Gig Review: Incineration Fest, London (12-13 May 2018)

Despite a price increase from last year, the lure of a great atmosphere at the festival along with some quality bands, including Taake, Abbath and Rotting Christ, was strong enough to get me to London for the second year in a row. Once again the festival did not disappoint and the lack of clashes saw me running between the adjoining venues of The Dome and Boston Music Rooms for the entire run of the event.

Here are some of my personal highlights from the two days.

Rotting Christ (c) Exposing Shadows Photography

Ereskigal

Local black metal band Ereskigal started the festival off in style. Despite a bit of a delay with the queue, the venue quickly filled up with an enthusiastic crowd. A great presence on stage with singer ‘E’ sporting a healthy amount of blood and corpse paint. Definitely worth checking out and I hope to see them on more bills in the future.

Auri

Whilst Auri also describe themselves as black metal, they were a complete change of pace. Brutal heaviness combined with ethereal instrumental sections created a dark moody atmosphere.

Martyrium

Malta’s Martyrium announced just before the fest that they had changed their singer and this was singer Sandra Misanthrope’s second show with the band. The masked figure arrived on stage and she delivered a stunning performance over the band’s symphonic black metal.

The Crawling (c) Exposing Shadows Photography

The Crawling

Another change of pace as death/doom band The Crawling take to the stage with both new track “Promises and Parasites” and older track “The Right to Crawl” receiving a great reception from the crowd. They hit the UK again next week, be sure and check them out if they are near you.

Cancer

The UK death metal veterans brought the classic tracks out for this show with little ditties such as “C.F.C”, “Hung, Drawn & Quartered” and “Tasteless Incest”. A stripped back stage show but didn’t have any have any less of an impact.

Taake

A raw and intense performance from Norway’s Taake. Frontman Hoest was commanding on stage but not without humour at the crowd surfers attempting to scramble onto the stage. A memorable performance.

Having had a little too much fun at the after party on Saturday, day 2 started a little later for me.

Auri (c) Exposing Shadows Photography

Sarkom

The sheer extremity of Sarkom’s performance certainly blew the cobwebs off. Erik Unsgaard is an intimidating powerful force on the stage. Be sure and check them out the next time they are playing near you.

Stahlsarg

Sarkom’s touring partners Stahlsarg combined a nice dynamic of fast and slow guitar riffs and demonstrated why they are the rising stars of the UK black metal scene. They used the lights and smoke to create a very effective stage show. I look forward to seeing them again at this year’s Mammothfest.

Taake (c) Exposing Shadows Photography

Demonic Resurrection

Having travelled from India it was great to see the reception blackened death metal band Demonic Resurrection received from the crowd. One of the biggest pits of the weekend occurred during “Apocalyptic Dawn”.

Rotting Christ

Without a doubt, the overall highlight of the weekend for me was Rotting Christ and judging by the crowd response many felt the same. They were everything that you could want in a headline band. “Agape Satana” was the perfect combination of light and dark as was “Sanctus Diavolos”. “Grandis Spiritus Diavolos” was crushingly heavy and saw the security guards kept busy.

Once again Incineration Fest provided a great weekend of extreme metal and I will eagerly await the announcements for 2019.

Photos by Exposing Shadows Photography

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Anon
Anon
May 19, 2018 3:10 PM

No review of Abbath or Master’s Hammer?

Kerri
Kerri
Reply to  Anon
May 19, 2018 3:19 PM

Hi, no as I am photographer and therefore just wrote a few words about my personal highlights of the weekend rather than an actual review.

Mosh
Admin
Reply to  Anon
May 25, 2018 11:14 AM

As Kerri said – unfortunately we just can’t manage to get a photographer _and_ a writer to every event. The staggering number of live shows around these days, plus the fact that all of our crew have “real” jobs as well just makes it impossible. Most of our photographers are kind enough to draft a few words to go with their great pictures, though! :)