G! FESTIVAL
SYÐRUGØTA, FAROE ISLANDS
The Nordic new wave sets pulses racing at the edge of the world
IF THERE’S A festival setting that’s any more spectacular, it probably isn’t on this planet. Taking place on a small stretch of beach in a tiny, 400-population town set into the west of the Faroe Islands, G! Festival overlooks a vast bay bordered on either side by towering, green-clad mountain ranges, whose tops are more often than not obscured by atmosphereenhancing mist. This isn’t a metal fest per se, but Arch Enemy, At The Gates and Meshuggah have played here in the past, and this year it’s hosting its first metal showcase – set in a nearby, rather rustic-smelling barn – highlighting the everexpanding blastwave of the Nordic scene’s next generation.
If your brain is already addled by the surrounding landscape, Faroese nutters IRON LUNGS aren’t going to put you on any kind of even keel. Beats fall in the wrong place, thudding bass rabbit punches your temples, inebriated, jazzy interludes wander in, and yet their noisecore-on-downers melee soon exerts a powerful grip, aided by a vocalist who looks like he’s tightrope walking through his own private hellscape. Iceland’s ZHrINe are a somewhat more elegant proposition, their multi-textured, atmospheric take on black metal enhanced by electric cello instead of bass, and a bow used on frontman Þorbjörn’s lead guitar. From tense, juddering ratcheting up of tension through incandescent charges that take Wolves In The Throne Room-style velocity into wholly new environments to moments of delicate, mournful beauty, tonight’s set feels like a finely tuned emotional barometer and a personal rite of deliverance that enthrals a packed venue and resonates thoroughly with the spectacular landscape beyond.
Note to future festival bookers: if you want a band guaranteed to put a bomb under a crowd, get hold of BAEST. Starting a host of moshpits, circlepits and walls of death amongst battlejacket-bearers and the unsuspecting metal-curious alike, the Danes’ engaging gang mentality, no-fucks-given attitude and riotously roughshod approach to death metal is a pure adrenaline hit, goaded on by charismatic frontman Simon Olsen. New songs add explosive d-beats to the fray, and for all the body-jolting grimness of their Danse Macabre album, live they’re groove-heavy, lead break-lacing party starters that sends everyone out on a bruised and giddy high.
Despite their past-1am start, TYR’S main stage show isn’t short of revellers, and for all the whale-hunting controversy they’ve drawn internationally, they have a special resonance in their home country, their Viking-meets-power metal anthems not short on cheese but rich in historical lore that has a full crowd raising horns in the most fitting of settings.