Live Review: DESERTFEST OSLO 2026 Day 1
Posted in Features, Reviews on May 9th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Okay, here we go. Sorry in advance for the typos. I’ll do my best to correct as I see them.
No sleep on the plane overnight meant that by the time I flopped through the entrance of the hotel, I was exhausted to a point of emotional fragility. No, I wasn’t actually crying, but it wasn’t far off as I begged at the counter for an early check-in. I had to wait a bit, so I sat in the lobby, said hi to Tor-Erik from Slomosa and three-fourths of Howling Giant, who were passing through for coffee — oh shit I need coffee — and whathaveyou. About an hour and an early-check-in fee later, I happily galavanted, flailing from joy, to pick up my bags and head upstairs.
In the end, I slept about three hours, which isn’t enough, but so it goes. Nobody comes to a music
festival to be well rested. I checked in, got my credentials and made my way to the outside stage at Revolver, where Håndgemeng were soon to repeat the madness of last year’s outdoor appearance. It was packed by the time I got there. I probably should’ve slept less, but my consolation was going down the way to Rockefeller for Thulsa Doom’s soundcheck. They brought all the drums. I tried for coffee but couldn’t find any — I was gonna get one at the hotel but there was a line and I wanted to get moving. John Dee was still closed but was playing Sabbath when I walked through, so good things happening one way or the other. The day would ultimately start with High Desert Queen down there, and of course that’s a riot.
The Austin outfit were starting their ‘Riffs as Big as Texas’ tour with this slot, and I’m not sure who’d do better getting an early crowd on board for a busy weekend, though Håndgemeng might have a thing to say about that up at Revolver. Or they might not, because fuckall. But the point is High Desert Queen are a high-energy band, and that’s what you want in that spot. They brought it certainly when I saw them in January at Planet Desert Rock Weekend (review here), and apart from (my) jetlag in the other direction, Oslo was no different.
A hard snare hi
t snapped through the P.A., and they were off. Of course, frontman Ryan Garney was all over the place — Garney gonna Garney — and people were moving out front as there was little choice in the matter amid such infectious riffery. They noted from the stage it was their first time in Oslo and ran through a succession from their two to-date LPs with not a bummer in the bunch and no real drop in vitality, despite the fact that the songs do more than just shove. “Head Honcho” is always fun. People clapping along to “Ancient Aliens” and such. If all goes to plan, this won’t be the last time I see them this year, and they held that room captivated. I never found coffee and High Desert Queen made that hurt a little less at the start of my day.
The bar upstairs was open when I went up ahead of Thulsa Doom, so I got a pair of espressos — is that self-care? — and had to be told to take my card out of the machine because I was so out of it. It was beeping, not without volume. I told myself last year I wasn’t going to play it so tight on 2026, but here we are. I said a quick hi to Cas from Sasquatch, who’s here playing bass in Nebula, and went up to the Rockefeller balcony to drink my coffee. Already it was filling up for Thulsa Doom, and reasonably so. I don’t know when their last record was, and so far as I know they’re not out touring like High Desert Queen and some of the others on this bill, going from Desertfest to 
Desertfest to Desertfest in the ecosystem of Spring festivals in Europe — living the dream, as it were — but the long-running countrymen heroes absolutely owned the big stage and the big room and I’d have expected no less. It made me wish Ron was here to see it. You know Ron.
They seemed to be enjoying it as much as the crowd as well, and that made the set even better, seeming as they did to screw around until it was suddenly time for a three-part harmony. Their singer’s arm was in a sling, and maybe he was more subdued than usual on stage, I haven’t seen them before so I don’t know, but he and the whole band nailed it either way, and having seen the soundcheck, the actual performance was a thrill on a different level. Better band than anybody outside Norway knows, it would appear.
They were doing tattoos in the art room. I was thinking about getting a little Triforce on my hand, but probably not. Pretty sure I don’t have enough power, wisdom, or courage to justify that, but it would be a fun moment to show up at home with it and show The Pecan. I went and got some water instead. Gotta hydrate. So important.
In doing so I left my phone where I had been sitting on the side. I retraced my steps and asked the guy in the Turbojugend jacket presently occupying that spot of he had found it and dude very smoothly pulled it from his pocket. I gave him a big hug, said thank 
you, and went to watch the rest of the set. Spelljammer were doing a line check downstairs at John Dee for their set, but the photo pit there meant I and my b recently recovered technology could enjoy more of Thulsa Doom, so that’s what I did. Not a band I ever imagined seeing, honestly. I’ll be surprised if Garney doesn’t bring them over to the States for Ripplefest Texas next year, or at least try.
They broke it down and got bluesy (-er) with about 10 minutes left, but built a nod back up from there — the stuff of classic stoner rock. After a little while, it was time to get downstairs for Spelljammer, but the end of Thulsa Doom was immense and I’m glad to have caught it. If you’ve ever found yourself curious though as to the difference between stoner rock and stoner metal, the Toner Low-worthy nod-worship enacted by Spelljammer, immediately after Thulsa Doom, offered convenient distinction.
I’d had another espresso by then and so was close enough to consciousness that there was something there in my mind for the Swedish trio to steamroll, and that they must certainly did. The green lights (and no, they didn’t stay green the whole set) could hardly have been more suitable to the floorshaking tonality, a thickened lurch that, while invariably influenced by Sleep, maintained its own riff structure and slow crawl. I love seeing a room get
flattened, and that’s exactly what Spelljammer were doing to John Dee.
It was such a hyper-specific, dug-in thing. I mean, think about the normies you know. Your friends, coworkers/classmates, maybe even your family if you don’t all have the right kind of sauce on your neurology for this kind of thing to speak to you. I would love to see someone walk into the middle of a Spelljammer set by accident and have no idea or context for what’s happening. Oh that racket? That’s decades of Sabbath riffing exponentially built upon by decades of international underground experimentation and progression. What’s that? Why’s it so loud? Because you can’t feel the kickdrum in your stomach otherwise, that’s why.
Peaceful drone in Rockefeller ahead of Pelican. The Chicago outfit, who it turns out are my favorite emo band — being instrumental helps their cause in that regard; also the chugg, which is chug enough to warrant a second ‘g’ — took the stage with momentum at their back from the last few years of touring and their LP Flickering Resonance (review here) that came out a year ago next week, with the original lineup reclaiming its sound as they did. It was a raw joy to see them again. Last time, somehow, was Freak Valley 2022 (review here), so of course I was looking forward to the newer material in the set. 
They did not disappoint in that regard or any other, and that they were sharing the main stage with fellow Chicagoan sans-vocal heavies Russian Circles — with King Buffalo between, no less — felt like something special to see, and so it was.
Moving through the crowd was swimming through the sea of nodding heads. The band hit it on pro-shop style, got on stage, railed into “Cascading Crescent,” saying not a word but waving to the crowd for a reciprocated hello beforehand. What a band, and what a time to be a Pelican fan. Any “all cylinders” cliché you want to throw their way, they’re ready for it, and they were just so fucking good and so goddamn heavy that I put my phone down and stopped writing for a minute to just listen and watch the show as it unfolded. The place went off between every song, including when the band apologized for not having been to Oslo since 2007 ahead of “Ascending” from the 2026 EP (review here) of the same name. “Ascending” is a little slower, so the effect after the opening salvo was of the band getting deeper into it, and it was just a pleasure to see and hear. I don’t know if a live record could do justice to Pelican on stage, but I’d take one anyhow in the Flickering Resonance cycle.
In perhaps the weekend’s most brutal clash, Nebula were about to go on outside at Revolver in what I had no doubt would be a set epic enough to became part of Desertfest Olso lore — yo, did you see when Nebula played Revolver? — but I knew there was no way in hell I was going to be able to get in, and Pelican for sure made it less of a challenge than it would otherwise have been to stay put. I closed my eyes for a bit, became part of that sea, and while this day hasn’t been easy necessarily after not 
sleeping, everything else kind of evaporated and I just spent some time in the music, receiving a dose of the rejuvenation that’s why I still do this in defiance of logic, good decision-making, time and money. I don’t want to oversell it by calling it spiritual, but guitarist Trevor Shelley DeBrauw said on stage they were a band who loved each other and that’s what the band was to them, and it made perfect sense.
The poster I’d been using to guide myself through the day because I’m old had Blackwater Holylight next on the John Dee stage, but when I went down there and was talking to a dude also there a couple minutes early, he said the Broadcast app had Astralplane next. And so it was. Cool by me, as Blackwater Holylight were playing Saturday instead and I got to see another band I’d probably never see if I wasn’t here. Astralplane have their cosmic elements, and sometimes they have a singing drummer, but the heart of their sound is in the riffs and tone and that’s just fine. They came out in nothing-too-fancy style and immediately locked in. I don’t know what they were saying from the stage because I’m an ignorant American, but people applauded and seemed stoked, so I’ll just assume it was something about a new record because watching them play live for the first time, I also would be stoked on more Astralplane.
Some continuity from Pelican in camaraderie and warmth of sound, naturally, but Astralplane were mellower by a margin, and in pursuit of a different kind of groove accordingly. I was lucky to be there for the set, and glad for that switch since it would’ve been less likely that I could’ve caught them at Revolver anyhow. Cool to see the room fill up as the set went on as well. I guess some of that was people coming over from The end of Nebula but rad just the same.
I had watched a bit of King Buffalo’s check upstairs 
at Rockefeller and they weren’t through “Silverfish” at the start of their set before they demonstrated plainly that guitarist/vocalist Sean McVay doesn’t even need to stand up to kick ass. He played started due to a recent injury — pretty sure it was an ankle, which hurts like hell for a long time in my experience — though of course with Scott Donaldson drumming and Dan Reynolds on bass, he was hardly acting alone toward the cause. I’m ready for a new King Buffalo album at this point, which is something I probably wouldn’t have said even this time last year, but I’m excited for what they still have to offer in songwriting. They’re touring here in Europe and just announced a couple Midwest US shows, and if you’ve never seen them, I’m not sure what urging I could give you would be enough. I wound up on Reynolds’ side of the room, and I call it his because the bass was so thick that it shook the wall I was leaning on because I’m so frickin” tired.
They had the standalone single “Balrog” (posted here), but I thought I heard some newer sounds in the set as well, though I wouldn’t swear to it, but their digging back for “Drinking From the River Rising” was appreciated as well. Really you could just extrapolate that across the board to the whole time they were on stage. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen King Buffalo at this point — less than some, surely, but more than a few — and they’re never exactly the same. The setlist is different, or the room is different, or it’s just a mood thing, but one way or the other, there aren’t a ton of bands I’d rather behold in a stage on a given evening than King Buffalo. It felt like the lineup was doing you favors all night.
Because basically it was, and the thread continued into Dopelord back downstairs. Singing along to “The Chosen One,” “Evil Spell,” “Addicted to Black Magic,” and so on was apparently my pull-out-the-earplugs moment for the day, and it was like I’d waited until I could do absolutely max damage for it, but I guess that’s how it goes sometimes. The Warsaw stoner-doom four-piece toy with occult themes and yes, they brought enough satan for the whole class in “Hail Satan” alone, never 
mind the rest of it. What a blast. This was my second time seeing them after Budapest in 2024 (review here), and between signing to Season of Mist, celebrating 15 years as a band and opening for Napalm Death on tour earlier this year, they’ve been busy in the interim.
Their 2023 album, Songs for Satan was packed with memorable tunes like some of the aforementioned, but new or old, the worship of riff and dark gods remains. They’re another one who, if you’re not already into this music and the deviant subculture that values it, they probably make no sense or come off angry or whatever, but in the genre they’re just so, so much fun. They asked the crowd when they got up today and said they were so tired from the travel that they were going to die in 40 minutes when the set was over, and got a laugh, but while their tempos are mostly pretty languid, there was no discernible fatigue in their performance. Instead, the roll was palpable in the room and they basked in it, speaking of celebrations. The room was with them all the way.
It was getting late, but Russian Circles promised more chug to come and there you go. The evening’s headliner have always had a lot in common with Pelican, but more influenced by post-rock, and while on paper it’s instrumental heavy from Chicago, there’s never been
any trouble distinguishing between the two parties, and both are readily identifiable when listening. Dopelord induced an oblivion of nod, and Russian Circles were a turn in another direction, less gleeful in their delivery, for sure, but with texture and atmosphere as primary elements of their sound. My favorite memory will always be seeing them in 2013 in New York at Radio City Music Hall (review here) and then skipping out to get Mexican food with my wife before Coheed and Cambria went on, but that doesn’t mean I want glad to see them. The weight and intensity of 2022’s Gnosis (review here) made that record a bit of an outlier for them, but in a most welcome way, and at a welcome point in the evening.
Even though I would credit the hotel shower I’d taken before heading over to the fest with getting me through the day, I stank by the end of it and was fairly rundown. With Saturday still to go, I made my way with deliberate pauses toward the back and out of the venue. My own afterparty of sorting photos and falling asleep at the keyboard awaited, plus somewhere right around their third song, my keep-going chemicals shorted and I realized the only thing I’d eaten all day was a protein bar, also before I left the hotel room. I’ve never been especially good at being a person. Would you believe I give my kid shit for being a picky eater? Ridiculous, the level of hypocrisy.
So, food, work, and rest were the order of it, but what a day this turned out to be. Not that I wasn’t looking forward to a bunch of the bands, but I was coming back no matter who was playing, so that it worked out so righteously was a boon. Saturday last year was hard for me to keep my head in, already anxious about the travel home as I was. How it would play out this year I guess I’d have to live through it to find out, and I was definitely looking forward to that.
More pics after the jump, with special thanks to Tom Polzine for letting me borrow his SD card reader. More later. Thanks for reading.
