EUROPEAN METAL FESTIVAL ALLIANCE
Sabaton, Avatar and Rotting Christ join forces with a host of festival behemoths
FRIDAY
European Metal Festival Alliance is a live-streamed joint venture bringing together the best acts of 13 pandemic- halted independent festivals including Bloodstock, Brutal Assault, Dynamo, Midgardsblot and Summer Breeze, in a valiant attempt to conjure the much-missed metalhead communion that summer usually promises. make for a ceremonial start, clad in ornate robes on a stage dripping in human skulls, snake thrones (really) and candelabras, but their emotive black metal at times risks being eclipsed by the onstage pageantry. instantly pulverise with the death/grind of . Larissa Stupar’s raw-throated convulsions are a much-needed focal point as they decimate what preceded them. stand astride a stage incandescent with flaming candles and torches inside Midgardsblot’s reconstructed Gildehalle. While they lack Cult Of Fire’s theatrics, Dolk’s summoning screams prove why they are an enduring force. ’s set is pre-recorded, with a crowd in attendance, making the young trio’s potential-filled but nascent take on Machine Head/ Gojira-esque grooves and gang shouts feel kinetic, and they sign off with a none-more-metal Haka. Fittingly, although pre-recorded, ’s performance is utterly spellbinding. They play facing each other in a circle lit by a ring of fire at their centre, with void-piercing strobes all around, while Colin van Eeckhout’s conduit for raw human emotion flows freely from vulnerably beautiful to desperately, crushingly cataclysmic. ’s synth-elevated, clinical melodeath provides a satisfyingly brutal, if a little perfunctory, return to earth. pummel a Las Vegas throng, but despite Heidi Shepherd and Carla Harvey’s energetically bellicose stage command, theirs is an anodyne act of rebellion. round out day one with a pre-recorded set that begins with the slow-burn of and ramps up into an imperious statement of power. They conjure a reverent aura of sonorous blasphemy that they’ve honed as elder statesmen of the extreme arts. Non serviam!
