REVIEWED: Fortress Festival 2025 @ Scarborough Spa (Day 2)

It’s a little after 12pm on a decidedly bleary-eyed Sunday morning, and as an ever-expanding horde of dishevelled-looking punters pile into the Grand Hall ahead of ABDUCTION’s anticipated main stage set, it’s clear that more than a few of us are in something of a fragile state as we embark on day two of the weekend festivities. But from the moment the Midlands extreme metal mob enter the darkened stage, spewing forth a face-melting tsunami of weightily bludgeoning blasts and jagged riffs whose discordant, ghoulishly echoing throes amass intensely disquieting enormity, the instant exhilaration among fans is only too palpable. Face obscured behind a Leatherface-esque mask hewn together from a macabre assortment of animal remains, frontman A/V hurls himself to and fro about the stage with violent abandon, his gut-wrenching howls and bellowing cries of abject torment tangibly teeming with anguish.

Centred on a complete and uninterrupted playthrough of mind-altering 2024 masterwork ‘Existentialismus’, the meticulous care invested in evoking the precise energy and lyrical universes underpinning each and every track makes for a visceral, tremendously immersive experience. From animated visuals taken from the album’s eerily transcendental cover art to looped black and white footage from an insane asylum and close-up shots of a rat infestation, it’s with morbidly compelling magnetism that we’re ushered headlong into a grimly absorbing netherworld of wretchedness and suffering.

Among the numerous shades of nightmarish, viciously bristling carnage captured here, ‘Razors of Occam’ luxuriates in a blackly intoxicating fusion of sombre, ghoulishly elongated clean vocals and thickly contorted grooves before imploding in a synapse-scorching blaze of wolvish tremolo riffing and larynx-shredding screams. Elsewhere, ‘Truth is as Sharp a Sword as Vengeance’s’ knife-edged, deliriously whirling symmetries, pulverising slabs of percussion and near-operatic vocal sections make for a crushingly melancholic standout. Unflinchingly raw yet richly laden with sinister atmospherics and genre-twisting idiosyncrasies, suffice to say Abduction are one of the most uniquely characterful entities operating in extreme music right now.

Given the grandiose, insanely intricate scale of MOONLIGHT SORCERY’s extravagantly riff-laden craft, it’s hard to believe that this is a band who emerged from complete obscurity just seven years prior to the present moment in time. Indeed, with just a smattering of EP releases and 2023 debut ‘Horned Lord of the Thorned Castle’ to their name, the Finns’ breathlessly energised hybrid of icily harrowing second wave black metal and ornately flourishing fretwork has already garnered them a more than sizeable following. Atop an all but pitch-black stage whose densely impenetrable gloom is punctuated by fitful beams of theatrically flickering strobe lighting, ‘To Withhold the Day’ comprises a face-melting supernova of propulsive hyperblasts and frigidly abrasive riffery. Liberally furnished with a deliriously energised array of icily glimmering symphonic trappings and stratospheric zeniths of epic, sleekly entangled riffery, the Finns pull off a strikingly accomplished feat in melding together frostbitten extremity and Children of Bodom-esque theatrics into the stuff of vicious, indescribably exhilarating brilliance.

Via its myriad layerings of machine gun-paced blasts, corrosive screams and airily whirling guitar leads, ‘Vihan verhon takaa’ displays seamless prowess in splicing together the many multi-faceted elements and energies that comprise this electrifying standout. Spilling over with a synapse-scorching profusion of densely muscled riffage, icily entrancing synths and towering crescendos of lacerating fretwork, seven-minute epic ‘Wolven Hour’ rounds off their set in joyously grandiose style as a deafening roar of applause rises from the euphoric assembled masses.

While the overwhelming majority of tonight’s audience will likely be wholly oblivious to the turbulent, blood-drenched legacy of political unrest that’s long fuelled FORTERESSE’s deathly, frost-stricken craft, there’s no mistaking the darkness that abides here in rich, icily lacerating abundance. And however lamentably sparse our knowledge of French-Canadian history may be, it’s clear the Quebec-based black metal crew’s unique national heritage has played a pivotal role in forging the intensely caustic yet intricately crafted onslaught presently unfolding here before us. Blending expansive measures of craggy, second wave carnage in amongst a host of finely sculpted melodic details and evocative nods to their nation’s rich folk music heritage, every conceivable inch of the Canadians’ high-octane set is audibly bristling with hostility. Spilling over with a densely entangled mass of tremolo-stricken riffage whose knife-edged, ceaselessly writhing throes manifest coldly harrowing intensity above a frantic barrage of propulsive blasts, ‘Le Sang Des Héros’ makes for a brutally compelling proposition. Expanding out beyond these synapse-scorching territories into a morbidly absorbing wealth of sleekly elongated fretwork and weightily rumbling percussion that abounds with funereal majesty, Forteresse pull off a finely orchestrated fusion of searing sonic extremity and ghoulishly enveloping atmosphere.

It’s hard to believe it's been a full decade since AGALLOCH last brought their grandiose, immeasurably affecting craft to UK shores. And from the complete dissolution of the band in 2016 to its subsequent reformation seven years later, it’s clear this period of prolonged hiatus has served the Americans exceptionally well, judging by the frankly electrifying form on which we find them here this evening.

Traversing stylistically diverse yet seamlessly interwoven sonic territories that see expansive lines of sumptuously unravelling, distortion-drenched riffage run riot in between flesh-scalding implosions of abrasive extreme metal, theirs is a sound brimming with a plethora of primal, intensely melancholic feeling. Amassing a colossal, weightily turbulent presence on a par with some majestic but potentially lethal force of nature, 2006 epic ‘Falling Snow’ pairs bone-shattering slabs of churning bass groove and bloodcurdling screams with a bewitching array of folk-infused melodic trappings. Like elegantly cascading mountain rivulets whose fluid, endlessly twisting configurations tangibly glimmer with ethereal beauty, the Americans’ keen ear for meticulously layered detail makes for a compositionally masterful repertoire.

With its luxuriantly unfurling chord progressions abounding with all the gentle, rustic warmth of a sunlit autumnal forest, ‘Dark Matter Gods’ pairs otherworldly atmosphere and classically frostbitten aggression to hauntingly engrossing effect. And from the snaking, melancholia-weighted passages of 2002 classic ‘You Were But A Ghost In My Arms’ to the lacerating, stratospheric crescendos of riffery and caustic howls that abide in 10-minute epic ‘Our Fortress is Burning’, the cinematic intensity and exquisitely layered complexity exhibited here in darkly absorbing abundance makes for a spellbinding grand finale of a closing set.

Missed Part 1 of our Fortress Festival coverage? Check it out HERE