Richard HolmesBack after a Covid-related, three-year hiatus, Byker Grave Festival brought a host of UK and international acts to Tyneside.
Rich Holmes was there to witness the fest’s 10th anniversary.
Byker Grave Festival 2023 @Anarchy Brew Co, Newcastle, November 11, 2024
Since its humble beginnings in a Newcastle pub back in 2013, Byker Grave Festival has been a highlight in North East England’s extreme music calendar… and it has never let genre straightjackets get in the way of its commitment to sonic destruction.
From UK luminaries such as Green Lung and Conan, to cult overseas acts like PLF and Chapel of Disease, the event has brought serious talent to indie venues across Tyneside.
2023’s edition was no exception, with bands from Dewsbury to Tennessee lining to obliterate Anarchy Brew Co (and sample some of the brewery’s produce).
Northern soul
It’s no mean feat taking the lunchtime slot at any festival.
And an admittedly sparse crowd greeted home grown trio Disciplinary.
But the noise punks’ punchy, twin bass interplay, backed by genius drummer Rob Woodcock, was revelatory for those who did get out of bed in time.
A new act with an impressive collective CV, Disciplinary aren’t a band to sleep on.
That said, neither are Waheela.
The quintet have been eviscerating the underground for well over a decade, and their semi-improvised, cathartic noisescapes never fail to impress.
Adam Potts, down at crowd level for much of Waheela’s set, tore atoms apart with his tortured vocals – but he was just one element in a barrage of sound that ripped into Anarchy.
You could have picked out black metal, post-rock, doom and the chill of Joy Division from the band’s onslaught, but trying to tie Waheela down to a ‘scene’ is pointless.
Drummer James Porter – lit up like he was about to ascend to a mothership – anchored the grooves.
The rest of the band brought annihilation.
And it wasn’t even 3pm.
Black magic
Daubed in corpsepaint, UK black metal crew Andracca put everything into a performance dedicated to frontman Kieran Dawes’ cousin, who tragically passed away just weeks ago.
Their combination of spectral atmospherics and Darkthrone-inspired grimness turned heads at Anarchy, and their set mixed cuts such as Dissolution of Apathy with new material taken from the band’s upcoming debut album.
A new force in UKBM? Very much so, on this evidence.
West Yorkshire death metal veterans Blasphemer offered a different shade of darkness.
Their world is inhabited by serial killers and all-to-real bogeymen. Couple that with promethean riffs and arguably the best sound of the day, and you had a slaughterhouse performance at Byker Grave Festival.
Swarm warning
Jarring Scottish powerviolence? Turn on a dime tempo changes and petrol bomb riffery?
What more do you want from a Saturday afternoon soundtrack?
Edinburgh’s Endless Swarm, bearing rapid fire ragers like Manifested Forms, brought some serious heat to Anarchy as the temperatures dipped outside.
Frontman Gray Caldwell barely paused for breath.
And by Christ, these boys can play.
Sludge oozes into Anarchy
Sheffield’s Kurokuma, fresh from conquering Damnation Festival the previous Saturday, took the pace down after Endless Swarm’s attack.
Swapping blasts for hypnotic, churning grooves, the trio offered Byker Grave technicolour doom quakes, via an astral tunnel to ancient Mesoamerica.
They also delivered one of the festival’s heaviest sets, turning Sacrifice to Huitzilopochtli into a hymn to soul crushing brutality.
God knows how Anarchy Brew Co.’s next batch of beers will turn out, given the churning they must have gone through.
Last rites
The last time Newcastle witnessed Gabriel Dubko on stage, the Argentinean was fronting Wormrot following the departure of singer Arif. This time it was he was back to his day job, leading Implore (above) through an apocalyptic set of d-beat and blackened crust.
Yet it was a bittersweet performance.
Implore are signing off this year, after 11 years of vitriol and vehemence.
Byker Grave Festival was the last chance North East England had to witness songs like Never Again and to say ‘thank you’ for Implore’s immense body of work.
Masochistic Tendencies was dedicated by Dubko to “all who play in a band”. There were more than a few knowing nods…
The stuff of nightmares
Tennessee grind crew Knoll and US/German dissonant deathsters Nightmarer touring together? On paper, it might not have made sense. But at Byker Grave Festival, the synergy was clear.
Both bands redefined intensity.
Both acts offered total annihilation.
Nightmarer vocalist John Collett mounted the drumkit, overseeing a relentless barrage of mutant rhythms and depth charge fretwork. Almost ritualistic, Nightmarer’s dimly-lit set brought a new dimension of terror to their hell-warped material.
Knoll, meanwhile, have gained a rep stateside for the gut punching impact of their live shows.
Hopping across the pond, they’d lost none of their potency.
With James Eubanks pulling the earth’s molten core, screaming, through his throat, and his bandmates veering from shattering white noise to eviscerating blasts, Knoll lived up to the hype and then some.
They even brought a trumpet.
The sextet’s show, much of it culled from upcoming new album As Spoken, teetered on the edge of chaos.
It was like staring into supernova.
And it won’t be forgotten in a hurry.
Ripping it up
Hellripper are no strangers to Byker Grave, having graced the 2019 festival bill.
And since that time, James McBain and his live collaborators have evolved into worthy headliners.
That’s no real surprise, given the visceral thrill of albums such as 2020’s The Affair Of The Poisons and 2023’s sensational Warlocks Grim and Withered Hags.
But you have to walk the walk…
And Hellripper didn’t so much own the stage as tear it out and take it back to the Scottish Highlands with them.
While many metal acts are happy to stay put and windmill, this quartet party like they’ve just time travelled from the Bay Area circa ’84. Songs like Demdike, Bastard of Hades and Goat Vomit Nightmare went nuclear, and blackened speed venom was spat into the eyes and ears of loyal fans and new believers.
The encore of Total Fucking Mayhem? Well it just felt right, as anarchy descended on Anarchy… and the pit exploded.
Roll on Byker Grave 2024…
All images used with kind permission of Stefan Rosic, Conundrum Images – check his work out on Facebook and Instagram.