Heading today’s announcement are avant-garde metal troupe Zeal & Ardor, with their set coming following the release of hotly tipped new self-titled record in February next year. An ArcTanGent staple, their set follows on from their gargantuan appearance in 2019 and is poised to be one the biggest moments in the festival calender next year.
Also announced today are Mclusky*, The Armed, The Fall Of Troy, Delta Sleep, Oranssi Pazuzu, Rivers of Nihil, Intervals, Alpha Male Tea Party, IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT, Arabrot, Frontierer, Her Name Is Calla, BRUIT ≤, Down I Go, The Samuel Jackson Five, Castrovalva, Hail The Sun, Satyr, Psychonaut and URNE. They will be joining an already absurd lineup that features Cult Of Luna, Opeth, Maybeshewill, MONO, Alcest, Amenra, Oathbreaker and some of the best names in the global math rock, post rock and contemporary music scene.
On the subject of today’s announcement, festival head James Scarlett states; “Other than my 3 year old child, this line up is the best thing I have ever created. Hahaha… seriously! I really am so proud of this line up of bands and I honestly think 2022 will be the best ATG ever. There are more bands to come in a few weeks, but this should get you going for starters – just look at that beautiful line up poster! I should also point out that we’re already well on our way to a sell out for ATG 2022, so I suggest people get their tickets ASAP. See you in August!”
ArcTanGent 2022 takes place at Fernhill Farm, Bristol, between the dates of 17th – 19th August 2022. Understandably, with pursuits of all things contemporary and experimental attending from all over the world, tickets are already flying out and are set to sell out long in advance. Tickets can be found here and check out the lineup thus far below.
More women and people of colour are a part of heavy music now more than ever before, and indigenous bands, like New Zealand’s Alien Weaponry, are giving voices to cultures and countries that often found themselves on the outside looking in when it came to mainstream exposure in the metal community.
The trio, composed of brothers Lewis (guitar, vocals) and Henry de Jong (drums), and Turanga Morgan-Edmonds (bass), all are of Maori heritage and made a huge splash in 2018 with their debut record Tu, which seamlessly blended ferocious tribal groove metal with songs written in traditional Maori; calling awareness to a language and culture that is slowly being forgotten by the world at large, but is still a vital part of New Zealand and global past and present.
Now, the band is back with an even greater rallying cry in Tangaroa, a record that touches on history, environmentalism, and a deeper dive into inner darkness. We spoke with the band to discuss the record, the lessons they’ve learned since gaining the eyes of the metal press, and their upcoming tour with titans of metal, Gojira.
Lewis de Jong: “We wanted the record to sound raw and open, so yeah we definitely wanted a live sound. We always record our drums in a big room and we don’t close mic anything. We play through Marshall valve amps. We definitely have processes in place to get the sound we’re looking for, especially on this record.”
Lewis: “I think the last three years of my life have been more busy than any part of my life to date. A lot of things have happened: good, amazing, bad, terrible, you name it. It opened up a lot of things to write about, and I can’t really deal with them until I write them down. It’s difficult to deal with things though just talking.”
Henry de Jong: “Music, for Lewis and I is one of the biggest outlets we have as far as working through shit. I don’t know if I’ve ever been particularly at talking with people, but just being able to put our thoughts onto paper or into a song, there’s always something that is hugely beneficial for us. And as far as the songs we’re writing in Maori go, it’s what I’m passionate about and interested in, so for me it’s a really fun process to put all of that into something that tells a story in and of itself, and being able to research stuff that I don’t know a lot about. If I’m researching for a song topic that I don’t know much about but I’d like to, just doing that research is really fun.”
To be put simply, the latest single from the Welsh noise-rock harbingers Death Cult Electric is the musical equivalent of jamming a fork into an electrical outlet. The soundtrack to the imminent collapse of society and the feral orgy of violence that’s set to follow, ‘Snakes And Their Children’ implores one to forget our current way of living and to prepare for the changing of the tides with subtle industrialist post-punk textures and a delivery that’s as subtle as a taser to the frontal lobe. Those longing for an intoxicating dosage of overdriven distortion and dystopian discourse will certainly have such desires fulfilled with this, and as something that will most likely be proven soon, Death Cult Electric are essentially the soundtrack for the forthcoming downfall. – Dan Hillier
How would one describe Kite Thief? Imagine the sugar rush of Vukovi mixed with angular, serrated tech-metal orientated fretwork. It’s a contrastive and bladed music cooperative that has allowed the Bristol based band to become highly in demand in recent years and nothing displays this volatile dichotomy more than their new single ‘Hindsight’. Complete with an utter molar remover of a hook, the track showcases the collective wealth of experience that the band possess and stands as something that’s completely unique all whilst being appealing to followers of acts such as Superlove, Dream State and Insurgent. With the band already subject to a dotted following only after three years since their inception, Kite Thief are already looking to be one of 2022’s biggest success stories. Best get in on the hype now. – Dan Hillier
Metallic hardcore upstarts Dying Wish are a name on a lot of lips at the moment, and for good reason. Their debut album Fragments Of A Bitter Memory is due out October 1st and through each single, they’ve showcased a classic metalcore sound indebted to Unearth, Killswitch Engage and Bleeding Through while still making it all their own. Latest single ‘Severing The Senses’ stands in solidarity with survivors; as vocalist Emma Boster describes it, “I wrote the lyrics at a time when friends of mine were coming forward about their experiences with abuse after years of their stories being invalidated and suppressed. As a survivor myself, it was triggering for me to see their bravery met with even more denial and excuses from the person who caused them harm. That feeling of anger and sadness I get in those moments will forever be unparalleled. ‘I cannot escape this torment granted by the hand of a coward’ is specifically about those triggered emotions”. – Will Marshall
Sammy: “We kinda started experimenting with it even as far back as The Warmth Of A Dying Sun, as every album’s gone on and as you do when you’re in a band you just wanna explore new territory. So it just seemed like a natural thing to do, start adding more clean sections in, we’ve been experimenting a lot more with having choruses in our songs etc, so it felt like a natural direction to go in really. Even on our last record, the first single to come out of that was ‘Force Fed’, and even though that was still pretty gruff there was still melody there, so it’s not exactly new territory for us so much as it’s us pushing it further than we have before.”
Sammy: “It’s kind of different with every album we do, but this is probably the record where I’ve done the most lyric writing, whereas before it’s been fairly split. Last year Justine was working throughout the pandemic but for me I had quite a lot of downtime, so as soon as I got the green light to start writing I just went full steam ahead with it. With this one there’s still some co-writing going on but this is the most lyric writing that I’ve done for a record, particularly now we’ve moved into this territory where there’s a lot of choruses and stuff. I’ll usually write the chorus riff and be like ah okay, I’ve got an idea in my mind for how that’s gonna sound, so then there might be some songs where I’ve written the rough idea of what the song’s talking about and I’ll go to Justine with that like ‘hey this is where I was going with this one, could you give me some lyrics that maybe you have in mind that would fit with this?’ But yeah, with Warmth and Eternal Forward Motion it was very collaborative, and that’s still how we operate but just because of how it worked out around the pandemic it saw me penning a lot of the lyrics for it.
Sammy: “It was pretty smooth for us luckily, we were in a good place with the last album where it’d already been out for over a year by the time the first lockdown started, and we’d been able to do some shows and all that, so I was in the headspace to begin writing again anyway so when we figured out that the summer was basically a write-off anyway and didn’t know when shows were gonna resume again it was just like; oh okay, let’s just get another album on the go! So all the writing literally just took place at home in the room I’m in now, and it was definitely something that helped me to keep sane last summer for sure, jumping straight into that, and it was exciting because I was able to write all these things that were different for us, and then we booked in to record it throughout December, and then for rehearsing for the record as well was during the summer, so the stars kind of aligned for us during that process and we didn’t experience any hold ups at all which is was very fortunate.”
Prior to co-headlining the Key Club stages alongside Boston Manor at Slam Dunk Festival, guitarist Scott Carey and Drummer Ashley Green were kind enough to take the time to chat to us about the return of live music and their experience of bringing new album The Greatest Mistake of My Life to the stage this festival season.
Scott: “Obviously it’s everything we’ve kind of dreamed of for the past two years, I know every band is going to have the same kind of answer. But we all have jobs and it’s nice to have something to look forward to again and do what we were born to do!”
Ashley: “I think sitting on the album for so long as well, it was nice to have that as a distraction and to work on something. But as soon as it was out it was like ‘I can’t believe we have to wait until November to play some of these songs.’ So being given the chance to play some festivals, it’s banging mate, it’s really nice.”
Ashley: “We had initially planned to do everything about six months earlier.”
Scott: “The record was meant to come out November 2020, we made the decision to put it out as close as we could to when live shows were returning, we didn’t know when that was so we just said ‘let’s put it out next summer.’ It gives us more time to make sure the record is finished, all the mixing, all the visuals are really good and up to the standard we want. It was a good decision all round.”
Scott: “No, we recorded it in February 2020, literally we were in the studio and we watched the lockdown announcement in the control room. We left the studio and went home into lockdown, it was crazy.”
Scott: “It wasn’t the intention but it took on a whole new meaning for us especially, listening to that album for a year, a year and a half in lockdown it took on a whole new meaning.”
When it comes to releasing new content, there’s certain rules, regulations and protocols one is excepted to adhere by. So understandably, when an artist forgoes all of this and chooses their own path, it’s naturally intriguing and often hints towards a collective thinking and operating outside the norms of both genre and mainstream culture. If there ever has a band that proves to be an example of this it’s Slash Fiction.
Hailing from Yorkshire physically and the DIY UK queer punk scene spiritually, the alternative emo troupe have always substituted mundane industry norms in order to uphold their artistic and ideological integrity. It was something that was evident within their initial 2018 EP Flowers, a powerful, independent and wholly honest slab of zingy emo that saw the band fissioning classic sensibilities in the style of the The Get Up Kids with modern queercore lilt to articulate their tales of modern living. Whilst the record was only a handful of tracks in itself, it jettisoned the act into the centre of the UK queer punk scene, and with a collection of shows under their belts with the likes of Nervus, itoldyouiwouldeatyou and Havelocke they have remained their ever since.
Now three years on and one still-ongoing pandemic since that release, the band have just recently released their debut LP in the form of Gender, Trauma & Friendship. A record that does what it says on the tin thematically, the Amateur Pop Inc released album stands as a wonderful and creative excursion, one that see’s the band vividly detailing joy that comes with combating gender norms, the love that comes with the embracement of one’s true identity and the uplifting power of companionship in times of oppression through a lovingly crafted homemade lens. Yet it also showcases the band’s penchant for working on their own terms. Be it intertwining post-rock atmospherics, incorporating noise-rock tones – or in terms of the actual record release – dropping it less than ten days after the official announcement of it’s existence.
Related: Slash Fiction – Gender, Trauma & Friendship | Album Review
“The record came out exactly two years to the day from when Jess sent the first set of lyrics that we ended up using on the album”, explains singer Beans when asked why they released Gender, Trauma & Friendship only eight days after announcing it. “We’ve really thought about little else throughout the last 18 months, it became such a focal point for all of us during the pandemic and none of us could really deal with waiting for other people to hear it any longer than we had to. We scheduled the release basically the minute the masters came back. Probably the biggest disagreement we had during this entire process was whether to put out a single a week before the album or just drop the whole thing at once.
“For me, I think this is like our mission statement”, they continue. “This is the thing I want people to discover Slash Fiction through, so the most important thing was just to get it out into the world. We have no PR budget, we can’t do a six month campaign, we’re banking on word of mouth and the strength of the record carrying itself forward.”
