Friday starts later and Sunday is usually a little more mellow (until The Bug anyway), but Saturday is the overstuffed filling in the festival sandwich – a ridiculous but delicious feast. There’s an awful lot of it to get through here, so let’s get stuck in.
I start the day with an appetiser of psyche cleansing drone: Smote and One Leg One Eye both played the festival last year, now they come together for a special collaboration and wind out a set-long slice of immersive drone. Not operating under quite the same degree of discipline as Water Damage yesterday, it has shifts of tempo and drifts from periods of intensity to moments of relative calm, subtly moving between the players on stage. The sound floods the hall, filling the space; it’s a fine example of live performance as an immersive experience that connects everyone in the room. It’s something the festival is really good at, as opposed to a carousel of bands just playing their songs at you.
Smote x One Leg One Eye. Photo: Cat Dineley
In the back of the programme there’s a nice little tribute to Ozzy from Home of Metal but across the weekend there’s notably less Sabbath worship than in previous years. Meatdripper are here flying the flag for Birmingham metal with a psych-doom kind of bent. Always improving they’re a name to watch; today drummer Kai is out sick and while the sub does good work on short notice, and the band pull off a solid show, I feel they’re just missing half a step on their usual attack. Buñuel aren’t really metal but they’re definitely hard and heavy, their powerhouse rock now twisted into ever fiercer sheets of noise. Always explosive frontman Eugene Robinson howls and shadowboxes, while the band roars and rumbles around him, but between songs he invites us to tag his mom on any pics we take so she knows he isn’t wasting his life!
Meat Dripper. Photo: Cat Dineley
I’ve been very much enjoying their self-titled debut so I was really looking forward to Rún but sadly I didn’t get along as well with the live incarnation. They went over well but it never came fully into focus for me; it seemed to be sinking into the improv sludge. Maybe I was having a mid-afternoon dip of my own because we headed over to catch Witch Club Satan and I wasn’t wild about that either, although my expectations were very different. I thought it was going to be panto. I mean, the name verges on piss taking doesn’t it? Turns out they’re quite serious and the show is more grandly theatrical, channelling black metal as a blunt signifier of fury. The female/queer claiming of black-metal rage has really delivered in recent years (Ashenspire, Ragana, Agriculture) but I was less taken with this. It’s a spectacle for sure, and weird how confrontational a virtually naked pregnant woman on stage feels, but I was more abstractly impressed by the scale and effort than I was moved by it.
Buñuel. Photo: Cat Dineley
Local promoters 0121Queercore are DJ-ing up on the roof, and over at satellite venue Centrala there’s a photography exhibition Queercore in The Second City featuring images from their gigs and sharing its name with a recent documentary about the scene. On XOYO’s stage Death Goals and HIRS Collective are bringing the queercore noise. Both duos, Death Goals are all about audience interaction, affirmation, and community between chaotic bursts of noise. HIRS Collective play harder and faster, chucking in clips of pop tunes as segues to break up their hectic blasts; it’s fierce fun. Death Goals have a new EP out, HIRS Collective collab on one of the tracks (of course). It’s called Survival Is An Act Of Defiance which is obviously a statement of solidarity in the face of growing hostility towards the LGBTQ+ community, but also feels applicable to the festival as a whole, particularly this year.
Backxwash. Photo: @snaprockandpop (Joe Singh)
Committed and intense, Backxwash takes it to another level – the more melodic but emotional material from Only Dust Remains well suited to the dramatic space of the venue. ‘Wake Up’ is vivid and strong, ‘DISSOCIATION’ is lovely, but the set peaks at ‘History of Violence’ which in many ways could hardly be more of a song to match the moment. When the final verse’s shift of emphasis from personal to wider horrors hits, the abstract patterned visuals that have played behind her change to block lettered lyrics, in case anyone might miss the sentiment. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, Thinking ’bout all the people dead in the street…” it’s outro a brilliant extended roll call of the way opposition to a genocide is silenced. Fortunately the BBC were not present, so no one will have to pretend it was antisemitic.
Aya. Photo: @snaprockandpop (Joe Singh)
Aya is intense and chatty, appears chaotic but totally smashes it. What she plays is basically this year’s Hexed! in roughly the same order as the album, although you’d be forgiven for missing it. ‘The Names Of Faggot Chav Boys’ and ‘Heat Death’ roll out early, and then she starts to wander a little. She has an anxious way of narrating the set as she goes, despite which she appears to be enjoying herself. Talking about the songs, talking to us, talking to herself. “Do you like gabba? Yeah, you do” precedes a couple of minutes of pounding gabba beats; a short while later a brief d’n’b diversion is headed off with, “enjoy those amens, that’s all you’re getting.” She flips between seemingly absent-minded asides and full-throated vocals at disorienting pace. Rather than a stationary shadow behind a table top she’s a lively figure, charging about the stage, fighting the mic stand for fun. The chaos keeps it on edge but never unbalances things; there are no lulls. It’s a perfect blend of performance and production. A word about flat caps and the moors introduces a vicious ‘Time at The Bar’, and she ends on a triumphant ‘Off To The Esso’. Incredible.
