FESTIVAL PREVIEW: UK Slam Fest 2025
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch
It’s been ten-years since the inaugural UK Slam Fest took place at the Temple of Boom over in Leeds; a line-up headlined by Czech brutalists Epicardiectomy, topping a bill that included Engorgement and Party Cannon.
Twelve-months later and UK Slam Fest became a ‘thing’ with the show sporting Madrid progressive slammers, Wormed, and Italians, Putridity. Chorodotomy performed their debut UK show in 2017 as Cephalotripsy stepped up to the plate and closed that year’s show.
By 2020, the plan was to shift the festival across the Pennines, to Manchester’s AATMA venue, expanding it to a Friday evening and all-day Saturday. An intended international occasion, UK Slam Fest was scheduled to host the likes of Cytotoxin, Kraanium, Embryectomy and Abysmal Torment, alongside home-grown talent like Basement Torture Killings and Operation: Cunt Destroyer.
I think it’s fair to say we all remember what a shit-show 2020 turned out to be, with 2021 feeling the continued restrictions; however, the ship was refloated at the Star and Garter in 2022, when Amputated headlined a more streamlined bill, under the moniker of UK Slam Fest Domestic.
By 2023, everything seemed to have returned to as much normality as we’re likely to get at the moment, and Slam Fest relocated again, this time to Manchester’s Bread Shed, a tidy venue just off Oxford Road, which has played host to the likes of Venom Inc, Possessed and Phil Campbell, as well as being a setting for one the Manchester Punk Festival’s many stages. Everyone’s favourite scatological-obsessed grinders, Gutalax, topped the bill, alongside returning former headliners, Epicadiectomy, and fellow feces-focused Norwegians, Coprophagia.
Stability reigned in 2024, as Czech grinders Jig-Ai and Dutch death machine, Disavowed, both brought UK exclusive headline shows to the festival. But, just to show home-grown talent is thriving, you could also find performances by Dawn of Chaos, Impurist, Gunk and Spawned from Hate.
Which brings us nicely up to 2025 and this year’s celebration of a decade of brutal extremity.
Again taking place at Manchester’s Bred Shed, this years’ event will be held on Friday 10 and Saturday 11 October, and features a fearsome line-up of the most Slamming Death Metal the genre has to offer.
Friday headliner is seasoned New York technical death metal exponents Malignancy, still lead by original vocalist, Danny Nelson after thirty-three brutal years, and a stop-start discography that has seen a host of EPs and demos since the first release of Eaten Out from Within back in 1992, right up to the band’s fifth album, …Discontinued, issued just last year.
Ex-Obsura and Defeated Sanity bassist, Alex Weber, joined the band around the time of the plague, fitting in as the fourth piece of the puzzle, adding a core to long-time musicians Mike Heller and Ron Kachnic’s work.
In the vein of contemporaries Suffocation, Cryptopsy and Deeds of Flesh, Malignancy combine sheer raw aggression with mind-blowing technicality to turn your brain to little more than a gloopy soup by the time they’re finished. Face-melting brutality will clearly be the order of the evening.
Joining Malignancy on the opening day is gore-obsessed Glaswegians, Scordatura, whose career started back in 2008 with their Genocidal Maniac demo, and had given the world three full-length records of fetid Dying Fetus-meets-Cannibal Corpse levels of sonic violence.
Current Party Cannon vocalist, Daryl Boyce had been fronting Scordatura since the beginning, though I’m expecting less beach balls and general revelry, and more abject fear and mass slaughter – in a purely musical sense, of course.
In a Slam Fest exclusive, the organisers have signed Austrian Hardstyle Cyber-Gore merchants, Seil Taishogun to play their debut UK show in Manchester. It’s been thirteen years since the band self-released their solo full-length album, Banzai, with its mixture of heavy industrial gore-grinding and electronic dub stepping moments, interspersed by insane interludes of sheer J and K pop madness; which, in all honesty, are more unsettling than the rapid compositions by the band.
Bolivian brutalists, Worship the Pestilence could well have qualified as the WHO’s house-band over the past few years; instead, they head to the Bread Shed with some old-school stylistics locked and loaded. Main man, Jorge Velarde, has been ever-present since 2008 and has recruited steadily, putting together a solid four-piece for appropriately named albums Arriving to Spread Misery and In Time of Plagues and Obscurity. Latest release, 2023’s Rebel Child of Nature mixes old-school mid-paced riffs with brutal pig grunts for a punishing but rewarding listen.
Opening the whole shebang on Friday will be Bridgewater trio Eproctophilic Necrophile, who’ve only been active for a couple of years but already managed a demo, a couple of extended players and a live album; not too shabby and I think we can expect an enthusiastic opening to the tenth anniversary festivities as the band smash into their uncompromising combination of goregrind and noise.
Saturday will deliver a full roster of ten bands for Slam Fest’s all-day assault. Topping the bill is Chicago maniacs Gorgasm whose mission to bring some of the most depraved riffs to the public’s attention had been ongoing since 1994. Their Sadist EP last year was the first new product in a decade and reminded us that the world isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, and this summer’s release of the single, Ravaged Corpse Décor could well be the starting pistol on a new full length.
If ever a band should be the cherry on the tenth-anniversary cake that is UK Slam Fest 2025, then I can’t imagine a better way to bring the brutal curtain down on proceedings.
Not to be confused with the melodic death metal or thrash bands who share the same name, the now-Canada based Incinerate arrive in Manchester with more than quarter of a century’s experience of blending old-school death metal with a sludgy technicality. Still led by original vocalist, Jesse Watson, and with only bassist, Sasha Wilczynski, pre-dating the last album, 2020’s Sacrilegivm, the band have recruited wisely and are sure to be chomping at the bit for the baptism of fire that will be playing as special guests to Gorgasm.
Home-town heroes, Crepitation, don’t have far to come and are no strangers to festivals in general and UK Slam Fest in particular. One of the three survivors of the very first event, back in 2015, to be playing today, the band have recently appeared at both Bloodstock – where they recorded their live album If You Want Blood (Stock) – in 2022, and at Damnation the following year.
Regularly featured at Obscene Extreme over in the Czech Republic, the band have recently recruited Exhumation vocalist, Chris Furlong to the cause, as direct replacement for Chris Butterworth, now a member of Pithy.
Don’t expect any gentle introduction from Mr Furlong, and Crepitation just isn’t built to do anything but destroy.
Also having a short journey to the Bread Shed – and being the second remnant of the first event, Mancunians Visions of Disfigurement arrive at the festival almost exactly to the date of the one-year anniversary of the release of last album, Vile Mutation. Slamming brutality and a misanthropic perspective will be the order of the day for these four lads, not known for their sweet-and-kindly musical nature, and ready to ready to give the festival an early evening wake up call.
Exhumation is from just down the A580 in Liverpool – no booing at the back – and will see Chris F pulling double-duties before his stint with Crepitation later. Theirs’ is a more old-school death metal sound, no less brutal, but more in the vein of Cannibal Corpse’s blood-splattered murder-worship than all-in raw and ruthless pig-grunting slam.
The Sadistic Inhumanity EP is now four-years old but still provides a caustic five-tracks of that classic DM sound we all know and love.
At the time of writing this preview, one-man outfit, Goremonger had been forced to withdraw from the bill. Hopefully it is not a serious issue, and we will see him at a future show. No replacement had been announced at this point.
Third and final band who played in 2015 is Chainsaw Castration who have yet to release a full-length but have a discography stretching back to 2014 and filled with demos, EPs, compilations and splits alongside Cheerleader Concubine, Regurgitated Pus, Malformed Clitoral Syndrome and festival alumni Visions of Disfigurement.
Expect brutal slamming death metal and maybe a hint of the deathcore as CC introduce breakdowns and grooves.
It’s been ten years since London’s Dygora issued their first EP, the six-track Prelude to Revolution; another band still to issue a debut album, this year’s Southside Tapes is five uncompromising monuments to what happens when death metal and hardcore run into each other, head-on.
Sharp squealing guitars and complex polyrhythms might make the band something of a square peg in Slam Fest’s early Saturday round hole, but there’s more than enough unfettered brutality here to slake the thirst of even the most traditionalist death-head.
Popping across from the North-East, Ovulating Cadaver might be a new band, having only formed in 2024, but the members have cut their teeth in acts like Vulgar Dissections, Stone Cold Abyss and Plague Rider. With just a couple of single to their name, OC is already showing themselves to be ones-to-watch as their journey through brutality develops momentum.
Opening everything up on Saturday will be Warwickshire duo Andrew Blower and Callum Cheshire, collectively known as Hacked Up, whose rudimentary version of slamming brutal death metal sees just a drum and guitar, and unholy, demonic grunts. Their early, uncompromising performance is bound to be the equivalent of waiting for Wetherspoon’s to open at eight o’clock on a Monday morning: seems like a good idea at the time but will quickly mess you up!
The organisers are tirelessly seeking Goremonger’s replacement and we at The Razor’s Edge, as UK Slam Fest’s media partners, will let you know when that is announced. In the meantime, grab a ticket and prepare yourself for a mid-Autumnal day-and-a-half of brutal birthday celebrations.
Crepitation photo credit: Tim Finch Photography
