ArcTanGent Festival, famous for its eclectic, dazzling line-ups as much as its relaxed and fun atmosphere, kicks off its 2025 edition on Wednesday 13 August, and Joe Norman and Nick Dunn will be there for every minute of it. (It’s a hard assignment, but someone had to do it!)
Joe writes: It’s my third edition and I’m looking forward to another year of experimental metal, post-everything guitar music, math rock, avant garde extremities, and unclassifiable, genre-defying music. This edition has yet another absolutely stacked line-up – with more exciting bands than I can go into detail about here – so what follows is a brief preview of some acts I’m looking forward to the most.
Nick adds: Having never been to ArcTanGent before, I’m very much looking forward to diving in! Here’s a small preview of some of the acts I’m most excited about.
Joe: Led by Amaya López-Carromero aka Maud the Moth, Healthy Living return to ATG following a storming show at last year’s edition. Combining post-punk, shoe gaze, and strong indie rock song-writing with Amaya’s wide vocal range and command of various styles, every Healthy Living show is a must see, but this one especially, bolstered by the enthusiasm of the ATG crowd, already primed to become absorbed by this powerful band who sound like no-one else. Oh, and you can go see Amaya be equally amazing solo as Maud the Moth on a different day.
While I’ve seen their name around a fair bit, I must admit that I’ve only just got around to listening to international post-metallers Bipolar Architecture. So I’m very excited to see them deliver their unpredictable sound live. On record, all sub-genres and styles of metal are up for grabs, moving from smooth, atmospheric passages through surging black metal intensity, to huge lumbering riffs, threaded through with the powerful rasp and growl of vocalist Sarp Kesi. Lovely.
US prog-death band Horrendous released the ludicrously good album Ontological Mysterium in 2023 and they finally visit the UK in August to (hopefully) play some of it live for us. I’m curious how the mixture of clean/dirty vocals will translate on the stage, as delivered by both vocalists, Damien and Matt, and can’t wait to experience the band’s technical wizardry in person. The world has never been in a better place for Cosmic Death Metal and – while the title can be misapplied, and applied somewhat vaguely – everything about Horrendous transports me beyond our solar system and out into a very dark, bizarre universe where human life is irrelevant and obscure alien entities thrive.
Nick: Kicking things off on Wednesday evening are Wardruna, Norway’s premier neofolk outfit. Famed for their atmospheric and ritualistic live shows, this promises to be a bewitching affair, and one I’ve wanted to experience for a long time.
Meryl Streek is one of Ireland’s angriest musical voices, putting out 21st-century punk that really hits home. Mixing punk, electronics, and post-punk into an avant-garde mix over which he defiantly and eloquently spits spoken-word poetry decrying the state of the world, Streek may just be the unstoppable force punk needs to counter the distressingly immovable object that is the world today.
Similarly vital, Ithaca are sadly bidding farewell, with this year’s ATG festival marking their final show. One of the most energising and intriguing prospects in the UK’s hardcore scene, Ithaca won critical praise for 2019’s The Language of Injury, and built on this foundation with 2022’s They Fear Us. It will be sad to see them go.
Joe: Without doubt, Emma Ruth Rundle is one of the most significant songwriters and voices of our era. The fact that she never compromises on raw, heartfelt honesty makes every one of her shows a cathartic experience. I have never seen someone convey their emotions with as much power and conviction as Emma Ruth Rundle. Performing solo, Emma will no doubt play songs from her magnificent piano-oriented solo album Engine of Hell – performed in its entirety at ATG in 2022, including a song with cellist extraordinaire Jo Quail – but Emma is known to working on a follow-up, so her fans eagerly anticipate the live debut of a new song or two from that. It might sound a bit trite to say that I shed a tear at every one of Emma’s shows, but it’s true: her songs are that powerful.
If it’s strong emotions you’re after then Japanese post-hardcore and post–rock artist Envy deliver a similarly profound and moving live experience. I’ve been lucky to see them at the Roadburn and Rock Stadt festivals this year, so can confirm that they are at the peak of their powers. I always look for a band who can move from pin-drop silence through gentle, gentle parts, building up to caustic crescendos of dissonance and heaviness. Well, envy are the masters at this, with each member throwing themselves into the show as if it was their last – and I’m literally impatient to see them do it all again at ATG.
New Heaven, the latest album by Virginia’s Inter Arma, is a superlative work of extreme post-metal that you’ll want to see performed live at all costs. This is band who have mastered all styles and sub-genres of metal, flowing freely between them from one second to the next, in order to create a musical language complex enough to articulate their ideas. I saw them in London earlier in the year and they are a band who need rely on nothing but their supreme technical and song-writing skills, combined with sheer raw enthusiasm, to deliver an astonishingly good set. (ie they play in very bright shorts and get away with it!) I guess death metal is the main flavour here, in the skronky, dissonant, and chromatic vein – although don’t be surprised if they chuck in a surprise Prince cover now and then. No, really.
Nick: One of the more musically-straightforward (but no less lyrically outré) bands on the bill this year is Australia’s Battlesnake. They play the kind of scuzzy heavy metal that disappeared when grunge arrived, wear gaudy golden priest robes, and write songs about churches on wheels. Safe to say, theirs will be an interesting set to watch.
Joe: While the French experimental quartet Ni seem to have named themselves after the famous knights from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they are no joke. And, to be fair, Monty Python gags were often a lot smarter than they first appear. Once you have managed to Google Ni (fortunately not quite as difficult as you might imagine), you’ll start to see how apt that moniker is: this is hyperactive, skittish, avant metal that owes a lot to the complex rhythms of jazz, the twists and turns of tech/prog, and the theatrical/performative tendencies of bands like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (see below). If you have a similarly skittish brain like mine, Ni’s music offers maximum dopamine satisfaction – and I just know I’ll be thoroughly absorbed by this entire set. I knew that I’d like them even before I clicked play because Ni feature bass-player Benoit Lecomte, who I’ve seen play with Poil Ueda and various improv/jazz projects at the Roadburn Festival. If talent is like alchemy, everything this guy touches turns to a kind of eccentric gold. Chef’s kiss.
It’s safe to say that the recently reformed Sleepytime Gorilla Museum will be top of many people’s lists at ATG this year. They’re probably the weirdest and most unique band around, so why wouldn’t you come see them at ATG? Formed in California in 1999, Sleepytime have become legendary for the surrealist/Dadaist nature of their live shows – homemade instruments, presentations, puppet shows, junkyard orchestras ala Tom Waits – and frankly I don’t know what to expect from their show at ATG. All I can say is that – if you like storytelling, oddball instrumentation, wild performances, smartly subversive lyrics, and a general and rather terrifying sense of weirdness – Sleepytime Gorilla Museum’s return to the stage is the very definition of unmissable.
Nick: Bringing proceedings to a close on Saturday will be Ireland’s premier post-rock trio, God Is An Astronaut. I’ve been desperate to see them for a long time, and with the release of 2024’s beautiful Embers certain to contribute a few songs to this year’s tour setlist, I’m incredibly excited to finally experience their live show.
