ISOLATION FESTIVAL
YOUTUBE LIVE
Featuring a line-up of 13 bands from Century Media’s roster in just under four hours, Isolation Fest offers a quick-fire remedy for sofa-bound festival lovers. BAEST’S cramped rehearsal space is an ideal setting for their filthy death metal, as frontman Simon Olsen does his best to warm up the necks of those at home. HIDEOUS DIVINITY’S pristine technical savagery sounds massive. Playing from three different locations and without drummer Giulio Galati, they still deliver an impenetrable avalanche of modern extremity. The multi-angled camerawork for SVART CROWN’S blackened maelstrom adds more of a live feel, while their grim, poisonous music takes the audience to more ominous locations. Boston’s THE OFFERING add some cool visuals and even a bit of dry ice to set up their vibrant mix of styles.
BONDED are former members of
Sodom, Suicidal Angels and Despair, and live-debut their triumphant anthems with enthusiasm. DESERTED FEAR power through a song from each of their four albums. Welcome To Reality’s melodic-tinged death metal is a sad reflection of the current plight, but its riffs slay nonetheless.
Bottles of beer in hand and grins on their faces, ANGELUS APATRIDA deliver a potent sampler of their wicked amalgam of thrash, death and NWOBHM.
OMNIUM GATHERUM appear in an empty club, piling into Be The Sky.
They bang heads and throw shapes but, weirdly, this turns out to be their only song. LUCIFER are packed into a cosy jam room ensconced in red lights and a wall of amps. Their groovy, riffpowered squall bristles with raw energy.
BORKNAGAR’S sound quality is so high that it’s hard to believe they are not sitting together. Complete with keyboards and a live fiddle player, they deliver a transcendent experience and the feeling is pure bliss. VOIVOD’S two songs, Obsolete Beings and Orb Confusion, play out as low-budget videos from the early days of MTV, with Denis ‘Snake’ Bélanger lip-syncing his vocals while staring out his front window as the band freak out on their dizzying blend of thrash, punk and avant-garde. INSOMNIUM follow from an empty club, but the energy and video production of their two-song set are frustratingly low. As a bonus, Sweden’s
DEAD LORD cap things off with a pair of belters, including the supremely fun Don’t Give A Damn. The return of live music remains distant and uncertain, but Century Media have given us a badly needed dose of heavy metal festival escapism. Bring on the next one!
ADAM REES/JOE DALY