REVIEWED: Incineration Fest 2025 @ Camden Town, London

Whether you’re the newly signed talent that’s been relegated to a 10am slot on a stage the approximate size of a postage stamp, the ill-fated band whose entire cargo-load of tour gear was robbed en route to the venue or the waterlogged punter camping in literal squalor, the festival experience has long been something of a mixed bag for all concerned. And while, on the one hand, it’s pleasure to see the more specialist, underground fixtures of the scene gathering ever-increasing traction and popularity, the grizzled old veterans among us can’t help reminiscing about bygone years when the likes of Incineration were altogether smaller, cosier and generally less, well, people-y affairs. With that being said, the best-kept secrets seldom stay hidden, and the frankly staggering turnout for this year’s tremendously anticipated instalment abundantly illustrates that indisputable fact. And with a line-up spanning everything from the iconic likes of Decapitated and Triptykon to such absurdly talented, subterranean gems as Wormwitch, it’s small wonder Camden Town is positively heaving with activity on this unseasonably scorching May Bank Holiday weekend.

Following a queue whose jaw-dropping length may have been bested only by the infamous funeral procession of Queen Elizabeth II, we enter the Electric Ballroom to find the aforementioned venue bursting at the proverbial seams. But considering the brutal, morbidly enveloping calibre of carnage presently unfolding here before us courtesy of Canadian black metal horde SPECTRAL WOUND, it’s unsurprising that this afternoon’s crowd is so inordinately sizeable.

Half-obscured beneath a darkly engulfing deluge of blood red stage lighting, the cadaverously painted collective plunge headlong into the frantic, ceaselessly bludgeoning throes of ‘Fevers and Suffering’, their ghoulishly silhouetted forms thrashing and convulsing with a level of violent abandon seldom seen in today’s tediously homogenous and inauthentic modern world. Indeed, with its insanely propulsive, punk-tinged grooves and myriad layerings of icily harrowing tremolo, theirs is an aesthetic keenly aligned with the old gods and icons of the genre.

Yet, with an intensely sinister plethora of deathly, distortion-drenched atmospherics and sinewy, intricately twisting riffing structures that audibly drip ink-black malevolence, these highly skilled aggressors manifest a presence equally drenched in compositional ingenuity. Particularly engrossing is the sumptuously layered wealth of majestically unfurling fretwork and weightily churning grooves that reside in the dizzyingly euphoric, frostbitten territories of ‘Aristocratic Suicidal Black Metal’. Elsewhere, ‘Twelve Moons in Hell’ revels in an unimaginably corrosive blend of densely entangled fretwork and abyssal shrieks caustic enough to strip flesh from bone. In short, this is precisely what black metal should be: bitingly visceral, teeming with violent intent and palpably drowning in morbidity.

Meanwhile, over at the Underworld, CARNATION’s meticulously layered repertoire of gnarly, decay-stricken grooves, frantically bludgeoning snares and exquisitely sculpted riffage comprises one of the most sonically innovative and characterful death metal bands this humble scribe has ever witnessed. And despite still bearing the “old school” tag on the various online platforms seeking to adequately define their current, newly reinvented craft, each track derived from ruinous 2023 slab ‘Cursed Mortality’ inhabits its own very particular universe of sonic energies and aesthetics. Underlined by impeccably tight musicianship together with a calibre of production that sees its composite parts display blistering clarity within this grandiose, lethally energised mix, synapse-scorching opener ‘Maruta’ comprises a veritable supernova of white-hot, brutally hammering aggression.

With its unhinged hyperblasts and gargantuan layerings of raggedly bristling riffage, there’s no small amount of reverence for the iconic trappings and trademarks of the genre. But, both here and throughout the Belgians’ viciously compelling performance, the razor-keen execution and compositional imagination exhibited here in spades far outstrips the primitive parameters of this outdated early blueprint. Take, for instance, the searing profusion of serpentine guitar leads that display finely sculpted prominence in amongst ‘Maruta’s’ ultra-violent episodes of blastbeat-laden carnage, or the majestically unspooling, doom-tinged guitar leads with which the nightmarish territories of ‘Sepulchre of Alteration’ are liberally furnished.

Since its decidedly primitive, hellfire-stricken genesis back in the 1990s, black metal has undergone more than its share of genre-bending stylistic shifts and adjustments. But while we’ve seen countless intriguing variations and altogether less enticing tamperings with the genre over the course of the past couple of decades, every so often comes a musician who does something truly remarkable with these notoriously caustic, obsidian-hued vibrations. Something that elevates the spirit to untold zeniths of transcendental wonder while, all in the same breath, wielding a sonic assault monumental enough to level whole civilisations. Such is the epic, genre-obliterating brilliance of BLACKBRAID.

Hurtling headlong into a sound barrier-shattering onslaught of battering hyperblasts and sinewy riffage whose gnarly, weightily reverberating throes churn and blister like the lethal undercurrents of some vast, unfathomable ocean, ‘The Spirit Returns’ comprises a brutally arresting opener. With its haunting central refrain of whirling, distortion-drenched fretwork displaying impeccably controlled placement and fluidity in amongst these frenzied episodes of unbridled sonic extremity, both searing intensity and sharply penned coherence feature prominently throughout this darkly absorbing set. Letting loose a livid, ghoulishly elongated howl that displays supersonic projection above the pulverising collective heft of the three highly skilled guitarists founder and frontman Sgah'gahsowáh has enlisted to join him on this electrifying run of shows, ‘Moss Covered Bones on the Altar of the Moon’ comprises wondrously corrosive standout. Spanning a lacerating plethora of insane, frost-stricken acceleration and unearthly screams that segue seamlessly into its latter portion of sumptuous, elegantly snaking fretwork, the Americans’ capacity for crafting seamless, sonically expansive and utterly bewitching modern metal is nothing short of limitless.

Via an indescribably hostile intermingling of battering acceleration and scabrous, darkly reverberating riffage, WORMWITCH see the cavernous, airlessly stifling confines of the Underworld instantly erupt in a seething mass of frenzied, hair-flailing motion. Beyond a frantically rampaging onslaught of starkly clattering snares and vocal cord-liquefying shrieks that implode out of the mix with unhinged, deliriously propulsive momentum, these genre-twisting Vancouver natives revel in a host of searing, deliciously sinister fretwork. From angular lines of craggy, ink-black riffery that audibly bristle with hostility to unhurried passages of crushingly expansive, doom-tinged bass, ‘Age of the Ordeal of Iron’ comprises a finely orchestrated melding of undiluted aggression and ghoulishly enveloping atmosphere. True to its title, ‘Fugitive Serpent’ is an unruly, intricately snaking beast of a banger, its myriad strains of jaggedly abrasive thrash, bone-shattering blasts and darkly entwining riffery coalescing into a searing inferno of incandescent aggression.

While the departure of insanely corrosive vocal talent Rafal ‘Rasta’ Piotrowski at the tail-end of 2024 may have been a deeply unwelcome piece of news for long-time devotees of DECAPITATED, the Polish extreme metal titans’ tremendously awaited stint at Incineration instantly obliterates whatever nagging anxieties we may have been harbouring up to the present moment in time. And following an epic, ominously cinematic instrumental intro that sees the Electric Ballroom saturated in inky swathes of midnight-hued stage lighting, it’s with violent, spinal cord-snapping immediacy that we’re hurled headlong into the churning, viciously turbulent throes of 2006 classic ‘A poem about an old prison man’.

Richly exemplifying the blistering yet ever-inventive songwriting we’ve long admired in these inimitable aggressors, ‘Earth Scar’s’ gargantuan layer upon layer of gnarly, weightily chugging riffage incites an instantaneous frenzy among fans. And as an expansive circle pit teeming with frantic, deliriously energised motion opens up, pulling in an ever-growing horde of sweatily euphoric, headbanging lunatics, newly recruited frontman Eemeli Bodde commands the crowd with immeasurably vicious vocal talent and charisma. Scarcely pausing to draw breath in between the various, diaphragm-rupturing guttural growls, vitriolic barks and supersonic screams that comprise his wondrously brutalising repertoire, the easy chemistry that bonds together this tremendously talented collective is an exhilarating pleasure to observe. Encompassing everything from the bludgeoning, skull-splittingly immense grooves and mind-bending time signatures of iconic 1997 smash ‘Spheres of Madness’ through to the incandescent extremes of blastbeat-stricken ultra-violence underpinning blasphemous 2017 anthem ‘Kill the Cult’, these Polish masters of extreme metal once again bring a truly unparalleled level of staggering, ingeniously varied carnage to the capital.