Live Review: RADAR Festival 2023 - Friday
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Ruben Navarro / Eleanor Hazel / Aneta Robak
RADAR Festival have made the decision to relocate to the industrial surroundings of Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse from their previous home in Guildford; meaning the North has an easier access to the kind of line-ups seen at previous iterations of RADAR, the Tech-Fest and ArcTangGent.
The line-up when compared to the preview posted on these pages has altered slightly, such is the life of a festival organiser I presume, but the withdrawal of Heriot and Car Bomb stung a bit, if the truth be told. But here we are, and forty-two bands are playing the two stages across the weekend, so let’s see what happened.
Having been to shows at the Victoria Warehouse over the past few years I wondered how it would work as a festival location; but such is the labyrinthine nature of the building I imagine you could slot another stage in there too. The scheduling is devised as to have no clashes and access to the stages is straightforward, with only a small journey between one and the other.
Sadly, I miss Shattered Skies final ever show due to slow moving traffic on the Swinton interchange. When I do arrive Playgrounded has taken to Stage 1 and are creating an oppressive atmosphere through the use of heavy hits and swirling vortices of sound. They imbue industrial beats into their emotional presentation, lending an expansive, Katatonia-like feel to the performance. I’m in another queue, this time on foot, as Forager take to the second stage but can hear their fast and furious musical assault from where I’m standing.
Exploring Birdsong are all about the atmosphere and their piano-led progressive rock is reminiscent at times of fellow Liverpudlians, Anathema. The vocals can simultaneously drift you off to slumber or terrify you, all the while seeing delicate keys dancing with the grounding work of the rhythm section. The simple, yet effective, lighting of the RADAR stage adds to the atmosphere and the tongue-in-cheek comment “If you hated it, you should come and tell us about it” as the introduction to the final song showed the band don’t take themselves as seriously as the music might suggest.
The Five Hundred is a different beast entirely, though they do use the broad and epic, they don’t allow that to get in the way of the ferocious and frightening. Smoke & Mirrors opens with the kind of cacophony only heard on battlefields, but the band introduce hypnotic rhythms which, along with the lighting, both mesmerise and also terrify in equal measure.
One of my most-anticipated performances at RADAR 2023 was A.A. Williams. I’d seen her a couple of months ago, in town at the Deaf Institute and have been falling in love with the As the Moon Rests record since. Fortunately, the band have left the smoke machine at home for this one and Evaporate opens with a slow, deliberate build. Ms W is all about building that atmosphere and she and her band manage this in spades. Slow and melancholic odes ebb and flow like waves, sometimes crashing, sometimes lapping, but always refreshing. Sometimes, you can even hear faint echoes of jazz. They close out with a gorgeous rendition of As the Moon Rests and my expectation have been exceeded.
Stage 2 looks like a Seventies discotheque as FLOYA play in front of a neon version of their logo. Musically, they are certainly rooted in a bygone age, mixing emotional pop punk with an Eighties version of soft rock. It shouldn’t work, it really shouldn’t, but it does, and the band not only attract a sizable crowd, but they also entertain them through danceable melodies and general all-round good vibes.
Unprocessed attract such a crowd and such a response that we could be looking at a potential future headliner. I’d made many a note about which genre to slot the Germans into, including Progressive Metalcore, Emocore, Technical Easycore (I was just putting words together come the end). Their defiance of categorisation can only be a good thing, meaning Unprocessed are just being themselves. Whether that be utilising choppy riffs and heavy stomps or laying subtle Latin guitar lines with the oppressive sound of an approaching Godzilla, nothing is off the table as far as they are concerned. With two songs to go the call goes out for crowd-surfers and a steady flow of bodies begin heading for the stage. If you want an example of what RADAR Festival is all about then Unprocessed are as good a place to start as anything.
Owane & Jack Gardiner have a sizable audience for their noodle-heavy performance and those folks appear to be loving it. I’ve seen Satriani and I’ve seen Vai and this kind of playing, while hugely impressive, just doesn’t float my boat. Sorry, chaps, I’m in awe of what you can do, it just doesn’t refresh the parts other music can reach.
Damnation Festival alumni God Is an Astronaut’s instrumental post rock thrives on the creation and sustaining of atmosphere but a couple of pauses for technical issues disrupt the band’s flow. That said, the Irishmen still manage to weave tales of musical majesty through the use of gently hypnotic passages set against caustic stabbing guitars and thundering bass. It feels as though introducing vocals into this would over-complicate the matter and rob the listener of the chance to create their own narratives about what the music means. As the set comes to an end and the stage is awash with green light, the mystery of where A.A.’s smoke machine went is solved as the band disappear behind a wall of fog.
The Victoria Warehouse was built in 1925 and a near-century of wear and tear is starting to show its face. I’m concerned about the base of some of the pillars in Stage 2 when Aviana take to the stage and whether they were ever designed to hold something this heavy. The aptly titled Rage kicks things off and it’s clear the mission statement is to bludgeon from the beginning. There are industrial beats vying with deathcore breakdowns ringing through the very structure of the building itself. If that weren’t brutal enough, they decide to unleash the “heaviest song we’ve ever written”, instigate a Slipknot-style Jump-da-fuck-up moment and pop some insatiable grooves among the beatdowns. Now, I’m not a structural engineer by trade, but can we at least get a few acrow props under this ceiling, please?
It’s clear that the Friday sell-out has much to do with a certain headliner, confirmed by the amount of Sleep Token shirts being sported today; but giving them a run for their money in popularity stakes is Haken, whose reception is that usually afforded to returning conquering heroes. They are perhaps the first band of the day to fit into the pure progressive metal mould. They are a Dream Theater of sorts, down to the rabid fan-base and the high-level of musicianship that can sometimes boarder on the indulgent. Yet, like the America prog titans, Haken reign in the self-gratification for the festival crowd and serve up an hour of complex and enthralling tunes, to the delight of the gathered masses and as a marker laid down to the headliner that they will have to work to take top-honours for the day.
Stage 2 headliners, Monuments, couldn’t be more happy with their show. Combining the Emo with the Deathcore, screams with death grunts, they appear to have the complete attention of all present. Seems Walls of Death are contractually verboten so the band call for a circle pit and for RADAR to become the craziest crowd of the day. False Provience is a shout out to the Tech-Fest crew and sees this machine purring like a happy kitten, harkening back to the glory days of the genre. Leviathan is built around an unstoppable groove which has everybody moving to the crushing drum beat, while Lavos, the third track from the In Stasis record, comes with a call for rage. Monuments provide a fitting end to the second stage’s first day.
Which just leaves the small matter of Sleep Token’s mainstage headline set. Clearly, here is a band with a strong – dare I say, rabid? – following and the number of Ts and hoods in the building is amazing, proportionally rivalling a Maiden, DC or Kiss show. Last year’s S.O.P.H.I.E. stage top billing proved Sleep Token were ready to step up and, on tonight’s evidence, that is confirmed.
New album, Take Me Back to Eden, has been getting mixed reviews from the press but what do they know? When the reception to the establishing Chokehold, the apt-for-Manchester Rain and the delicate Aqua Regia is so vociferous then the media’s reaction to a band trying new avenues of creativity is moot. The heavier material comes from This Place Will Become Your Tomb, in the shape of Hypnosis and the conclusion of Like That.
Sleep Token are about building the atmosphere and their willingness to discover new ways to seek those out is commendable. It might not be to all the critics tastes, but there is three-thousand-plus people here who would strongly disagree.
Photo credits: Ruben Navarro / Eleanor Hazel / Aneta Robak
