Following the highly successful 2021 post-lockdown return of Damnation Festival to Leeds University, 2022 sees the event move back to its original home city of Manchester, now expanded to take place in the 6000-capacity BEC Arena.

 

The move, whilst probably inevitable, was always going to be something of a gamble. Some of the smaller rooms at the Leeds, Damnation were getting dangerously crammed, and the festival’s repute, ticket-buying demand, and band-booking clout had outgrown its former venue. But, on the other hand, many had come to regard the Leeds University Union, for all its quirks and eccentricities, as Damnation’s home.

DUNCAN

At Friday’s A Night of Salvation warm-up event, the atmosphere in the warehouse-like BEC Arena doesn’t quite reach the warm and welcoming community experience that Leeds has offered. Perhaps it’s unfair to make the comparison, given that only one of the three stage areas (all pretty huge) is open, and only small proportion of the audience have arrived; but walking around the venue felt a little cold — both physically and emotionally.

Thankfully, the same can’t be said for Friday’s performances. The sound is crisp and clear, the lighting (once it hits its stride) clear and evocative, and the acts deliver the goods to a highly appreciative (and, by the end, joyfully inebriated) audience.

 

RICH

Made it through the rush hour traffic, and the crowds just in time to catch most of Mastiff’s early opening set on the Holy Goat Brewing stage, and I wasn’t disappointed with my efforts. Mastiff are a great live band, heavy as balls, gritty sounding sludgy hardcore: Very nice!

Singer Jim barking dryly at the audience makes me appreciate, whilst being bludgeoned by the sound spitting out of the PA, that they’re very aptly named. The room was already half full at such an early hour just how much Damnation has grown. This stage will be the second room of tomorrow’s festivities and it’s massive! Playing some new songs, Mastiff open up the Night of salvation in style and it’s always a pleasure to catch them live

Next up we have the phenomenal Pupil Slicer, A band with no small amount of hype around them, who famously went from playing small gigs when we went into lockdown to playing to thousands on the way out of it all. It’s easy to see why Mirrors was a masterpiece and live it takes on a whole new level. The band who have just spent 28 days recording the follow up to Mirrors are incredible live, like a ball of pure chaos made flesh and it’s glorious to witness.

Sharp angular jarring riffs and wonderfully complicated polyrhythms weave labyrinthine around each other. I’m immediately reminded of watching The Dillinger Escape Plan damn near tear the venue apart when they headlined Damnation back in 2010, still one of my favourite gigs of all time. By the time they got to ‘Wounds Upon My Skin’, I was lost entirely in the moment, only to gain clarity after having spent a smallish fortune on their merch. This is potent ferocious stuff, it’s no wonder everyone and their dog is trying to get Pupil Slicer to play their festival.

 

If there’s one thing that defines Damnation I’d probably say it was the worship of the titanic riff. Whilst not as intense as Pupil Slicer, Ithaca were powerful and heavy, and provide plenty of those riffs. Metallic hardcore with plenty of post-Rock calming interludes their set built up and built up into something powerful enough to get the crowd surfers going.

DUNCAN

Following sets from Mastiff, Pupil Slicer and Ithaca, We Lost The Sea perform Departure Songs in full. The magical set burns slowly but assuredly through melancholic quasi-folk and fragile jazz-enriched ambience, its steadily building flames eventually becoming raging fires of post-rock catharsis.

Celeste, who take the stage adorned with red head-torches, follow with a relentlessly demonic and terrifyingly miserable set, full of dread-laced and disorientating guitar textures and bludgeoning breakdowns.

SATURDAY:

Saturday’s main event immediately radiates the essence of Damnation that was muted at best the previous evening. Part of what people love about the festival is the social aspect — existing for a whole day in a space entirely populated by members of a subculture who, for all their subdivisions and occasional factionalism, share an implicit understanding and commonality. People catch up with friends they only see once a year, and bond with strangers over their shared musical passions. The opening up of all rooms, now bristling with black-clad bodies and beaming faces, blasts away the erstwhile atmosphere and temperature issues and, happily, the spirit lives on in its new home.

 

That’s not to say that there aren’t any teething problems. Food queues are outrageously long at peak times, there is no non-alcoholic beer at the bars, good vegan food is difficult to find, the eating and drinking areas are all outside in the cold, and it is nigh-on impossible to find a cab or any other public transport out of the venue at the end of the night. It would be churlish to suggest that these have any deeply negative impact on what is, after all, a new venture in an untested environment. But many will hope that consideration will be given to these things before next year.

Frayle open the day’s proceedings with their romantic and gothic “witchy” doom metal. The band’s first UK performance, it’s a visually striking and sonically foreboding set that packs a sensual and ethereal punch, if such a thing can exist.

 

 

 

BRVIT are late to start due, I presume, to their complex and unusual stage setup that features cello and violin. When they do start the sound is wonderfully clear, as brooding glitchy electronics trade places with mournful post rock and deliciously odd experimentalism.

Insanity Alert lighten the mood with an intentionally ridiculous onslaught of fast grinding hardcore mayhem with a whole lot of audience participation. They end with a reworked and turbocharged cover of Iron Maiden’s “Run to the Hills” — “run to the pit / mosh for your life”!

So Hideous’ blasting frenzy of experimental black metal feels like a roar of despair, anguish and liberation. Groove-rich ambient post-Rock segments provided breaks in the frenzy so that the desperation feels ever deeper when the chaos reignites.

Full of Hell provide yet more chaos with an intense and ever-changing set that encompasses screaming hardcore and discordant doom.

Pig Destroyer’s set requires intimate knowledge of their album Prowler in the Yard – performed here in full — to avoid miss-headbanging throughout a set that, like a dangerously desperate motorist with a death-wish, never seems to stay in the same lane for more than a few seconds. Their disciplined tightness is only outdone by their unstoppable energy.

Wolves In The Throne room provide the closest thing to a spiritual experience. Epic, sorrowful, evocative and beautiful, their wonderfully transcendental set culminates in ritualistic sage burning.

 

Godflesh manage to get past an initially very odd sound mix (that has the electronic drums absolutely swamped to the point of inaudibility by the all-encompassing guitar sound) and ultimately put their 1990s classic Streetcleaner across with not only punishing brutality but also a controlled sense of dynamic nuance. This was a very special set from Justin Broadrick and G.C. Green that offers something tangibly different from their “usual” show, but doesn’t skimp on the wall-of-noise ultra-heaviness that they do so well.

At The Gates somehow make intense and gut-punching melodic death metal seem effortless and even graceful. As they slide through Slaughter of the Soul groove after groove rains down upon the hungry audience. Peppered with impossibly slick lead guitar work, ludicrously tight drumming and Tomas Lindberg’s anguished growls, At The Gates’ set is suffused with a kind of cool calmness that radiates from just underneath the aggressive exterior.

 

Elder are also no strangers to the groove. Skittering between Zeppelin-esque riffy rock and progressive scuzz-doom, their epic and emotive songs often feel like 60s psychedelia put through a death metal filter.

 

Converge’s headline set begins with Jacob Bannon asking “are you ready; are you sure,” and then launches straight into a full rendition of their 2001 magnum opus Jane Doe. As you’d expect, it’s a superfast turbocharged whirlwind. Bannon is a force of nature, possessed with adrenaline-charged stage presence and superhuman energy. True to form, Converge show throughout this explosively dynamic set just how they have been able to subvert the lexicon of post-hardcore to create a kind of ever-evolving fusion that is entirely their own. Few bands can balance incisive technical precision, progressive and innovative musical arrangements, and raw and heartfelt punk rock rage like Converge do tonight. Their encore even includes an Entombed cover that elevates the enraptured audience beyond what seemed possible. A peerless set from a band who continue to push the boundaries and raise the bar.

 

Nobody could doubt that Damnation 2022 is victorious. Some will still miss the Leeds venue, and many will hope that the aforementioned little gripes can be rectified next time. But, ultimately, the hordes of metalheads from all corners of the UK and beyond leave with smiles on their faces and blastbeats ringing in their ears.

 

WORDS BY DUNCAN EVANS

PHOTOS BY RICH PRICE PHOTOGRAPHY