RADAR FESTIVAL 2022
CASINO NIGHTCLUB, GUILDFORD
Leprous, Haken and Conjurer lead a three-day show of forward-thinking force GUILDFORD’S PROGRESSIVE METAL
weekender has returned after a three-year hiatus to find new time signatures to bludgeon your brains with. Following a string of locally sourced warm-up acts, DEVIL SOLD HIS
SOUL are the first proper draw on Friday.
It’s an uphill battle for the post-hardcore connoisseurs. They’re down a guitarist and saddled with a poor mix, but when they click, they’re untouchable. Unjustly stuffed into the basement that is the second stage are
PRESS TO MECO, whose genre-splicing rock deserves to be cramming stadiums. Upstairs,
HUMANITY’S LAST BREATH bring the beefy slam, offset by a bit more beefy slam. Experimental they ain’t, but they’re heavier than a continental shelf. Headliners LEPROUS rock up 25 minutes late, although the second they open with the lush Out Of Here, all is forgiven. Slave and From The Flame are progressive pop-metal masterclasses, the sound is flawless and strobe lights flash so wildly they may as well be spelling out “fucking rad” in Morse code.
EL MOONO are greeted by a minuscule turnout on Saturday, for which Guildford should hang its head in shame. Their indieflecked groove metal packs more wallop than
THECITYISOURS, whose electronicore is limp enough to make Attack Attack! sound like Ulcerate. Calls for movement are left
unanswered by the crowd. BLACK ORCHID EMPIRE cleanse palates with their roaring riffs and rock refrains, just in time for
CONJURER to lay waste to Radar. Since emerging in 2016 they’ve been British metal’s nastiest force, and they pummel the crowd into submission. Band of the weekend.
With a six-piece line-up that includes three guitarists, BOSSK forgo their post-rock atmospheres and continue the violence unabated as fill-in singer Simon Wright deals the killing blow with his roar. Below deck,
CABAL’S deathcore is as delicate as a Freddy Krueger handjob. Space is tight, but there’s always room for a pit when the beatdowns hit this hard. SOEN surf in on a wave of melodic prog metal anthems, with tracks like Antagonist and Monarch upholding the genre’s predilection for bombastic choruses, if not the mind-warping song structures. Despite being delayed by tech troubles, A.A. WILLIAMS is a beautifully sombre counterweight. She floors the second stage with her heartbreaking meditations – until the annoyingly punctual
HAKEN arrive upstairs and drown her out. The headliners are especially rowdy, having found an affinity for balls-out metal on their Vector/virus albums. Prosthetic punctures with staccato thrash riffs, before Nil By Mouth feeds Guildford chugging djent. They’ve never projected as powerfully as they do tonight. PALM READER expand their line-up to smack Radar with a wall of sound on Sunday, as Josh Mckeown’s voice soars with emotive choruses. You needn’t be a fortune-teller to know they’ll go far. Juxtaposing silly sax toots with barrelling drums, POLY-MATH make jazz burly as fuck. They go harder than actual ‘metal’ band HACKTIVIST – the rap rockers that can’t coherently rap or pen a rock hook. In contrast, CAGE FIGHT’S supply the piss and vinegar, their snarling, crossover thrash metal making for a relentless 40 minutes.
The weekend’s biggest crowd swarms for PLINI. The guitar god is prog’s Snuggie, enveloping Guildford with his smooth-as-silk solos and warm, welcoming banter. Also, his technical perfection makes the metalcore heavies below, OUR HOLLOW, OUR HOME,
sound like sulking toddlers. Even when they break into pop refrains like Loneshark’s, it’s never as bewitching as what’s gone down upstairs. At least DIRTY LOOPS’ danceable funk-jazz ends the weekend on a high, concluding a sold-out day with thousands sashaying their way back home.