Offalfest 4: Festival Preview

Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch

We at The Razor’s Edge are stoked to be covering the fourth edition of Offal Fest in Manchester later this month; two and a half days of the most disgusting music you could hope to hear, twenty-five awesome bands and a spanking new venue to show it all off in. Sadly, the north-west has waved goodbye to two of the area’s best extreme music shows, with the UK Slam Fest hitting its tenth anniversary and calling it quits, and the Bolton sausage fest that is Grind After Death going on an indefinite hiatus after this year’s fifth birthday bash.

Happening over the weekend of 24th to 26th July and no longer being hosted at the Bread Shed, rather moving to the unfamiliar confines of Manchester Metropolitan University’s Boundary venue, not a place I’ve been before, but they’ve got three-shots for £6 and will price match Guiness – so you can’t say fairer than that.

The weekend begins with a pre-show of half-a-dozen bands to get the blood properly pumping. While it might be additional to the weekend ticket, the cost / benefit analysis makes it a sound financial investment. Headlining this event is hometown heroes, Crepitation, who don’t have too far to come to attend, and have carved a niche for themselves following multiple shows at Slamfest, Bloodstock and Damnation; always a joy to behold and renown for levelling any stage they step upon – so much so that their recent back-catalogue features a number of live releases. The debut full-length, The Violence of the Slams, might well be more than decade old, but it’s still a blistering half-hour of slamming deathgrind.

Brutal technicians, Infected Disarray, have a patchy past, in regard to their active years. Formed in 2000, going on hiatus until 2004 and being operational until 2012, in which time they released their one and only – to date – album: 2009’s Disseminating Obscenity, which, as luck would have it is receiving a 2026 redux to be released mere days before this show. With a whole heap of song titles culled from a medical dictionary – Prenatal Excavation of Diseased Ovarian Atrocity, Demonstrating the Necessity for Extreme Prejudicial Infanticide Within the Vomit Filled Womb – the four-piece has been together since the first reformation in 2004, with Toms Carter and Broadfield of Twitch of the Death Nerve, joining the OG Joninsane and Paul Martin for what is sure to be a terrifying experience.

Mancunian slammers, Coprocephalic Mutation, have been issuing product since 2018 through a series of singles, demos and splits with the likes of Infantectomy, .357 Homicide, Traumatomy and PeelingFlesh, with only the 2020 EP, D.3.1.4., being a singular example of CM’s brutality. Catchy slams and mammoth beatdowns are the order of the day when these lads hit the stage.

Gore-obsessed Glaswegians, Scordatura’s 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. Taking a break from his day-job in Party Cannon, vocalist, Daryl Boyce has been fronting Scordatura since the beginning, and the release of this year’s Led Into Oblivion album proves this is no side-project.

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 singles to their name, OC is already showing themselves to be ones-to-watch as their journey through brutality develops momentum. Scottish brutal Dissolving Entity may only have been together a little over a year, but they’ve been granted the honour of opening the whole weekend. Their debut EP, Parasite Enthroned, is three blasting assaults in eight-minutes, so it’s best to get to the Boundary early so as not to miss out on them.

Offal Fest 4 has pulled off a major coupe by bringing Dallas slam royalty, Devourment, to Manchester for their first UK show away from the south of England. Celebrating more than thirty-years and brutality and slamming, and the recent release of their first new studio material in five-years on the EP Pious Impiety, which shows the band is still as focused on the mission as ever they were. The band’s debut album, Molesting the Decapitated, might have been released in the last millennium, but its power and influence is still felt to this day. Following full-lengths Butcher of the Weak, Unleash the Carnivore and Obscene Majesty have been punctuated by periods of inactivity from the band, but what a unique selling point for any festival to boast, having these Texans topping the bill.

New York natives and brutalists, Immortal Suffering, make a swift return to Manchester after their May 2025 show at the Rebellion Music Bar with Stabbing and Emasculator, one of only three times the Queens crew have ever stepped foot on an English stage. This, if anything, makes their appearance at Offal Fest all the more mouth-watering, with the prospect of blistering tracks from Asylum and Preyed Upon, as well as newer material from the Extreme Torture EP of 2023.

UK debutants, Italian technical mob, Unbirth, take their name from a sexual fetish that – let’s just say – reverses the birthing process (Google it if you’re interested, but don’t blame me if you have nightmares). Their fixation on the cosmic scale and insignificance of humanity in the face of that can be heard across the band’s three full length records, beginning back in 2013 with Deracinated Celestial Oligarchy, up to last year’s Asomatous Besmirchment.

Tokyo grindcore/ goregrind terrors, Butcher ABC, is another band heading to these shores for the first time with history dating back to the mid-nineties and a discography heading as far back as 2002. The only full-length album in the ample back-catalogue is 2017’s confrontational North of Hell, with the remainder being a host of live recordings, demos, EP and splits with the likes of General Surgery, Coffins and, most recently, 100 Years War. Greek goremongers, Embryectomy, come to Offal Fest fresh from their show at 2025’s Flesh Fest with Amputated and Epicardiectomy, where their tales of torture, rape, murder and infanticide found favour with the locals. No new record since 2020’s Flamethrower Ecdysis but with drummer Jake Gamble having now established himself behind the kit since joining in 2024, expect a mighty barrage blasting across the Boundary.

Rarely a place you think of where brutal death metal is concerned, but Switzerland’s Kakothanasy have been bringing the sickness since 2012 – or 2010 if you count the early years as Genocide Farm. Last year’s sophomore full-length album, Metagonism, was thirty-minutes of ferociousness, all presented with dictionary-busting titles. Drifting to a Moderately Commutable Adjustment Without Fitness Supremacy, Foremost Biotic Constituents Conjoined for Analog Synthesis: An Irrelevant Recognition of Qualms? and The Hard Problem of Targeting an Irrefutable Endogenous Transmission in a Somatic Compound give you an approximation of where the band is coming from. Italians Inverecund have a new demo which includes a cover of Slayer’s Dittohead alongside two new examples of their old school brutal stylings. A continuation of the EP Engrossed in Horripilation from 2023, it takes mid-paced death metal and fills it full of dark, foreboding atmospherics and chilling horrors.

Northern Ireland’s Strangle Wire prove Belfast isn’t only responsible for top quality punk bands, with their take on rampant death metal from the early days of the genre. The quartet have been around for a decade, and their 2022 debut album, Shaped by Human Frailty is certainly a collection of tunes well worth a look. Manchester’s Disgracing bring slamming brutal death metal blasts and croaks, with 2026 debut EP, Descension into Despair, finding just the right balance between slams and brutality. Colchester’s Battle of the Slams winners, War Bastard opens proceedings with some classic old school death metal.

Whatever you have left after Saturday’s mammoth session of musical extremity will be stiffly put to the test on Sunday, with eleven more global acts specifically booked to remove the skin from your face and the cranium from your shoulders. Making their UK debut as Offal Fest’s Sunday headliner is Ohio wrecking machine, Regurgitate, whose sole studio full length, Tales of Necrophilia, might have crawled out of it’s grave in 1999, but still casts a significant shadow over everything that followed. The core personnel of Tipon, Baker and Baxter have been spewing the gore since the mid-nineties, with second guitarist, Steve Pedley, ex-of Emaciated Entrails and Embalmer, joining at the millennium. The on/off nature of Regurgitate means only Tony Tipton and Brian Baxter contributed to the 2011 EP, Clitoraldectomy. It certainly is a tantalising prospect to finally see these legends on British shores.

Named after their countryman, movie director and generally considered Godfather of Gore, Lucio Fulci, Caserta-based death metallers, Fulci, offer a new definition of the genre by taking crushing riffs and abject brutality and infusing them with a cinematic atmosphere and stories of zombies and gore. Early albums, Opening the Gates of Hell and Tropical Sun are love-letters to Italian shock cinema, their most recent full-length, Duck Face Killings is based on the 1982 Giallo classic, The New York Ripper, and features unbridled raw aggression across its entire run-time.

Prague brutal slammers, Epicardiectomy have been bringing the violence since 2007, and come back to Manchester following last year’s Flesh Fest headlining slot. With album number four, Dismal Landscapes of Voluptuous Pustular Cadaverosis, locked, loaded and ready to launch in August we might well be getting a host of new tracks to accompany classics like Prurience in Putrescence, Horrendous Festering Transmutations and Fornicating in Pulverized Feces. If the 2023 EP, Exhumed Decollated Mutilation is anything of a signpost, then I’d suggest the upcoming material will be business as usual.

I cannot wait to see Danish Slam machine, Guttural Slug, again after their monumental opening slot on the Party Cannon / Internal Bleeding shows as recently as April. That night, the Slug were the bollocks, focusing on the recent Ulcers in the Flesh of Thought EP and, of course, the stone-cold slam monolith that is Megalodon. Need to get a shirt this time. Another band with a name related to the Italian horror scene, London trio Twitch of the Death Nerve is so-called due to the 1971 Mario Bava movie, aka The Bay of Blood. Like Fulci, their musical focus is to translate the intensity of the visuals and recreate them through slamming brutality.

Originally from South Korea, now playing out of Yokohama, Japan, Suffocation-inspired duo, Fecundation ooze and slither with a rank intent, their latest album, Moribund fluctuating between blasts and crawling riffs. Torture, suffering, domination and defilement are the of the day for Lille’s Darkall Slaves, who take the brutality of Disgorge and the technical prowess of Malignancy and stir it up into a cacophonous cocktail of sound.

Scottish band, Laceration had something of a purple patch between the release of their debut EP, Condemned to Torture in 2010 and the 2013 issuing of the Severing the Divine Iniquity debut and, to date, only full length. Blending slams, brutality and grind into a fetid musical concoction that is sure to pep up your summer Sunday. One-man noise-grind outfit, Lymphoedema, makes his way to Manchester from Limerick City in the Republic of Ireland, certain to bamboozle with his combinations of musical extremity, mixed with drone, harsh noise, trap and more. Likely to be a show for the ages.

Italian duo, Gorge, have barely a year of activity but have a couple of demos and a single to show off their old school, mid-paced brutality, all leading up to the launch of debut album, Deeds of Horror set for the end of August this year. Repulsed make the relatively short trip up the M6 from Milton Keynes to open Sunday’s shenanigans with some heavy, hardcore moves.

Offal Fest 4 is all set to be a worth iteration of the festival and a special weekend for extreme music. It your tastes veer away from the mainstream, I’m sure there’s something here for you to enjoy. I listening to all the bands preparing for this preview I can honestly say absolutely every band playing has the ability to be Band of the Weekend. Let battle commence!!!