REVIEWED: Incineration Festival 2026 (Pt. I)

Accomplishing in fewer than 24 hours what many firmly established festival giants struggle to do in the space of whole weekends, Incineration has long been something of a marvel in celebrating the innumerable different frostbitten, murkily obliterating and blackly entrancing iterations of extreme metal circa 2026. And from the ghoulishly transcendental conjurations of German black metal visionaries, Der Weg einer Freiheit across the vintage, crypt-scented savagery of Vomitory and Hypocrisy’s exhilarating, interplanetary anthems through to internationally celebrated Bathory tribute act Blood Fire Death, there’s no doubt that the 2026 edition of the fest is set to be by far its most comprehensively ruinous to date. With festival pints flowing in ample supply as black leather-clad hordes of fans spill into the World’s End’s already buzzing wristband exchange, Camden Town is once again awash with all the animated bustle and anticipation you’d expect of a monumental live music event pulling in some 3,000 genre fanatics from every imaginable corner of this notoriously uncompromising movement.

DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT 

While more than a few crypt-dwelling black metal enthusiasts may have dragged their weary, hungover carcasses out of bed with the sole purpose of catching Afsky’s opening set, the Danish ensemble’s last-minute cancellation instantly puts paid to any such plans. Thankfully, DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT are a band more than equipped to make one quite literal hell of an entrance. Atop a stage drenched in darkly coagulating swathes of crimson-hued lighting and frantically whirling strobes, the Germans commence their hypnotic, blackly grandiose conjurations.

Across colossal, meticulously interwoven strains of ornately snaking fretwork, icily reverberating ambient noise and a rhythm section whose bone-shattering yet disquietingly unhurried momentum calls to mind a scene of ghoulish ritual sacrifice, Der Weg manifest civilisation-levelling enormity and knife-edged suspense from the get-go. And from ‘Marter’s’ intensely ominous point of entry, a tsunami of larynx-shredding screams and bludgeoning hyperblasts sends us instantly spiralling into the stratosphere. Then, with seamless, instinctual placement comes an exquisitely tortured slew of groove-laden riffery that accelerates forth into a frenzy of manically energised euphoria. Truly, this is an epic, darkly exhilarating sonic odyssey quite unlike any other.

VREID 

In amongst all the myriad different thrash-laden, symphonic and folk-infused variants of black metal that continue to push and progress the subgenre into ever-intriguing new sonic territories, Norway’s VREID are by far one of the most compositionally inventive and characterful collectives we’ve yet to encounter. Proudly upholding the sonically intrepid spirit of visionary songwriter and fallen comrade Valfar since his untimely passing in 2004, this exceptionally skilled ensemble are an intriguing, head-scratchingly contradictory proposition on paper. A fluidly shifting and elusive entity that’s as intoxicatingly steeped in frigidly entrancing atmospherics as it is palpably bristling with feral, rock-laden riffage. And while newly unleashed 2026 album ‘The Skies Turn Black’ may illustrate exceptional prowess in fusing together these two seemingly disparate musical traditions, witnessing this absurdly anthemic sonic alchemy in motion is an indisputable wonder to behold.

Indeed, with their heady intermingling of sinewy, weightily churning groove and vertigo-inducing crescendos of icily gleaming, second wave-era riffery that swirl and dissipate into the ether with utterly beguiling, transcendental majesty, all the synapse-scorching yet fleetingly impermanent magic of the moment is present here in stirringly evocative abundance. A truth only too keenly underlined by electrifying new single ‘The Skies Turn Black’ whose gnarly, Motörhead-tinged bass work and sumptuous, obsidian-hued riffery comprise an acutely affecting tribute to the ever-irreplaceable godfather of heavy metal, Ozzy Osbourne.

VREID 

With a sea of plastic pints and horns raised high across every visible corner of the darkened venue, it’s via euphoric whoops and howls of applause that we proceed into altogether more hostile, frostbitten territories with 2009 standout ‘Speak Goddamnit’. Composed in honour of the many brave souls who sacrificed their lives in the Norwegian Resistance of 1940, this incendiary slab sees propulsive blasts of percussion gather sound barrier-shattering momentum in amongst scabrous, thickly contorting grooves low-slung enough to graze the very depths of the abyss itself. Rounding off tonight’s joyously energised repertoire with ‘Black Rites in the Black Nights’, a final flurry of scalpel-keen riffery and theatrically rumbling percussion brings Vreid’s set to an explosive conclusion as the crowd erupts in a deafening profusion of ecstatic applause.

HYPOCRISY

As a subgenre that’s long prized raw and rough-hewn brutality as the literal gold standard in artistic credibility, death metal is hardly the most fertile breeding ground for sonic experimentation or colourful eccentricity. Yet with a career spanning countless bands, prestigious collaborations and some of extreme metal’s most celebrated recordings, HYPOCRISY frontman and engineering legend Peter Tägtgren has never appeared particularly concerned with such constraints.

Beneath a frantically flickering profusion of War of the Worlds-esque, luminous green lighting, Tägtgren spews forth a deluge of throat-cauterising screams and intensely corrosive, supersonic shrieks with gloriously unhinged abandon. Indeed, from sound barrier-shattering feats of hyperblasting warp speed to airily lacerating strains of meticulously sculpted fretwork, every conceivable inch of Hypocrisy’s face-melting, intricately layered craft is purpose-built to set the synapses alight. And despite racking up more than a full 35 years of blistering, immeasurably inventive sonic extremity, each savagely bludgeoning, anthemic and sweepingly majestic corner of the Swedes’ illustrious back catalogue is recaptured with an audible freshness that feels firmly anchored in the present moment.

With its icily gleaming expanses of ethereal choirs manifesting heaven-grazing enormity above tautly muscled layerings of gnarly, densely contorting groove, it’s hard to believe genre-twisting epic ‘Fire in the Sky’ is over 25 years old. And from colossal implosions of pulverising, insanely paced brutality to sleekly entwining twin guitars that tangibly blister with infernal fire, this adrenaline-fuelled classic has lost not one modicum of its transcendentally absorbing magic.

“Maybe we should speed it up a bit?” teases Tägtgren, a riotous roar of assent rising from the audibly euphoric crowd before ‘Killing Art’s’ lethally energised onslaught of lightning-paced blastbeats and viciously bristling tremolo instantly decimates the senses into submission. Plunging headlong into ‘Eraser’s’ richly engulfing wealth of majestically snaking twin riffage and lithe, elegantly writhing guitar leads, this evening’s monstrously anthemic revelries conclude with 1996 classic ‘Roswell 47’. Swamping the faculties in a colossal, blackly intoxicating fusion of bludgeoning ultra-violence, larynx-corroding snarls and delectably angular, knife-edged melodic fretwork, this iconic banger pulls together all the viciously honed prowess and Independence Day-sized cinematic atmosphere that’s long made Hypocrisy such a relentlessly compelling proposition.

Stay tuned for Part II of our Incineration Festival review coverage, coming soon!