that Amenra was the most hyped band from everyone I talked to from the start of Night of Salvation. I only caught a few songs, and my most unpopular opinion is that I didn’t quite get the overwhelming amount of referrals I got to check out their set. I can appreciate the amount of spirituality and self-made community that the Church of Ra has garnered, but it did feel like it didn’t click as much as it should have for me, given how much I had universally heard about them. Chalk it up to having a limited appreciation for post-metal tilting bands, I suppose.
I opted to finish out the night with fellow Belgians Wiegedood, who played a heroic, no-intermission, 115-minute rendition of their De doden hebben het goed trilogy back-to-back-to-back. I was first exposed to Wiegedood’s commitment to novel live performances last year at Roadburn, where they played a special one-off specially-made soundtrack to the 1926 Japanese silent film, A Page of Madness, which is about as obscure a premise for a live performance as you can get. That particular show had a plethora of percussive, guitar. and synth instruments, and considering how well it was executed, I was very excited to hear what a more traditional metal set would be like.
Going into the marathon set, I had many questions, such as whether I needed a catheter to prevent losing my spot in the audience, and how exactly an almost 2-hour continuous set was going to work, given that their extremely fast, violent, and precise brand of black metal would demand a fair amount of concentration. Wiegedood delivered on all fronts, and of the four main bands I was there to see, arguably put on the most technically impressive and complete sets.
They created an immense sound as just a trio, and were dialed-in to the point of appearing to be in a trance-like state. I have a huge appreciation of them now as musicians; the concept of the set, and even the sound mix was done in a manner that made things sound very similar to the album recording. I stayed front and center for the whole damn thing and it was an epic conclusion to Damnation 2025.
After 20 years, it’s clear that organizer Gavin McInally and the Damnation team have found a winning formula that has led to fans and bands alike returning year after year. What’s impressive is that this consistency has not led to a formulaic roster of bands, and I appreciated the fan service that was shown in mixing long-standing favorites with emergent acts, as well as some of the acts themselves being exclusive sets. The festival itself seems to be thriving versus surviving, and I’ll be interested to see the way they grow without sacrificing their identity. I certainly won’t wait another 20 years to go the next one, and will be interested in comparing it with my next UK-based festival, Fortress Festival, in Scarborough, UK in 2026.
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