DAMNATION FESTIVAL
“GLOWING RUNES AT THE BACK OF THE STAGE LEND AN EXTRA SENSE OF THEATRICALITY THAT IS MORE IN LINE WITH GENESIS THAN THE NORWEGIAN BANDS ENSLAVED FIRST ROSE WITH.”
VENUE BEC ARENA, MANCHESTER DATE 03/11/2023-04/11/2023
Almost 20 years since it was founded, Damnation Festival has long been a champion of metal’s underground. But a move to Manchester’s BEC Arena (formerly Bowlers Exhibition Centre) in 2022 expanded both the festival’s capacity and scope for programming, and even its preliminary evening, A Night Of Salvation, has expanded to bigger bands this year. The line-up boasts a litany of exclusive album-in-full sets covering a spread of subgenres and styles that, while not all progfriendly, certainly adhere to a principle of progressive, challenging music.
By the time Enslaved released 2003’s Below The Lights, they were well on the way to embracing the prog sensibilities that would let them slip the bonds of black metal. Playing the record in full, the shift has never been more apparent. The Dead Stare introduces a Voivodlike dark psych freak-out, while The Crossing
intertwines blast-beats with nimble acoustic guitars à la Blackwater Park-era
Opeth. There’s a sense of ponderousness to the set, however, as the record doesn’t fully hit the highs of its successor, Isa.
Leprous have no such issues. “This album is where we really started to find our character,” frontman Einar Solberg offers by way of introduction to a full playthrough of 2013’s Coal,
tackling the material with a sense of panache and dynamism that makes the set thrilling. Off-kilter rhythms and soaring vocal melodies put the band through their paces, but with each fresh flourish and stylistic left-turn – jazzy syncopated beats meet with snarling metal on Chronic, Echo
shifts from metronomic riffs to nimblefingered guitar picking – they affirm their creative brilliance.
It’s testament to Damnation’s shifting sense of scope that Katatonia eschew their deathdoom and gothic roots to instead explore 2012’s Dead End Kings, the album that saw them go full prog. The resultant set offers grandiose melodies in the massive setting they deserve, and the appearance of The Gathering vocalist Silje Wergeland on The One You Are Looking For Is Not Here recreates their sublime collaboration from 2015’s Sanctitude to lend an extra-special sense of occasion to the set.
While death metal and sludge riffs provide a stomach-churning start to the festival proper on Saturday, Nordic Giants emerge as a singular and distinctive force. Dressed in outfits halfway between Peter Pan’s lost boys and The
Wicker Man, their set is an audiovisual extravaganza with short movies playing out onscreen as the two-piece play sweeping, emotive melodies and epic compositions. Loki and Rôka switch instruments from keys to trombone, drums to guitar – played with a bow, naturally – as each song requires, tapping into the weightless transcendence of trip-hop via the cosmic melancholy Pink Floyd could so often inhabit. Floyd even get a cheeky nod as one film showcases the iconic marching hammers and a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flash of The Wall art.
Adorned with colourful lights like, well, a Christmas tree, Julie Christmas has an undeniably ethereal presence onstage,
headbanging and shifting like a malfunctioning automaton with an exaggerated stiffness that only accentuates the awning riffs her band play, like someone took whale song and gave it a metal soundtrack, the set a disorienting but thrilling experience.
Unfortunate sound issues mean Katatonia start their second set of the weekend much later than planned and are also forced to play a truncated version. That doesn’t stop them from triumphing in spite of it all, however. The live debut of No Beacon To Illuminate Our Fall kicks things off with twisting, turning rhythms, while eventual closer Behind The Blood throws a bit of welcome arena-rock-style guitar grandstanding into the mix.
Winding the clocks back to their 1994 debut Vikingligr Veldi, one might think Enslaved would find prog in short supply as they return to their black metal roots. Credit to Håkon Vinje, then, whose keys add a swirling prog mysticism to the band’s early material. Glowing runes at the back of the stage lend an extra sense of theatricality that is much more in line with Genesis than the Norwegian bands Enslaved first rose with, showing just how much they have evolved over the past 30 years.