I took a saunter up the A1 and arrived at Newark County Showground. My objective was not to look at prize bulls, but to enjoy a day at UK TechFest. I have been a day tripper to this four-day event before, and have always been impressed with the setup: two stages in a large hangar with a bar, walking area and merch stands in between, plenty of catering options, a zillion bands and many happy campers. Another bonus is the absence of overlaps so no hard choices have to be made on who to watch. This said, there are a lot of bands and having friends here to catch up with, I didn’t set out to watch everyone, so apologies in advance to those not mentioned here. While there was one band in particular who shone out for me today, there are many I did not know about in advance other than paying the courtesy of listening to a few snippets. The excitement of discovering new bands whose sound and persona appeal to me is always one of the attractions of attending any festival including this one.

A midday start was fine for me as I’d only just arrived, but the heat was on for the day’s openers Swarm6ix to whip up hysteria and enthusiasm among the one hundred and odd bleary-eyed campers – an impressive turnout. This is a nu-slam metal band – slamcore? I observed before coming that they feel the need to use characters in place of letters, thus we have d0pamine and $ocial $uicide, not to mention the band name itself. FFS, these are songs not passwords. It must be a generational thing. Anyway, the midday pretenders with statutory hoods and the look of people with a propensity to do damage tore into their brand of edgy, slam bam metal. There’s a lot of swearing and anger of course, as this is a band whose world revolves around toxic relationships, is suggestive of dark alleys and violence, and forgoes, if I read this right, a nice cup of cocoa before going to bed with a good book. Slam, slam, slam. I liked the energy and the bass vibe but they lost me with their bitter rantings and emotive choruses. It’s ugly and deliberately so. I was distressed to hear that they’re running out of d0pamine. Maybe they could invert the 6 in their band and that might make things better. But the lads put on a brave face. It’s a hard life. Whilst not being my stylistic preference, I did appreciate this band’s edginess and in-your-face attitude.

In Blind Summit, the next band I saw, I witnessed a warbling woman and a growly bass which added pungency to the scene. She danced, the men pirouetted and kicked air. I loved the heaviness which conveyed a dark atmosphere, but the songs meandered, and then stopped without rhyme or reason. I sensed that the vocals were supposed to be haunting, in the style perhaps of The Gathering. They certainly had vulnerability. I can’t fault the explosive darkness of the instrumentals but this band’s offering all came across as disjointed to me and didn’t hang together.

I didn’t actually watch Draconian Reign as I was having my lunch next door but I could hear all of it and it sounded like there was a mass murder going on. Heavy as lead with screams to wake the dead, it sounded impressive. This was music of the underworld, from which surprisingly everyone came out alive. I now know what to listen to while I’m eating. The ideal accompaniment to a sausage sandwich: cafés please note.

Just as I always enjoy hearing Dutch bands when I go to ProgPower Europe, one of the pleasures of UK TechFest is experiencing British bands, about whom I knew nothing previously. Living in East Anglia, I don’t tend to see many bands from other parts of the UK unless I go up to London. Now crunching metalcore spewed forth concurrently with a crew member frantically tightening up the drum kit – a dangerous enterprise as the drummer matched his colleagues in hammering intensity. This was Rosen Bridge from Anglesey in North Wales. The combination was powerful: solid riffs, hard melodies and impressive vocals and clean harmonies. To give himself more presence, the vocalist stood on a makeshift table, which he didn’t need, in doing so precluding the possibility of winning a health and safety award. Rosen Bridge were audience-friendly both in their interaction and choreography. The band’s music was fresh and lively. A wall of death circled the room in response to this prescribed dose of infectiousness. The vocalist from Blind Summit came onto the stage at one point to add a touch. That for me had less impact than the interesting song structures, the stellar drum patterns and guitar work, along with the personality of the band members, in particular the lead singer who presented the set well and whose voice resounded theatrically. So the rumour is true that the Welsh can sing. But it was much more than this. The songs were complex but dramatic too and impossible to resist. My conclusion was that Rosen Bridge are a band with a lot of talent.

“Chilled Prog Metal vibes” was how TechFest devotee Dan Singleton described Azure to me before the event. This was certainly from the calmer end of the spectrum, at least in the sense of violent imagery, of which there was none. A hypnotic prog rhythm passed through the air. The small singer was appropriately bedecked in an azure-coloured suit. At first the vibe was dreamy and a little bit punchy, rising to something approaching epic. Freddie and the Dreamers this was not. But it did go on a bit. The shrill-pitched singer in azure was having his own drama. The instrumentalists meanwhile looked like they were having a blast. I wasn’t feeling it. It was prog of the proggiest kind. Contrary to this vision it was loud, to the detriment of the musical message, I’d say. Some of the passages were jazzy. The singer was giving it all. It wasn’t fluid, in fact it was difficult to listen to. Azure’s music was heavy and technical and gave the impression of being about something important. The singer announced a song about “Destiny or an important moment”, bearing out my theory that this wasn’t about mundane subjects like the cost of a pint of milk or the location of the first aid boxes. But although this was evidently from a higher plane, I was still at ground level. Well, the band seemed to be enjoying it. I am pleased to say that after more than 20 minutes I finally felt a bond after my earlier dysconnectivity. “Ameotoko Part II” – how very prog not to have Part I or maybe we did – had some transferable energy, I found, but overall I was disappointed with Azure’s set, which I can only liken to an overindulgent dessert.

The musical output was sinister and growly. A feisty young woman came onto the stage. This was Vexed. The riffs were huge. The room was filled with headbanging. Spectators moved as one in time with this heavy procession. The concrete floor was in danger of cracking. The breakdowns were big. The world crumbled. People threw shapes – is that what people do nowadays? Somewhere there were songs in among this screaming, growling destruction process. Heavy grooves were dug deeper.

There was a faint air of mystique in the guitar work. The feisty woman proved to have a wider range than just growling. The tempo went up. The crowd became more animated. The cleaner vocals were not as mysterious as was probably the intention, but hell, this is live performance and the crowd was going wild with the dark groove and the aggression. And that’s what counts.

Intrigued by the prospect of “ominous industrial nuances” and having evidenced this by listening to some samples, I very much looked forward to Heriot. Enter a lot of heaviness and growls to the point where it seemed to be an incomprehensible growling competition. To constant thunderous tones, it was like being subject to machine gun fire in a blizzard. There was the occasional haunting vocal but overall this dark and scarily evil fare seemed to be devoted to the Deity of Heaviness. Having previously heard some of Heriot’s work, I know the atmosphere of their songs is more multi-dimensional than this onslaught. I do recognize that these smoky post-apocalyptic sounds are trance-like in their way, and appreciated the strong industrial element, but the cohesion escaped me. Heriot put us through the mill today.

It was tea time in Nottinghamshire. Heavy, sludgy metal was not so much to the taste of the 5.15pm TechFest crowd as the room was down to a dedicated 50 or so spectators for Armed for Apocalypse. The rest were no doubt saving themselves for later treats. This was dirty old stuff, high on riffage and downtrodden melody.  Abrasive it was, and most of the spectators around me looked worn down, although that could be the effects of all the heavy metal or maybe just the alcohol. The logical sequence was weighty doom, which came and passed, and although I can’t fault the energy and noise levels of this band, and commend them for an epic climax, there wasn’t anything really memorable about this set.

It’s foggy. The familiar drum pop and dingy rhythm that one associates with post metal pierced the air. A nice guitar line ran through this tomb-like heaviness from Hundred Year Old Man. It slowed down. The band managed tempo expertly. The growler growled through the gloom. This was in the mould of Cult of Luna. I’m not complaining. Heads bowed reverentially and solemnly.

The musical texture was of such richness that this was uplifting. Heavenly rings preceded a crusty tune. The intensity, already high, increased. This post metal was careful crafted, and delightful except that it told of dark apocalyptic scenes. Distorted breakdowns, chunking drums, rising swells – the weighty machine moved on. Hundred Year Old Man proved there can be beauty and inspiration in darkness and gloom.

Aborted was the one band I knew about before coming here. The prospect of seeing them was exciting. I’m sure I’ve seen them play live before, possibly at the Camden Underworld, but I do remember playing the 2003 album “Goremageddon: The Saw and the Carnage Done” on one night shift to the displeasure of my colleague who commented “I don’t want to be listening to this at 4 o’clock in the morning”. I offered to play it the following night at midnight instead, but apparently he didn’t quite mean this. I kept my promise.

The introductory Aerosmith backing track over, the band launched into their whirlwind set of death metal. Aborted’s vocalist Sven de Calluwé, who visually is the Belgian equivalent of rail union leader Mick Lynch, injects the banter and the playfulness, evoking headbanging, jumping jacks, moshing and crowd surfing, but it’s the tightness of the growling guitars and punishing drums that are the backbone to this highly organized mayhem. Aborted ooze class. Sven was comical to watch, bursting every vein in his neck and slapping his head as he roused the crowd at every opportunity. The razor-sharp axe work continued. The instrumentalists administered ritual carnage.

One hatchet job followed another. Some songs were new, some were old. There’s plenty to choose from. To my delight, and maybe that of my work colleague as it was only 8.30pm, the set finished with two songs from the “Goremageddon” album. “The Saw and the Carnage Done” is relentless, breaking down and rising every time with a new wave of harsh, adrenaline-inducing drama. All the while it was like an express train rumbling towards us and flattening us. It was a pleasure. The crowd was euphoric. Brilliant.

Now for a mystery band. Well, it was until Dan Singleton and Will Young (of the band Defences, not the Pop Idol one or the New Zealand cricketer) kindly deciphered the logo for me. The band whose logo became such a personal challenge is Bound in Fear. Was there any mystery in their music? Well, no. After a very brief bit of death n roll at the start, this was brutal death metal, so there followed an abundance of guttural vocals, harsh and deep instrumental lines and a multitude of breakdowns. Sirens signaled danger. The TechFest party continued. The guitarist joined the enthusiastic moshers. The vocalist, who seemed to be in physical discomfort, led the audience interaction well and seemed a right geezer. Extremity won out over any semblance of technical subtlety but the music was unabatedly ferocious and crowd-pleasing. As the set went on, the pace picked up. The band continued to play like they were drilling holes in the floor.

And that was my lot. I chose not to stay for the headliners. Aborted were my headliners. It’s also the lot as far as the event is concerned. The organisers have announced that this is the last edition of UK TechFest. This is disappointing news, but let’s give oceans of credit to them for pulling off the mammoth task of putting together the event, and all of the many things that go into it. Today the music was varied and vibrant, I met people I knew and lots of people I didn’t and everyone, including the venue staff and the band members I encountered, was a pleasure to be with. So all in all, I can look back on another successful and enjoyable day out at this magnificent event.

Review: Andrew Doherty 

Photos: Wouter van de Kamp

https://www.uktechfest.com