A Decade of Damnation
Damnation came hot on the heels of the warmest Halloween on record. Buried deep in the labyrinthine depths of England’s Leeds University, and in its tenth year, the festival’s now firmly established as a red letter day in the heavy metal calendar. Particularly for fans of the genre’s more extreme bands, as Damnation concentrates on less overtly commercial sounds, from the most whip-crack fast and vicious, to the eerily experimental and atmospheric.
The 2014 line-up promised nearly thirty bands, from established legends to promising new blood, spread over four stages in a twelve-hour-plus marathon of metal madness. I arrived rather late this year after being summoned to a last minute Halloween wedding (which was, as they say, another story). But in plenty of time to experience a good cross-section of the ear-blasting delights Damnation 2014 had to offer.
My introduction to the evening’s entertainments came courtesy of Orange Goblin, now surely established as one of the most reliably solid, contagious good times on the metal circuit. The London quartet hit the stage at a gallop with their absurdly infectious Stoner groove, and by the time they reach the final straight with ‘Red Tide Rising’, the Goblin hold the entire hall in their collective fist.
Gallic doom merchants Monarch are far more of an acquired taste. Their seductive blonde siren Emily Bresson shrieks from the infernal depths of a drone of ponderous guitars like a thing possessed. It sometimes feels like we’ve inadvertently strayed into a bizarre heathen rite, or maybe a seriously unorthodox therapy session. More than a tad pretentious, perhaps, and occasionally teetering on the edge of ridiculous, Monarch are nonetheless unquestionably a potent, unnervingly evocative experience.
Next on the agenda are the legendary St Vitus, the venerable American institution often hailed as the forefathers of doom metal. Alternately bathed in lichen grey, unearthly green and infernal crimson, the hoary tattooed warhorses drag ominous riffs howling from the tomb in a set dominated by their 1986 classic ‘Born Too Late’. It’s more than enough to satiate the faithful, though I’m not so sure how many converts St Vitus made that night.
Ahab complete my evening’s unholy trinity of doom metal, this time hailing from Germany, and focused on matters maritime. Solely addressing the nightmares of the sea might seem rather creatively constrictive, but Ahab have made the territory their own, as sinister riffs wash sinuously over the primal granite of the bass and drums. The seagull and crashing wave samples should have felt cheesy, but the whole thing pulls together beautifully, making Ahab my band of the evening.
Bolt Thrower were the band most people were really anticipating. The warlike Brit death metal veterans now enjoy quasi-legendary status, in part because they now play so seldom, making tonight’s headline something of an event by default, and the assembled hordes are spoiling for the fight to come. They’re not disappointed, Bolt Thrower levelling the crowd with one merciless salvo of riffs after another. The band’s status is further confirmed when the queue for merch practically descends into a melee – proof positive, perhaps, that rationing T-shirts and live appearances can be a winning strategy…
by Gavin Baddeley
http://www.gavinbaddeley.com/
[Photo’s by Gobinder Jhitta and Tim Finch]
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