It’s spring bank holiday in the UK, which can mean only one thing; a long weekend of headbanging in London’s dingiest venues. 2019 marks the eighth edition of London’s Desertfest; a festival dedicated to the slow, the slower, and the heavy. With a healthy dose of bong and Satan worship thrown in for good measure. Continue reading
Desertfest London kicks off for their eighth edition today, taking place all weekend from 3rd May – 5th May 2019 in Camden, London UK. Tickets are still available at the link below. The fest is headed up by immense talents such as Om, Amenra, Fu Manchu, Electric Citizen, Black Tusk, Mondo Generator, Wovenhand, High Reeper, Kadavar, All Them Witches, The Skull and more! Get ready with our day by day list of must-see bands! Continue reading
Desertfest London is around the corner with just a month to go before the eighth edition. The fest had added the final dozen bands including an entire stage takeover from the incredible Black Deer festival! Their Sunday curation stage welcomes The Devonshire Arms, The Vanguards, The Fargo Railroad Co., The Southern Companion, The Outlaw Orchestra and more have been added such as Whoremoan, Cities of Mars, Orbital Junction, Drore, Årabrot, Vokonis, The Great Machine, and Wren. Desertfest takes over London 3rd May – 5th May 2019 | Camden, London UK. Tickets available at the link below. Continue reading
It’s the May Day bank holiday in London, which can only mean one thing; Deserfest! A weekend of avoiding the sun in the darkest and dingiest venues across Camden Town, listening to the darkest and dingiest stoner and doom music. Continue reading
London’s annual three-day festival to tune in, turn on and drop out: Desertfest is back this weekend. Ghost Cult will be on hand once again covering the fest which features headliners High On Fire, Graveyard, Warning, Eyehategod, Napalm Death, Weedeater, The Obsessed, Hawkwind, Church of Misery, Death Alley, Kind and more! We thought we would help all you heshers and hesherettes out with a fest preview of all the must-see bands, all the stage times, and other essential shit, which will give you all more time to find snacks, snake brews and find your missing rolling papers. They are in your hand, dude. Dig? Cool. Continue reading
This torturously heavy UK trio Monoliths is so recently formed that I couldn’t dig up anything on them for weeks. Knowing that it was comprised of members from Bismuth, Moloch and Ommadon, however, enlightened me to my fate for the following half-hour.
Getting crushed by a Fuck-off monster of a traction engine. If our US cousins aren’t too sure what one of those is…well, it’s not an easy way to go. The first of two colossal tracks on début Monoliths (Dry Cough Records /Crown & Throne Ltd.), ‘Perpetual Motion’, begins and ends with a disturbing fuzz that leaves you in no doubt what’s coming and, in closing, what has just been. Tanya Byrne’s swerving bass thrum knocks you off your feet but, as the track ebbs and flows, nuances appear as mini-crescendos swirling around the mind. David Tobin’s solo breaks the Om-esque hypnosis which the terrifying riff and Henry Davies’ wondrously tempered drums hammer through the solar plexus, hardly breaking the lumbering pace yet bewitching the senses with its pulverising might. I’m not usually one for instrumentals but this carries me to far-off lands on the back of a yeti.
The monumental, everlasting pummel of ‘The Omnipresence of Emptiness’ takes a short while to move through the volume, and to that familiar bass bellow. Yet when the whole thing crashes together it is a life-ending implosion, carrying depth and weight suitable for the occasion. Missing the latent groove of its forefather, subsequently this is the harder track with which to find an immediate affinity until the most unnerving, horrifying roar introduces a shattering solo. It’s here where one realises the flattening power of the drums, while the other ingredients of this plundering sortie become so unfathomably heavy I completely lost where I was, bemused by the sheer weight yet moved by a scintilla of emotion.
Look, this is no epiphany. It is, however, a near-perfect slab of evil Doom and an excuse for lovers of this stuff to completely lose their shit. In making something usually so monotonous and pulverising sound immediate, occasionally moving, and unmissable, Monoliths prove themselves an essential addition to the Low-end canon.
8.5/10.0
PAUL QUINN
Roadburn Festival has added Minsk, Mount Salem and Worm Ouroboros to their lineup for Thursday, April 9, 2015 at the 013. Goatwhore, Downfall of Gaia, Cortez, Fister and Moloch have been added at Cul de Sac.
However, Lord Mantis will no longer be performing and Fistula will be taking their place on April 11, 2015.
Curated by Ivar Bjørnson (Enslaved) and Wardruna‘s Einar “Kvitrafn” Selvik, Roadburn Festival 2015 (including Fields of the Nephilim, Anathema, Skuggsjá, Enslaved, Wardruna, Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin performing Dawn of The Dead and Susperia in its entirety, Zombi, Sólstafir, White Hills, Bongipper, Floor, Eyehategod and The Heads as Artist In Residence among others) will run from Thursday, April 9 to Sunday, April 12, 2015 at the 013 venue in Tilburg, The Netherlands.
