From the slime-ridden swamp, up into the skies of rotten planets, and back down to the dystopian streets of Earth, tonight was a show that will leave your ears ringing, your shirt drenched, and your body bruised.  

It’s reassuring to see promoters operating as community rather than competition. From the stoner sludge of Hangman’s Chair and Dool’s galvanizing dark rock, to Mizmor’s emotive blackened doom and Inter Arma’s experimental extreme metal, there’s a real Smorgasbord of music to enjoy.

Tonight brought together style, power, beauty and darkness to showcase Chelsea Wolfe and her band as artists with a distinct yet diverse sound, at the very pinnacle of their powers. 

With their progressive songwriting, huge riffs, Nina’s magical voice, and the glorious melodrama of their performance, Lowen put on a spectacular heavy metal show that aligns them with the greats of the genre.   Go and see Lowen immediately before they get as huge as they deserve. 

This doesn’t feel like a performance: rather , a recital of the songs through a practiced veneer of confidence; every song is allowed to be raw, authentic, and unflinchingly honest. Emma allows each song to reflect her mood, her nerves, her emotions, making every performance unique; and this is why I’ll keep seeing her shows again and again.  

Watching Iress perform is a truly marvellous experience, and I’ll wager that more than a few tears were shed in the audience tonight. The dreamy, doomy quartet perform with confidence, nuance and passion, with a particular sensitivity to dynamics, moving smoothly from a scream to a sigh, a thundering riff to a lightly rippling melody.

Plini is full of soul; that’s the key point for me. I expected a big guitar show and certainly got one, but we got much more than that. Personally I’d take one phrase from a Plini song over a whole album by some of the more self-indulgent shredders out there. . .Every note is articulated so soulfully, so distinctly, that it genuinely feels like he’s talking to you with his instrument. . . it’s this combination that makes a Plini show such a joyous and elevated experience.   

You made the right choice if you came to see Abbath tonight. He may not be playing Wembley Stadium but he should be. This isn’t just a show that means you can tick off seeing Abbath play Immortal: it reinforces Abbath’s status as heavy metal legend.

Paul exudes calmness and kindness. During our conversation, he answered our questions carefully, with enthusiasm, and wit, taking in his musical and spiritual roots, his early days as a death metal punk, his song-writing process and journey as a vocalist, the queer metal community, as well as the solo career that he showcased later on at the Black Heart.

Paul receives a standing ovation and compels his audience to spend time with him over a roast. We emerge from the venue – into daylit, bustling Camden – aspiring to become better observers of our own minds, and to best catch the stories we tell ourselves. And to think about how, like Paul, we exist as mythical vessels of humanity.

Portals has exactly the atmosphere that I always want from a music festival: of walking through, well, a portal and into a nerdy utopia where everyone “gets” you. Every interaction throughout the weekend – between other fans, venue staff, security, volunteers, vendors, musicians, photographers – was friendly, warm and convivial. So at the start and the end of the day, it’s the people who make the atmosphere..

It’s true that the burning bowl at the core of Desertfest’s pipe will always be a fuggy mélange of stoner, psych, doom, drone, and all that good stuff.  But – having been lucky enough to attend Desertfest almost every year since its inauguration in 2012 -– I’ve seen it move on from predictable flavours to a more diverse, heady smoke. . . We all got gloriously high on the pungent sounds and the phenomenal atmosphere of Desertfest 2024.  

Tonight demonstrates that Riverside aren’t just another “prog” band: alongside Klone, they play music that can be radically intelligent and complex, dark and politically astute, yet coming into its own in the live environment by maintaining a spirit of energetic enjoyment and – dare I say it – fun.  

Portals 2024 is set to be the biggest and best year yet for this incredible underground, DIY festival. We’re talking guitar music of all stripes: post-, alt-, math-, prog-, psych-, shoegaze, blackgaze, metal-adjacent, all along the spectrum up to metal. I really hope to meet some of our readers there!

Hosted by London Prog Gigs, tonight’s show brings together three forward-thinking artists at the intimate, storied Hope & Anchor venue for an eclectic musical mélange: featuring the inimitable vocal drones of Kunal Singhal, the eclectic post-metal of Cabiria, and the sparkling, unclassifiable power that is our headliners Teiger.  

Shortly before their headlining show at the Islington Assembly Hall kicked off, Grutle Kjellson and Ivar Bjørnson—the backbone of Enslaved from day one—chatted with Joe Norman, while Taile Rose Eigelund photographed the interview.

Enslaved are a compelling live band for many reasons – stage presence, an endearing penchant for self-deprecation, energy, great sound, supreme musicianship, but especially because they always work to make each show unique.

I think the appeal of Drab, for me, is that they seem to distill the essence of so many styles and micro-genres from the 1980s, or that fetishize that period subsequently, whilst feeling like something new, without relying simply upon retro thrills.

On a rainy winter’s night, Matt Jarman from avant garde mavericks VOID invited Joe Norman from Echoes and Dust into his London home-studio to discuss the creation of his band’s latest album, Jadjow.

Now is a very good time indeed to go and see Årabrot!

Joe Norman had the pleasure of speaking with Norwegian Sámi singer Mari Boine ahead of the release of her sixteenth album Amame on By Norse Music and her forthcoming Norwegian tour.