Live Review: Grind After Death Fest
24th May 2025
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Rich Price
I’m old enough to remember the time before music festivals became mammoth money-making machines for some faceless corporation trying to flog grossly-overpriced diabetes in a can to already horrendously gouged punters. Back when the ticket options were based on whether you were going or not, and the VIP Experience was limited to not being hit on the head by a plastic bottle of some randomer’s piss.
Those days might have been rudimentary, with limited facilities, but we showed up, watched the bands, had some beers and went home – usually a bit smelly and the worse for wear, but the memories had been made.
Festivals seem now to have been hijacked and have become soulless corporate events, bucket-list items for folk otherwise disinterested in music, but with an overwhelming compulsion to drop the name of the current must-attend fest at every opportunity.
So, thank [insert whatever deity you may or may not believe in] that there are still events catering to music fans rather than consuming units, and have resisted the urge to make a Faustian deal with the corporate Mephistopheles.
This Bank Holiday weekend I was fortunate enough to be able to spend time at Bolton’s Alma Inn and finally get to attend the awesome Grind After Death festival. Now in its fourth year, the Grind After Death festival is essentially a party for a couple of hundred friends, hosted and curated by an aficionado of musical extremity, and catering for a niche gap in the live market. It is from similar acorns that Obscene Extreme Festival in the Czech Republic grew, so there is an appetite just waiting to be catered to.
After weeks of unseasonably sunny weather in the usually damp north-west of England, the skies have decided to darken and are threatening rain. Luckily, the Alma’s staging area come equip with a retractable roof, meaning the bulk of the audience area will remain mostly dry.
After a few last-minute tweaks to lighting and cables, Stockport’s Acid Vat get the show going. Introduced by our compare for the day, Cat Parasite, the Vat begin the day with pummelling percussion and buzzsaw guitars, leading to the first of many breakdowns to be heard throughout the day. Grandma’s Teeth is a saucy little number with a cheeky groove playing away and, as with all live shows the possibility of things not going to plan rears its head early, as guitarist and vocalist, Jordan Sheffield, does not seem to have the same setlist as his band mates and announces a different track than was expected.
No harm done as we’re treated to that number next. Acid Vat’s death metal credentials come to the fore when they slow things down through some fat, downstroke Morbid Angel riffs, which sees every head unescapably bobbing away; fast and punchy punk is delivered in the same balls-out manner as the closing cosmic technicality. Grind After Death 2025 is now officially underway.
Vocalist Mickey Mutant soundchecks Ned Miller’s From a Jack to a King before the start of Accelertated Mutation’s set, though it bares no reference to the band’s old-school Midland take on grind. Going back to the roots of the genre, the influences of crust, punk and power violence come to the fore in what is a display of sawing guitars and spastic rhythms; the PA buzzing constantly gives the show a raw and honest vibe, accentuated by the primal and gloriously unrefined noise coming from the stage.
If today can be seen as a journey through the aspects of musical extremity, then Accelerated Mutation’s show should be looked at as the Ground-Zero of the genre: fast, and sporting a punk attitude from the outset, this is the source of it all. The DIY perspective even sees Mickey passing his mic to a member of the audience to fill in on his final scream.
A scheduling swap is required as Corpsing are still enroute, so the hugely popular Grindcore Cake Makers step into the earlier slot, making for one of the most entertaining sets of the whole festival. Having played in 2023, the clamour to get these Leeds lads back onto a Grind After Death stage was high and, witnessing the show, you can understand why.
Wearing masks and playing to triggered electronics and sample may well conjure images of The Berzerker, but I can’t recall Luke Kenny ever doing his thing as someone baked a cake at the front of the stage. There’s something quite surreal to hear the aggressive cyber-grind being spewed from the PA as a band member goes about his preparation.
As with the practice of baking, the band draw in many influences to supplement their sound. From grind to thrash to a bit of R&B, all goes into give something of a unique flavour. The world’s worse unicorn fancy dress is pulled up on stage, as the chef goes the other way and starts to offer his concoction to the crowd. There’s a surprising number of people willing to try it; I decline on the grounds of Health and Safety, diabetes and the fact that it just don’t look too good. No offence to the chef, but it didn’t seem that Paul Hollywood needed a call.
London lads, Coprsing, were playing the Beyond the Grave show at The Black Heart in NW1 the night before Grind After Death, and their delayed journey up to BL2 meant a switch around of the billing. Celebrating their quarter of a century as a band, Corpsing’s death metal journey to this year’s EP, Viewing the Invisible, is one of the brothers Cutispoto’s unwavering faith in the band set against a constant turnover of members.
Cythraul bassist, Levi Le Blanc, had been fronting Corpsing for a couple of years now and with the EP being his first chance to show his talents in the recording studio. Newbie, Social Paralysis is not the heaviest thing on offer today, but the notion of extremity comes in many guises. Oldie, Born to the Faith, from the debut album leans into the grooves and the grinds, along with the screams; and Be the Pack, the EP opener, arrives with a big breakdown and a wider vocal demand than anywhere else. “It’s always nice to be up the way!” states Levi and the band look to be having a good time, which spills over into the crowd.
They – whomsoever “They” are – reckon you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover (it’s in the Magna Carta, or something) but when the guitarists are wearing Sylosis and Decapitated shirts, there’s a fretless bass player, and the drummer needs glasses, you can almost guarantee you will be getting your body pummelled and your brain frazzled imminently. Out of Yeovil, Unburier bring the tunes to tickle the cerebellum, with their crisp technical death metal assault.
There seems to be ongoing issues with the set-up, which frontman, Ben, seems to be taking the brunt of. If it’s any consolation, Ben, from where I was it sounded good, shorn of some of the band’s usually technicality, but not without its brain-melting chops. Structured Genocide sees all the heads in the room bobbing in unison to a slower number; yet, for all the perceived gremlins / ghosts in the machines, Unburier still managed to deliver an imposing set, taking part one of Grind After Death into its interval.
Yup, Interval. I’ve been to festivals by the hundreds, yet never have I seen an intermission. Cat takes the stage and gets a few party games going; a few drinking games and the distribution of prizes. As out-there as it was, it’s still sort of fun to see folk trying to swing a sausage on a string from their crotch and catch it in their mouth, or to wear a high collar and down a pint. Kudos to the young lady who volunteered for all the challenges, and for winning the drinking game.
By all accounts, powerviolence crew, Trading Hands, were worried about how they would fare at Grind After Death. Hopefully it didn’t take long for those thoughts to disappear as, in my humble point of view, they damn near stole the show. So far the crowd had been rather static, but as soon as Trading Hands hit the stage there was mayhem at the front that continued until Cytotoxin’s set ended.
From circle pits to slamming, it was good friendly violent fun, accompanied by the soundtrack of uncompromising hardcore. There’s old school dbeats and even some vague Oi! vibes going on, but it’s all raw energy pouring from the stage. As with the foundation of the punk movement, the band bring with them an adherence to a political point of view. Fed Fodder comes with a big scream and it’s impossible not to be swept along with the crackling power in the room.
Danceable beats, mixed with a very apparent pro-humanist stance, seems at odds with the musical carnage the band created for their brief time upon the stage, and the number of items of merchandise that suddenly appeared after the set suggests the band might have miscalculated their limited appeal.
Before Vatical Rites’ set, it was announced Grind After Death 2026 would be taking place at the Alma on 30 May and, as a sweetener, we were given DeathCollector and Italian goregrind kings, guineapig, as early bookings for next year.
London mob, Vaticinal Rites have the unenviable task of following Trading Hands which they manage by pummelling Bolton into submission through the magic of old school brutal death metal. Slamming vocals and filthy riffs are the order of the day, the crowd at the front of the stage, seemingly energised, continue to party like the world isn’t on the brink. Inflatables fly overhead, a small beach ball and a plethora of penises full the air as guitars scream.
The band’s debut full-length, Cascading Memories of Immortality has just celebrated its first birthday, and a majority of the show is crafted from that record. Bowels of Gargantua arrived with stomping drums before the set is slowed with big, reverberating rhythms. The crowd appear to be getting themselves battle hardened for the campaigns yet to come tonight but still manage to acquit themselves with the sort of status likely to be talked about for years to come.
Obscene Extreme-bound Belgians, Barren, are currently out on tour with Accelerated Mutation and have been laying wastes to venues across England all week. They are the festival’s last true grinders of the day and the packed crowd show their appreciation for the chainsaw grind by filling every space available and hunkering down for the long haul.
Featuring ex-members of Aborted and Agathocles, this three-piece are no strangers to a rambunctious crowd and know exactly which buttons to press to achieve maximum effect. The tour is being filmed with a view to an on the road documentary and it is asked that Grind After Death lose their shit for the duration. Not long after we see the first crowd surfer of the day.
Down and dirty riffs and scuzzy breakdowns cause chaos in the pit, especially when the carrot of free merchandise to the craziest revellers is offered. New material is played along with older, more established, tunes and we even get a song so new it had only just been recorded. The more the set develops the faster the material becomes, until it reaches a critical mass and the laws of physics dictate the set must end. Barren put themselves in a strong position to be another band in contention for Band of the Day.
It's not meant as a slight but The Bleeding‘s brand of death thrash is probably the most accessible set of the festival; which is saying something when you listen to the band in isolation. Blending death and thrash with hardcore and speed elements, along with the power metal-vibes of Demonic Oath and the early Cradle of Filth-isms of On Wings of Tribulation. The genius of Death’s Leprosy record is honoured in a one-off cover of Open Casket, previous recorded on their Rites of Absolution debut, and the thundering bassline of Hammer of Penance takes us into overtime, and the band are forced to stop.
As soon as the organisers saw Chemnitz technical brutalists, Cytotoxin at Brutal Assault last year they knew they had to get them for their festival. In what is a long overdue return to the region, the Germans are greeted like visiting royalty. Their career fixation on the events at Chernobyl have seen then well so far and do not look like abating anytime soon. The Biographyte album is barely a month old and five-years in the making – damn that pestilence – and finds the band in blistering technical form.
Sebastian ‘Grimo’ Grihm is in good form as the headliner’s master of ceremonies. He states there will be “no old shit” tonight as they have a new album out; encourages circle pits aplenty and organises one of the most ruly walls of death you’ve ever witnessed. Bringing the participants together in safety was his primary objective, and he managed it.
He even finds time to do some pretty bad dad dancing – not Barney-bad, but close. Yet all this is superficial to the technical brutality and razor-sharp precision of Cytotoxin’s delivery. Crisp and crystal clear, it’s wave after wave of savage riffing and grunting vocals. To see a band of this calibre playing in what is essentially a beer-garden is perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity; one that only someone with the vision, the passion and the sheer dedication to make happen can achieve.
Which brings me back to my initial point: events like Grind After Death are the life blood of the music scene, especially for those of us with a fondness for the extreme. I could single out the affordability of the show; I could single out the friendly atmosphere; I could point out how all involved are clearly doing it for the love of it, rather than any anticipated financial gain.
I could – but those things are self-evident to anyone walking into the Alma on festival day. Grind After Death is the antidote to all those soulless corporate-sponsored cash-grabs; maybe the ten bands are not front of mind when it comes to thinking about the genre, but you get to see some perhaps unfamiliar bands, which might just become new favourites.
I’ve already got hold of guineapig’s Parasite album, ready for 2026.
Photo Credits: Rich Price Photography
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