Has it really been twelve editions of Desertfest in London? I’ve been lucky enough to make it along to most of these editions, watching the festival grow and develop from a fringe event into a major international item on any heavy music fan’s calendar. In my review of the 2024 edition for Echoes and Dust, I commented on how the festival has diversified sonically, incorporating heavy music beyond the stoner rock sphere. While in 2023, the dynamic E&D duo of Chrises, Ball and Keith-Wright-Harris, explored an edition that clearly provided a quintessential Desertfest experience: wall-to-wall stoner, desert, psych, drone, and doom. Well 2025’s edition retained some of that urge to expand and diversify, whilst still delivering everything that we’ve come to know and love.
It’s disappointing that I could only make the Saturday and Sunday this year, so – for me – it kicks off with Danish death-doomers Konvent in the Roundhouse. I won’t dwell on the slight frustration of using the Roundhouse for these kind of Camden fests (while I like the venue, it’s just a little too long a walk from The Dev, Black Heart, or Underworld to make the format fluid). But it does provide a huge, expansive space to be filled with lumbering slab-dragging riffs. Konvent should be noteworthy for the glacial grittiness of their sound, and not just because the whole band are women.
Konvent. Photo: Jessy Lotti
At best, this show is epic, opening out the band’s sound, and providing some of those eyes-closed, introspective doom moments that I crave. But sometimes I’m left feeling it would be more immersive in a smaller venue, and that the songs would benefit from a change of pace at points.
Konvent. Photo: Jessy Lotti
Over in the Underworld now, Sons of Alpha Centauri are well known at Desertfest, of course, having impressed Chris Keith Wright-Harris last year with the jam set they played with Fatso Jetson. Usually an instrumental band in the Karma to Burn tradition, Sons recorded a couple of albums in recent years with guest vocalists. While these records are decent, I’m secretly pleased that it’s just the three of them on stage. Sons are located somewhere between Karma’s tight boogie riffs and Yawning Man’s (with whom they sometimes perform as Yawning Sons) loose, expansive jams. It’s absolutely perfect Desertfest fodder, in other words, especially when combined with so many interesting twists and turns, and subtle progressive elements: it’s all intelligently crafted without being flashy. The fest is certainly in full swing now. There’s a specific atmosphere you get at the Underworld for Desertfest, which I’ll always love: everybody downstairs, beer-in-hand, not moshing, just vibing; not asleep, just woozy.
Sons of Alpha Centauri. Photo: Jessy Lotti
But it’s over to The Dev for Lust Ritual, with a slightly different vibe: time for a lowdown, dirty show, drenched in beer and saturated in distortion. Here, the doom hits louder and feels more immediate than the other venues. If you know The Dev, you’ll know it’s that rarest of jewels: a wonderfully grotty dive bar with a decent sound system, perfect for one of London’s finest occult doom merchants. Lust Ritual are distinguished from the hoards of contemporaries in this sub-genre by the mournful wail of vocalist Ieva L. and their tight, proto-metal grooves.
Lust Ritual. Photo: Jessy Lotti
Amenra are one of those acts who work to diversify this year’s festival. It’s a slightly off-rota booking for Desertfest, which continues the trend for sonic diversification that started a year or two ago. Clearly, as a metal band they’re hardly a radical choice in general, as extreme metal bands have played Desertfest over the years (I recall seeing the much-missed Wodensthrone back in the day). But it’s less common to find someone whose music is so often jagged, dissonant, and caustic sandwiched between the Desert grooves.
Amenra. Photo: Jessy Lotti
But the Roundhouse is packed out, of course, and any naysayers have simply gone to see Worshipper or Barbarian Hermit instead. I think it’s well known that folks go hard for Amenra live because the band go so hard: It’s such a powerful emotional journey. By the time they play ‘A Solitary Reign’, about halfway through the set, it’s clear that this is a different kind of vibe to the rest of Desertfest. If it’s still a party out in the other venues, it’s serious in here. This is music to be consumed with eyes closed, music to feel deep in your body, music that doubles down on your emotions. That looping guitar refrain burrows deep into your psyche: sings you to sleep tonight. By the time that the eight minute ‘Silver Needle. Golden Nail’ concludes – a study in introspection and brooding intensity – I imagine that some will call it a day here, despite there being several hours to go: overwhelmed, purged, sated.
Amenra. Photo: Jessy Lotti
While understandable, that would clearly be a mistake. Throughout their twelve-year career, Zeal & Ardor have weathered a few storms. Drawing inspiration from racism Manuel received in online music communities, being questioned about production choices, or written off as a gimmick or as “posers”, seem to have only fed the band’s fire. I was lucky to see Zeal play an early show at the Roadburn festival in 2017, while they were still finding their feet. Destined to be a memorable show – leading a crowd a cappella version of ‘Devil is Fine’ in a deconsecrated church annex after the power cut out twice – they were already on fire. So now, essentially headlining Desertfest on the sprawling Roudhouse stage in 2025, Zeal & Ardor are absolutely unstoppable.
Zeal & Ardor. Photo: Jessy Lotti
With four albums under their belt, Zeal smash out bangers for almost an hour and a half. It’s relentless: song after song of catchy chants, moshy riffs, and emotive singalongs which feel never ending, building the room to a fever pitch of energy. Personal highlights include ‘Row Row’, like an angry outtake from Tom Wait’s Rain Dogs sessions, and ‘Don’t You Dare’, which could trigger a pit absolutely anywhere. The key to their live success, alongside a finely tuned band and all the bangers, is their use of triple vocal parts (Manuel rounded out by Denis Wagner and Marc Obrist as backing) for call-and-response, counterpoint, and harmony, which creates a wealth of ways that the audience can engage: singing, growling, chanting, shouting.
Zeal & Ardor. Photo: Jessy Lotti
Zeal have continued to hone the core aspects of their sound – more melodic death metal than black metal, mixed with gospel, blues, black spirituals – to produce album after album of quality material. Almost every band who’s ever played Desertfest features the blues scale predominantly in their music: it wouldn’t be rock or metal without it. But Zeal & Ardor convey the spirit of the blues in a more direct manner than most bands, in their mournful tone and spirit of triumph against adversity. And Manuel is not without a sense of humour as he returns a sparkly tiara thrown from the crowd during penultimate song ‘I Got You’.
Zeal & Ardor. Photo: Jessy Lotti
I manage to tear myself away from Zeal, with enough time to leg it over to the Black Heart to catch Green Milk from the Planet Orange to find everybody deep into a hard psych jam of feverish intensity. There is serious crowd surfing occurring, of the legs in the air variety, with a wild dance-mosh happening underneath. It builds to a fever pitch, like Acid Mother’s Temple at the peak of their insane jams, and is over far too quickly. It’s difficult to parse exactly what happened here, as I’m only comfortably in the venue for the last 15 minutes, but I’m left with the clear impression that I need to visit Planet Orange again properly as soon as possible, regardless of the colour of my milk.
Green Milk from the Planet Orange. Photo: Jessy Lotti
I’m back to the Electric Ballroom again on Sunday, hungover, to be met with the colossal sound and unequivocal political message of Divide and Dissolve. “Scarlet and I are proud indigenous people,” states Takiaya Reed (T/ / R) of her current drummer, going on to reaffirm the project’s message of indigenous sovereignty and postcolonialism. As a duo, T/ /R relies on her array of amplifier stacks to produce a dense and expansive guitar sound, heavy enough for drone-doom. Her chords are allowed to ring out for as long as they sustain, heavy as dragging tree trunks, and with an undulating roughness of tone like runnels of corrugated iron. Yet most songs begin with T/ /R playing the alto saxophone, in mournful, looping cycles, in a solemn palette cleanser before the heaviness kicks in again. It’s a heaviness that, given there are no vocals to anchor us in a specific meaning, relies on T/ / R’s verbal cues to situate that weight in its political context: “Free Palestine”, “Genocide is present in our lives,” and “This song is about love”. . .
Divide and Dissolve. Photo: Jessy Lotti
. . .themes which seem somewhat absent from the music of Texas’s “Doom Wop” trio, Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol. Commanding quite a response from the Underworld, Rickshaw Billie combine the humour and weird nasal voice of Les Claypool or Gibby Haynes with a heaviness that only an eight-string guitar can provide. Despite the eccentricity all this suggests, however, what these guys actually deliver is surprisingly soulful, melodic, and sincere, as well as warm, fuzzy, and very stoner.
Rickshaw Billie’s Burger Patrol. Photo: Jessy Lotti
“I could squeeze out my shirt to make a pint,” the guy next to me observes. And it is certainly a touch humid in the Underworld as we await the live UK debut of Castle Rat, Brookyln’s “Medieval Fantasy Doom” band. Unless you’ve been locked up in the stocks for a while, you might have noticed rhythm guitarist/vocalist The Rat Queen (aka Riley Pinkerton) herself in a photo shoot or two. Big hair? Kiss inspired make-up? No? Chainmail bikini? There we go.
As she takes to the stage accompanied by the Plague Doctor on bass, a sequined guitarist The Count, and drummer The Druid, it becomes clear that, while they’re dressed for the theatre, Castle Rat are not cosplaying at metal. This is doom-laden heavy metal in all its thunderous glory, with big songs and big drama.
The Castle Rat. Photo: Jessy Lotti
And make no mistake, this is melodrama indeed. The Castle Rat is protecting the realm from the forces of evil, presumably represented by the female Grim Reaper who takes to the stage at various points to menace our heroes with a giant scythe. Castle Rat might be armed with her SG-axe already, but fortunately she has an impressive magical sword to vanquish this foe. The venue’s significant heat clearly reflects the temperature of this fantasy realm because Death too needs only a skimpy leather bodysuit as armour.
The Castle Rat. Photo: Jessy Lotti
It’s difficult to focus entirely on the music at this point, suffice to say that Castle Rat deliver most songs from Into The Realm with gusto commensurate with their sword and sorcery ambitions.
There are twists and turns in this narrative. Femdom Death is struck down; the Castle Rat claims victory; but Death can’t be ended so easily, and she rises again to strike down – brace yourself – the Castle Rat herself! Fortunately The Count has the elixir of life stashed somewhere onstage (or about his sequined jumpsuit) and the Castle Rat eventually triumphs. We, her loyal subjects, shout IN THIS REALM! a lot, and generally go wild.
The Castle Rat. Photo: Jessy Lotti
Suffice to say that Castle Rat live, lives up to the hype.
It’s difficult to imagine a less theatrical band than drone heroes Earth. Down to earth, one might say if one had an excruciating sense of humour. Dylan Carlson has always been the most unassuming guitar hero – the exact antithesis of a posing shred-head – and this is a glorious, beautiful show, amongst the best I’ve seen from him.
Tonight’s set features a track from Angels, Full Upon, Primitive, and Bees, with three from Hex. ‘Old Black’ is a personal favourite, and there’s something about the way that Dylan plays it that gets me every time. He can play a huge campfire G chord like an expansive gesture, letting it ring put for ages, with no temptation to embellish it in any way, that seems to enclose a lifetime of woodshedding in the bedroom. Every Earth chord contains within it several decades of arcane guitar lore, which need never to actually be played in order to be assured of its existence.
Earth. Photo: Jessy Lotti
I’m especially excited by the UK debut of a new song, ‘California and Other Impossible Dreams’, consisting of the most perfect drone riff: a beautiful coil that ends at its own beginning. Earth are certainly on fine form and show no signs of slowing down after thirty plus years.
Upon leaving an Earth show, one enters a particular state of calmness and languidness, feeling cleansed somehow. Following a couple of days of wild energy and heaviness, their music is so full of space that it’s difficult not to feel meditative.
Earth. Photo: Sam Huddleston
While this would be a fine state in which to embark upon one’s homeward journey, I have a dirty date with a Dopelord planned (back in the Underworld of course). If you don’t think you’re familiar with Poland’s Dopelord, there’s a good chance that you actually already are because everything you might assume about their nature from their name is entirely true: they’re a heavy-as-fuck occult doom band who play it low, hard and dirty. And slow. Most importantly, they’re very, very good.
“Who was at our show at The Dev in 2018?” Piotr asks, and of course plenty of us raise our hands. “You look old!”
Dopelord. Photo: Jessy Lotti
The meditative spell is completely broken and I’m thrust into the action – more a slow stoned churn than a frenzied push pit – as Dopelord bust out monolithic doom anthems, one after another. ‘The Witching Hour Bell’ sounds like an Electric Wizard cover, but no one cares. The weekend ends covered in beer, with crowd surfers galore, including a pair who start at different ends and cross in the middle, with messy high fives. As it should be.
Once again, twelve years down the line, Desertfest still delivers a wonderful weekend, balancing the safe, solid and predictable with plenty of surprises along the way. And it’s one of the few festivals to which I know I’ll be returning next year regardless of line-up: the atmosphere is that good.
Photo: Jessy Lotti
Photo: Jessy Lotti
Header photo by Tim Bugbee.
