Pete Wall
Arriving at Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms and Stealth just around the corner from the famed Rock City, it’s immediately clear that Mangata is a festival run by true enthusiasts. The exterior of the venues is wrapped in a queue that snakes towards the wristband exchange and a hive of activity. Festival staff and volunteers are on hand to make sure everyone gets in as quickly as humanly possible, and we feel like we’re very much in safe hands. On entering the exterior courtyard that sits outside the entrances to both Rescue Rooms and Stealth, the vibes are absolutely immaculate: food is sizzling away to one side, iced coffee is giving people life on the other side, and the bars are beginning to fill with those ready to get on it from the off. With a line up to blow the socks off anyone with even a passing interest in alternative heavy music, this promises to be one hell of a day.
Judging by the raw exuberance and relentless hyperactivity of Nottingham’s own Wolves Don’t Sleep, they are a band who are determined to make the absolute most of their early slot in their hometown. Through the course of their set the six-piece metalcore outfit throw everything at the wall and a decent amount of it sticks. The stage is a hive of activity as they lay down slabs of djenty, black-metal-tinged aggression. Their most recent addition, Alex Carrman, handles samples and electronics but sidelines in two-stepping, headbanging, and general rabble rousing when left at a loose end. Frontman Stephen Bond is a ball of energy in corpse paint and seems genuinely overcome by the turnout as he looks out and tells the mass of gathered heads that their presence “makes everything we do feel so much more worthwhile”. Ending their set with the call-and-response, “In a world full of sin / Remember that love always wins”, there’s something deeply earnest and almost wholesome about the band, and it clearly connects as a good number of new fans are converted in front of their eyes. Even at this early stage, there’s no shortage of love in the room.
Glasgow death metal four-piece Scordatura are not messing around. Their brand of chunky, muscular, riff-heavy filth seems to get more and more potent as the set progresses. The band settle into a groove and never let up and when your frontman looks fresh from the gym in a sleeveless Suffocation shirt, you kind of know what you’re getting. With Scottish heavy music on such a tear at the moment across post-metal in particular, it’s incredibly satisfying to see a band this tight and compelling in a genre that can drift into repetition and stasis at times. Just before anyone starts beard-stroking too hard at the death metal show, the band let us know that they’re about to play a track about Lovecraftian beasts taking your orifices, and the ensuing horror is an absolute treat.
There were whispers early doors that Ward XVI were a band not to be missed and as a packed Rock City Beta room looks on, it’s pretty easy to see why. A full carnival of outfits, makeup, and stylistic flourishes make the band an absolute feast for the eyeballs. What’s instantly noticeable as well is the level of devoted fandom that Ward XVI have cultivated; a group of girls front-and-centre are dressed to the nines and in absolute lock-step with each section of the show. And boy is it a show! At one point the bass player is stabbed to death, and slumps to his knees as he continues to play, while the singer walks off stage and returns in a full-blown straightjacket as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. Call it ‘horror metal’, or call it ‘shock rock’, one thing you can’t call this band and their all-in commitment to the bit is forgettable.
Tealdeer are all over the map, in the best possible sense, throwing heavy breakdowns, classic rock, post-rock and flashes of daft System of a Down-style chaos into the same set. The whole endeavour could easily feel disjointed, but there’s enough energy and conviction to hold everything together, particularly when the style switching is so fluid and frontman Ted Claxton is stirring the crowd up like his life depends on it. We get crowd interaction to a level that is unmatched throughout the day: strangers hug, friends dance arm-in-arm, and the frenetic vibe of the whole thing never really lets up. The perfect encapsulation of the show comes when the strains of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Will Always Love You’ fill the room before Claxton rips through the intro with a guttural scream. It’s ridiculous, funny and genuinely effective, and you’d have to be pretty cold-hearted not to be swept away.
With their infectious sound, exuberant stage presence, and embracing of numerous guest vocalists, A-Tota-So shows feel like celebrations of the scene as much as they are showcases for the band’s excellent material. This time out they’re joined by Ari from Hidden Mothers for a belter of a cameo, before switching him out for bandmate Liam in tandem with The Grey’s Andy Price. The intensity of both guest-assisted performances feels like it could melt steel and A-Tota-So hold the room in a tight grip throughout the set as they bounce between the eclectic textures of their catalogue. The show falls right on the heels of the release of stellar new record I Told You So and just as that record’s title serves to clarify the band’s name, their set makes abundantly clear that this is a band on the up and up.
You Win Again Gravity sound like a more muscular version of a band like Further Seems Forever, bringing a weight and physicality to their melodic post-hardcore that works particularly well in the confines of Stealth’s tight downstairs room. There’s a ton of melody in the mix, but it’s the sheer heft of the performance that makes the biggest impression, with the band sounding considerably bigger than the stage might suggest. It’s an energetic start to the afternoon and a reminder that this kind of emotionally charged guitar music still has plenty of life in it when played with this much force.
Just prior to the festival getting underway, the news did the rounds that bassist and vocalist Liam Knowles would be departing Hidden Mothers, with the Mangata set being the first of three final shows for the existing lineup. Given Liam’s significant role in the band, his formidable stage presence, and his reputation as an all-around good guy on the scene, there is a different kind of heaviness in the room as the Sheffield four-piece take the stage. Battling some early issues with the in-ear monitors and the mix, it feels as though the set could get away from Hidden Mothers, but they pull through valiantly and gradually find their stride. Lead guitarist Luke Scrivens’ vocals are sublime as usual, cutting through the dense post-hardcore instrumentation with the kind of emotional clarity that has become such a defining part of their sound. Despite the early hiccups and sense of a chapter coming to a close, there’s something genuinely special about the performance, particularly when the band speaks about Liam’s exit. The affection in that moment says as much about the bond between the members as the music itself, giving an already intense set a heightened cathartic edge.
Tayne create a strange, hypnotic tension, pairing an almost mesmeric vocal delivery with a punishing instrumental backbone. The downstairs room at Stealth is fairly sparsely occupied to begin with, with viral favourites Raised by Owls drawing many to a packed-out Rescue Rooms, but the low lighting, red glow and sudden punches of strobe make the set feel genuinely immersive regardless of the crowd size. As the performance progresses, more people filter in and the room begins to really get moving. There’s something very cool about seeing the energy rising steadily as a room fills in real time. Those who have seen Tayne before don’t need to be told, but for the remainder of those gathered are well and truly won over by the time it’s all said and done.
It’s hard to put into words the effect that an Overhead, the Albatross set can have on a person. The Dublin five-piece make music that is profoundly moving in a way that creeps up on you, and before you know it you feel it in the pit of your stomach, in your chest, and behind your eyes. There’s always an emotional openness to their post-rock, but this feels like the point where everything clicks more completely than ever before. Perhaps it’s the confines of the sub-300-cap room; maybe it’s the proximity to the band, but whatever it is, the atmosphere is electric. The band deliver a masterclass in heart-on-sleeve post-rock. From the layers of opening track ‘L’appel Du Vide’ to the music-as-group-therapy of closer ‘Paul Lynch’, the set is awash with human feeling and a sense that the music has a genuine reason to exist beyond textures and tones. When sound, setting, and sentiment all come together like this, it’s life-affirming and overwhelmingly beautiful.
The Grey are a band that are absolutely at the top of their game. Their sound has always been about layers of heaviness and sonic exploration, but live those layers seem to stack higher and hit harder every time, with each of the three members contributing equally to the sheer weight of the experience. Bassist Andy Price appears to give a piece of himself to every performance, not least during the deeply passionate call to support one another through life’s turmoil that opens standout track ‘Chvrch’. At the same time guitarist Charlie Gration is barefoot and as locked in as ever, and Steve Moore hammers away on his kit with full-blooded conviction. The Grey simply wouldn’t know how to half-arse a show. They play like they mean every note, and tonight they sound enormous, with their 50-minute set flying by in a blur of post-metal reverie.
The Nordic Giants live show involves a seamless marriage of aural and visual creativity. The two mysterious feathered men on stage go by Löki and Rôka and their deft, intelligent post-rock is synced expertly with a series of engrossing short films, with each element amplifying and intensifying the other. Such is the symbiotic relationship between what the audience hears and sees that it feels less like watching a band and more like being immersed in a piece of all-encompassing art. A certain quotient of the sounds and images may be within familiar territory by now, but Nordic Giants have developed such a distinct way of combining them that it still feels unlike watching anyone else. For instance, a sequence depicting a couple falling towards the ground while reaching for each other and embracing is particularly striking, perfectly matching the scale and melancholy of the music and making the whole thing almost dreamlike. The experience is so singular and sublime that it’s hard to imagine what could enhance it any further; perhaps cinema seats or flotation tanks for next time?
Giant Walker bring a much more immediate, bouncy energy to the room than some of the acts that have graced the stage throughout the day, with enough richness and weight to keep things constantly engaging, while still getting people to a point where they let go of their inhibitions and really start to move. Their longer set could easily risk dragging, particularly after such a packed day, but they fill the extra time with an ease that makes the length fade entirely into the background. Dropping in arguably their biggest song ‘Silhouettes’ before the halfway mark is indicative of the kind of fully justified confidence the band have in their ability to keep a firm hold of a crowd. There’s a bona fide sense of connection and respect between the band and the room, and by the end Giant Walker have their audience exactly where they want it: bouncing, dancing, and expending every last bit of their energy. They close the set with ‘Coda’, the closing track from 2022’s All in Good Time. As Steff Fish sings the final lines, “Tell me, where do we belong?”, one entirely valid answer is right here in this moment.