ArcTanGent Festival 2022: The Review – Friday

Covet deliver an antidote to the musical neuroticism that came before them. Well and truly packing out the main stage, the American math-rock duo are airy and buoyant as their wholesome take on deeply technical math rock pacifies the thousands before them. Despite their profoundly intricate and bedazzling performance, a sense of good-natured humbleness runs parallel across tracks such as ‘Parachute’ and ‘Shibuya’, resulting in nothing but smiles not only off stage, but upon the faces of the band as well. It’s certainly a contrast to the scenes across the over end of the festival though, where Tuskar coat the PX3 Stage and it’s inhabitants in obsidian sludge. Across their set, the group unfurl their dense and raw sound like a wild animal set to strike, only highlighting the feral qualities within their primordial sound.

As the late summer sun beams down, the imagery conjured by Slow Crush’s name might seem at odds with their music, but over their set on the Yohkai stage they create a dreamlike atmosphere heightened by swirling guitars and airy vocals that are akin to being gradually smothered and crushed by the sheer beauty of their music. The smoke-wreathed stage practically glows from the lighting shooting through the fog, while the tent stand enraptured by their gorgeously heavy shoegaze.

Related: ArcTanGent Festival 2022: The Review – Wednesday

Meanwhile, Cork’s finest God Alone counteract the serenity emitted from the Yohkai with pure unfiltered hyper-mania. Performing tracks from their upcoming LP ETC, the group duck and dive through both time signatures and genres as a whole whilst they perform their approach to what is essentially metallic dance music for the mentally dispatched. Attacking their respective instruments much like they defile the concept of genre as a whole, the group whip up a joyous frenzy of sound, with the newly premiered ‘Kung Fu Treachery’ showing the band’s focus on ardent nonconformity and untamed energy at the cost of their own wellbeing. It’s truly absolute carnage in every way possible; their live sound presents itself as bladed melee between genres for supremacy and it’s impossible to find oneself dragged into the musical brawl that God Alone brilliantly instigate.

Much akin to their Irish predecessors, Oranssi Pazuzu embody the most extreme fringes of ArcTanGent with their cosmic, phenomenally weird take on black metal. Theirs is an uncompromising vision of extremity and the avant-garde, booming out over the stunned main stage crowd. Weird, obtuse and inaccessible – but thoroughly compelling.

Photo Credit:

Jonathan Dadds

Following this comes this festival’s most heartbreaking story. Unfortunately at every festival there’s an act that get their set cut short due to technical issues. Sadly this year’s most unlucky act is the highly anticipated Bruit≤, with the French post rockers only getting to perform less than half of their allocated time slot. What makes this sting even more is the fact that the when do actually get to perform they’re awe-inspiringly incredible. The performance of the first movement from their latest record The Machine Is Burning And Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again is articulated with staggering amounts of precision that only highlights the nuanced emotion running within the synthetic beats and dramatic strings that drive it. The only silver lining here is that there’s no doubt that many will be grabbing tickets for Damnation Festival for their next UK performance.

Thankfully, Alpha Male Tea Party are a cause for celebration. Their appearance may have been called into doubt following the theft of their gear just days prior, but their set is a boisterous demonstration on how just how life-affirming and empowering math-rock can be when performed with the right outlook. A true hero’s return for the band, one that hopefully numbs the pain the band experienced on the run-up to this festival.

As the vast consumption of bunny chow marks the day slipping to evening, it’s time for a band that have become synonymous with this festival; Caspian. Returning to ArcTanGent for the third time, the American post-rockers are warm and joyous to behold as they level the main stage with pure finesse. It’s a powerhouse of a set, one that not only highlights the dichotomy of their sound with the ethereal ‘Flowers Of Light’ and ‘Gone In Bloom And Bough’ contrasting brilliantly with the all-conquering onslaughts of ‘Arcs Of Light’ and ‘Collapser’ but one that also see’s the band ecstatic to be here alongside like minded folk. There’s a real and tangible connection between the band and crowd this evening, and it’s clear that no matter how many times Caspian return, they will be always be welcomed with open arms.

Back on the Bixlar, Though Rivers Of Nihil don’t have a live saxophonist – a real shame with how prominent it’s been on their last two albums – their technical, progressive death metal goes down a storm to a packed out tent. They draw heavily from arguable career high Where Owls Know My Name, though latest album The Work is still well-represented. They sound simply huge and the band are both incredibly tight during songs and jovial between, proving once again that serious music doesn’t have to be taken entirely seriously all the time.

Photo Credit:

Jonathan Dadds

In relation, this is something also made evident by Straight Girl performing simultaneously within the Elephant In The Bar Room. Appearing like a villain from an animated film of yesteryear, the self-proclaimed rave grave succubus not as much treats the crowd before them to possessive and hyper-aggressive EDM as much as they violently baptise them in it. It’s a hammering tour-de-force of violent and ghastly dance and despite the juxtaposition between their work and the metallic intensity paramount across the day, Straight Girl is joyous as they assault listeners, climbing across the nearby bar and stage itself with devilish playfulness. If anything, this set is proof that electronic dance music of this nature not only has a place at ArcTanGent, but it should be championed and promoted; get them on main stage next year please, Straight Girl could easily pilot the worlds biggest conga line at this very festival.

Return to once again levelling post rock, MONO take the sense of contrast and juxtaposition demonstrated by Caspian and exaggerate it to overwhelming degrees. Truly masters of their craft and seemingly knowing of it, the Japanese post rocker’s set is distilled emotion presented in potent musical form this evening, with their set going from making one feel like they’re about to cry to sounding like they’re about to bring down the wrath of the heavens and bring a biblical end of the world with mere minutes in between. It’s absolutely goose-bump inducing, a fact made evident with an incredible and emotional performance of ‘Innocence’. However, it’s the closer of ‘Com(?)’ that truly overwhelms the senses; as guitarist Takaakira Goto literally screams into his pickups on the devastating closing passage one is left awestruck bar from the lingering inner thought of how this stage is still standing against such an offensive of overbearing post metal.

Immediately after, The Yohkai stage is once again heaving before a band are on; this time for the Swiss-American maverick that is Manuel Gagneux and his soul/gospel/black metal outing, the idiosyncratic Zeal & Ardor. From a storming opening of Church Burns, Gotterdammerung and ‘Ship On Fire’, they simply don’t let up. Their stage presence is electrifying, every person onstage animated; they clearly live and breathe the band, and it shows. There’s a real sense that the crowd know they’re witnessing something incredibly special; by the time Zeal & Ardor close with the still-unreleased ‘Baphomet’, they’ve well and truly made ArcTanGent their own.

Photo Credit:

Joe Singh

Also making this festival their own is a last minute addition to the festival – Scalping. Whilst no stranger to the festival, the dark electronic collective have undertaken quite the transformation since their last appearance in 2018, with their recent debut LP Void projecting them into the forefront of the nations electronic scene. With that in mind, there’s no question of their right to headline the Bixlar stage this evening, and as the band tear through content from that record it’s clear that Scalping are no longer the hopefuls that appeared here four years prior. Backed by a stage sized screen displaying 3D rendered displays of body horror, it’s nigh on impossible not be indoctrinated into the hivemind of gyrating bodies that Scalping invigorate, with tracks such as ‘Silhouettes’ and ‘Cloak & Dagger’ making the Bixlar tent appear as if the band took a tent from Tokyo World prior to reengineering it for the dark and progressively minded. Truthfully, this set is completely hypnotic and it’s utterly impossible to defy the complex rhythms and melodies on show that fight the stereotypical perceptions of modern dance. Much akin to acts such as Aphex Twin and Massive Attack, this headline set shows that Scalping are here to sway the course of electronic dance – not through force – but with intelligence.

With the sun now set, the time for headliners has come. On the PX3, Palm Reader jokingly note they’re regularly called the UK’s most underrated band. From the rammed tent here, you might not agree; it’s clear they’ve got an appreciative crowd even when they clash with the prog metal titans TesseracT. By the third song, they’ve already brought out the big guns with fan favourite oldie ‘Swarm’, while Hold/Release and ‘Stay Down’ from the impeccable Sleepless show just how much the band have evolved sonically from the chaotic roots of ‘Internal Winter’. There’s a few sound gremlins, but nothing that isn’t ironed out soon enough, and closer ‘Both Ends Of The Rope’ sounds simply colossal. If they’re still the UK’s most underrated band in a year or two, the scene truly will have failed them.

Speaking of TesseracT, after years of sub-headlining and playing second fiddle here, some may have had their doubts on their ability to headline this festival – especially alongside Cult Of Luna and Opeth. However, anyone who originally had such doubts would have had them quelled by the end of this performance. Performing a career spanning setlist that showcasing both the subtle and overt changes within their sound over the last decade or so, the djent trendsetters sound as if they’ve been instilled with a newfound sense of confidence and purpose this evening, with frontman Dan Tompkins sounding better than ever before in particular. As he drives cuts from Altered States and choice selections from Sonder and Polaris – with his falsettos soaring to meet the lasers flying overhead – it’s perfectly clear that he was born to be a natural frontman.

Of course though, it’s triple whammy of the first three movements of ‘Concealing Fates’ that drive the capacity crowd into a frenzy. ‘Part 2: Deception’ ignites one of the most energised receptions of the whole weekend and as the crowd before them collectively loses their mind the band seem perfectly capable to tap back into the fury that fuelled their old material despite the aforementioned evolution in sound the’ve undertaken. Though in similar vein the showcase of new song ‘Natural Disaster’ is rife with the said aggression, and with it’s polyrhythmic delivery, it appears TesseracT’s sound has come full circle, something noticed and celebrated by the thousands gathered this evening. Regardless, this impeccable headline set counteracts the negative connotations of the djent movement; it solidifies the genre’s longevity and plays hosts to the fact that without TesseracT, the genre – and probably his festival as a whole – could never have achieved the success they could have achieved independently. An incredible end to an incredible day.