I think the advent of Desertfest in London and Berlin, subsequently in Belgium, once in Athens (and of course New York as well), is arguable as the best thing to happen to European heavy underground rock and roll in the 2010s. Set up with its two flagship editions each Spring, complemented by what was an outright stunning bill in Antwerpen this past Fall, Desertfest has helped shape the European touring circuit in ways that make shows possible that couldn’t otherwise happen, and Desertfest has become an epicenter around which releases and bands’ promotional plans are executed. It’s a place for new artists to emerge and headliners to reign. If you asked as much as Desertfest London 2025 is giving, you’d be overdoing it.

I haven’t been to Desertfest London since 2013 and I don’t expect the invite presumably because I’m a jerk and no one wants me around, but it’s been an honor to watch at a distance as this festival has become a landmark in each year of heavy. The full poster with day and venue splits follows here, and from Kind and Josiah at The Black Heart to Dopelord closing out the Underworld, to that entire Friday bill at Electric Ballroom eating your whole night, it’s a thing of beauty, I’m sure you’ll agree.

From the PR wire:

DESERTFEST LONDON ANNOUNCES STAGE SPLITS AND 14 FINAL ARTISTS FOR 2025

Friday 16th May – Sunday 18th May 2025

Weekend and Day Tickets on sale now via www.desertfest.co.uk

Desertfest London have released stage splits and announced a final round of artists, completing its diverse line up for the festival’s 2025 edition.

As Desertfest continues to celebrate all killer no filler independent heavy music, the festival has completed its 2025 line up with some formidable final additions that honour the current landscape of this subterranean scene.

Melbourne, Aus based distortion artist Divide & Dissolve will bring their ceiling-shaking soundscapes to Sunday’s Electric Ballroom, while Danish deathdoom quintet Konvent will open up affairs at Saturday’s Roundhouse.

Friday at The Underworld will see genre expansive Italian duo OvO bring their sinister sounds to London, before blackened sludge heroes Hexis celebrate their 15th anniversary alongside co-headliners, Norwegian noise-rock outlanders Årabrot.

Brighton doom beasts Sea Bastard make their long-overdue return to the Desertfest stage after 10 years. Elsewhere, The Black Heart will be buzzing with punk rock rebellion courtesy of Brazilian duo Yur Mum, while Canterbury doom devotees Famyne will close it out with their crushing riffs.

Desertfest London welcomes:
↠ DIVIDE AND DISSOLVE
↠ KONVENT
↠ HEXIS
↠ ARABROT
↠ FAMYNE
↠ CALLIGRAM
↠ OvO
↠ SEA BASTARD
↠ WALLOWING
↠ YUR MUM
↠ BILE CASTER
↠ OUTBACK
↠ OLD BLOOD
↠ INDICA BLUES

Weekend and Day Tickets can be found at: www.desertfest.co.uk

Desertfest London ↠ 16th -18th May 2025
Camden Town, London

http://www.desertscene.co.uk/support
https://www.facebook.com/DesertfestLondon
https://www.instagram.com/desertfest_london/
https://www.desertfest.co.uk/

Kind, Close Encounters (2023)

You know that scene in Spaceballs where Princess Vespa’s hair gets shot and she goes apeshit on all the balltroopers, Lone Star is all like, “Pretty good, for a girl,” and the Joan Riversbot answers back, “Pretty good for Rambo?” I feel like the prospect of getting together Primitive Man and Sea Bastard for a split and calling it “heavy” works on a similar scale. The Denver, CO, and Brighton, UK, outfits will pair up late next month (or thereabouts) for a new conjoined long-player brought to bear courtesy of Dry Cough and Black Reaper Records, which should tell you something about how heavy it will be that it needs two labels to do the lifting.

Details came down the PR wire. Almost broke the damn thing:

Primitive Man / Sea Bastard Split LP

Dry Cough Records / Black Reaper Records

Early 2016 will see the release of quite possibly the heaviest record Dry Cough has released so far.

If you like heavy music – and doom in particular – then you’ll no doubt be familiar with these two behemoths. After a joint UK tour earlier in 2015, they decided to put a record out together, and this skull-crushing split LP is the result.

Denver trio Primitive Man are one of the hardest working and most prolific bands around right now, releasing an LP and a slew of splits & EPS since 2013, whilst seemingly almost permanently on tour. The two tracks they’ve recorded for this split are as harrowing and ferocious as any of their prior output, in fact before I’d even heard them, ELM informed me that they were the bands’ angriest songs yet! ‘Cold Resolve’ is one of the slowest tracks the band have recorded and it’s an uncomfortably claustrophobic listen that brilliantly builds the tension to an almost unbearable level: ‘Servant’ follows, and whilst hardly fast, the gradual increase in tempo almost feels like a blessed relief. Unfortunately for your ears and nerves, the respite is brief and band continue to violently lay waste to your senses for a further fraught 6+ minutes.

The flipside features one mammoth track (is there any other kind?!) from Dry Cough alumni – and one of the UK’s finest doom outfits – Sea Bastard. This is the third record of theirs I have had a hand in releasing, and with each one they’ve blown me away. ‘The Hermit’ starts off fairly low key, the pace probably best described as ‘crawling’, but this is what the band do best: slow, bludgeoning repetition, luring the listener into an almost trance-like state before an expertly executed change in tempo takes things up several notches and the song explodes. In terms of riffs, Sea Bastard have always offered up some of the most aurally satisfying ones one could wish to hear, and this track is no different, it’s full of them. If one word were needed to describe this song – and this band then I think ‘hefty’ would do nicely!

Pencilled in for release late January 2016

500 copies. 180g vinyl.

Primitive Man’s side of the sleeve features the unmistakable artwork of vocalist/guitairst, ELM. Sea Bastard’s side is adorned with a distinct drawing from the band’s guitarist, Oliver Irongiant (and is the first sleeve of theirs not to feature any skulls!).

Co-release with Black Reaper Records (UK).

www.primitivemandoom.bandcamp.com
www.seabastard.bandcamp.com
www.drycoughrecords.com
www.blackreaperrecords.bigcartel.com
www.irongiant.bigcartel.com
www.leangreenohmswatts.tumblr.com

Primitive Man, “Loathe”

Sea Bastard, “Astral Rebirth”

Click Here to Download

[mp3player width=480 height=150 config=fmp_jw_widget_config.xml playlist=aot37.xml]

The apparent hubris I showed in bragging last time around at the silly method by which I transferred audio editing software from one laptop to another came back to bite me in the ass as I put this podcast together. Finally, last night, I turned to Thee Facebooks for assistance and received an amount of input that was both useful and encouraging on a personal level. Thanks to everybody who took the time to help and to recommend alternative programs to the one I was using. I’m by no means technically inclined, so it is very much appreciated.

So yeah, there was a bit of drama in the making maybe — it was right around the Buzzo track that everything went to hell — but I don’t think you’ll get any clue of that from the audio, which has a few unexpected turns in its progression. At least in the first hour. Hour two is huge jams, because basically there was no way I wasn’t going to put that 17-minute-long Wo Fat song in there and I wanted to have some other stuff to stand up to it, but hour one takes a couple different avenues toward heavy rock and I guess I was feeling some bluesy psych this time as well. I won’t spoil it any more than I already have. Hope you enjoy.

First Hour:
The Scimitar, “Babylon” from Doomsayer (2014)
Moab, “No Soul” from Scion A/V Presents Billow (2014)
Monobrow, “Cicada” from Big Sky Black Horse (2014)
1000mods, “Horses’ Green” from Vultures (2014)
Mat McNerney & Kimmo Helén, “Blood and Bone Revival” from The World is Burning OST (2014)
The Atlas Moth, “City of Light” from The Old Believer (2014)
Highlands, “Your Let Down” from Dark Matter Traveler (2014)
Blues Pills, “River” from Blues Pills (2014)
Sea Bastard, “Door Sniffer” from Scabrous (2014)
Major Kong, “Acid Transmission” from Doom for the Black Sun (2014)
Buzz Osborne, “The Ripping Driving” from This Machine Kills Artists (2014)
Prisma Circus, “Napalm” from Reminiscences (2014)
The Heavy Company, “One Big Drag” from Uno Dose (2014)

Second Hour:
Mope, “Doomed to Feed the Ground” from Mope (2014)
Idre, “Witch Trial” from Idre (2014)
Harsh Toke, “Weight of the Sun” from Light up and Live (2013)
Wo Fat, “Dreamwalker” from The Conjuring (2014)

Total running time: 1:58:41

Thank you for listening.

Download audiObelisk Transmission 037