Live Review: Offal Fest 4 – Sunday
26th July 2026
Words: Dan Barnes
It’s a noon start for Milton Keynes mob, Repulsed, and an impressive crowd consider some folk won’t have left Rebellion earlier than 4am. Formed but a few years ago, the trio have managed to amass a couple of EPs of their hybrid death/ grind/ hardcore. Regardless of the early hour, Repulsed is taking this opportunity to tear Offal Fest a new one. Blending cacophonous blasts with bouncing grooves and big, pounding rhythms, there’s heads uncontrollably bobbing everywhere you look. At times, Dan Newstead’s drumming takes on an industrial texture and machine-like coldness; but that gets brought back with the heart-warming Sliced, Poked, Shocked, Choked, Wrapped in Barbed Wire and Electrocuted. That one’s about killing paedophiles, apparently.
Limerick City’s one-man noise-grind outfit, Lymphoedema, is a very popular addition to the bill and draws a sizable crowd. Balaclava’d and using a laptop, the set begins with the jump-rope mantra from A Nightmare on Elm Street, before combining electronic beats with harsh blasts. Limerick City Gorenoise is a tribute to his hometown, utilising an industrial drum sound and urban vibes. Samples from Beavis & Butthead, a cover (of sorts) of Limp Bizkit’s Break Stuff and Shark Tooth – Decapitation, which is more in line with the project’s Hip-Hop roots. Technical issues mean we lose most of this song, but the smoke-hazed 4 Gram Blunt$ is a high (no pun intended) BMP cybergrind and the set ends with 3 as-yet untitled tunes.
Italian duo, Gorge, hit the stage minus a rhythm section, with Edoardo Nicoloso and Roberto Sava sharing guitar and vocal duties. Theirs’ is a very listenable sound, old school death metal with big and brutal elements. Chugging, almost Slayer riffs lead into a slow, yet technical barrage, big breakdowns and punishing, mid-paced aggression.
Scotland’s Laceration returns Offal Fest to the standard band set up, albeit a trio, and continue the reformation started in 2024. Uncompromising attitude and a Dying Fetus delivery is all that is needed to demonstrate the band’s dedication to the brutal. Man-mountain guitarist and frontman, Hamish Maguire talks of the strangeness of returning to songs he wrote as an angst-ridden teen, but the power and precision is still ever-present. Mention of mental health and the need to communicate with others receives a very positive reception, as does the new song premiered this afternoon. The only full-length from the band is Severing the Divine Iniquity from 2013, so hopefully new material is close at hand. Time does not seem to have robbed Laceration of the ferocious heart or abrasive approach to music, which certainly bodes well for whatever comes next.
French modernists, Darkall Slaves, bring a contemporary style to their crushing take on death metal, mixing heavy, blasting chugs, with cosmic breakdowns and two-steppin’ rhythms; unusual for a rancid death metal show, they even manage some bluesy grooves, which are very much at odds with the quarrelsome overall style of the band. Focusing a Malignancy energy, and a Gallic flare for the progressive, into the visceral subject matter of gore, torture, suffering and death, appears to have hit the perfect note with the Offal Fest faithful, who spin pits and slam the whole way through.
Far-eastern Suffocation-inspired duo, Fecundation have a huge sound for a band performing without a bassist. The level of technicality reached by drummer Temma Takahata, and guitarist/ vocalist, Chuck Jenga – both of Butcher ABC – is truly impressive. There’s minimal interaction between band and crowd, instead the music does the talking. Vicious and edgy, the set switches pace at will, firing along all guns blazing one moment, before adopting an angular momentum and dissonant approach. Death grind becomes old school death metal and the set just flies by.
Muscling in on the Italian horror theme before headliners Fulci arrive, comes Twitch of the Death Nerve and sees Toms Carter and Bradfield back on stage after the triumphant set with Infected Disarray on Friday. When you’re named after one of the genre’s more notorious films you need to be showing some violence and savagery; as luck would have it, they have that is abundance, along with grooves, samples and slams aplenty. Of Rutting Beasts and Drifting Herds comes from the debut record and is still a monstrous barrage of skipping rhythms, that belies speed, settling for intensity instead. There’s even a couple of new tunes from a forthcoming release of some description, both quite capable of forming their very own circle pits.
Denmark’s Guttural Slug draw a huge crowd for this first return to town following the triumphant April show with Party Cannon and Internal Bleeding. Sadly, those damned gremlins have other ideas for today’s set and, what should have been a crowning triumph, is truncated; though certainly not lacking in intensity. Vocalist, Alexander Kristensen, is making the frontman position his own and stomps around the Boundary stage like a man on a mission. “Manchester never disappoints” he states as slam hits after slam in one of the most unrelenting assaults of the whole weekend. Circumstances are such that we only get half-a-dozen tunes, Suspended from a Single Strand of Sanity and Ulcers in the Flesh of Thought from the new EP and, of course, a massive slice of Megalodon. Paranormal Evisceration, Hacksaw Surgery, Eye of the Cyclops and Isolated Insanity are compressed into the shortened time, along with the energy they bring, meaning limited though the Slug’s set was, it was both exhausting and exhilarating.
Prague slammers Epicardiectomy really do have their work cut out for them, difficult following the Slug at the best of times, but when the Danes are in this mood, it’s a task of Herculean proportions. Yet they managed it through their slower, brutal attack, Stan Pozharnitsky’s bass holding at all in check, acting as the stabilising element between drums and guitar. New record Dismal Landscapes of Voluptuous Pustular Cadaverosis is locked and loaded, ready for its late August release and, on this form, Epicardiectomy will most certainly be in the mix at the end of the year for 2026’s most brutal album.
Regurgitation‘s second set of the weekend was the equal of the first, as you would expect.
And so, in no time at all, it’s Fulci turn to take the stage, meaning that, somehow, it’s been three days since we got here. For the first time this weekend, the video screens flanking the stage are used for something other than band logos, with Fulci’s cinematic atmospherics being enhanced by accompanying visuals. The early Tropical Sun material snaps and snarls like the Zombie Flesh Eaters that inspired it: Eye Full of Maggots growls, Matul Tribal Cult lumbers as awkwardly as the living dead themselves, nasty and hypnotic; Opening the Gates of Hell’s Among the Walking Dead is as unstoppable as a relentless zombie horde. A couple of year ago, the Italians took on the 1982 Giallo classic, The New York Ripper, for their most recent record, Duck Face Killings, and the material from that record shows a more modern, colder, sound, reflecting a move from the zombie-infested jungles to the far more dangerous city streets. Rotten Apple, Vile Butchery and Sadistic Murder wear arguably more civilised clothes, but try as he might, vocalist, Fiore Stravino, cannot but sound as unhinged as Andrea Occhipinti’s movie maniac.
And so, Offal Fest 4’s curtain is brought down in the most alarming style, and the weekend’s revellers are sent out on to the streets of Manchester with images of urban slaughter seared into their brains.
In all seriousness, Offal Fest is a blast of a weekend and the Boundary is the perfect venue to host it: great sound, enough space to be comfortable, but intimate enough to create a strong atmosphere throughout. There was not a single weak – or even close to being weak – band on the bill, but festival highlights for me were Scordatura, Butcher ABC, Immortal Suffering and, despite the technical difficulties, Guttural Slug.
Props for Regurgitated for stepping into the void left at short notice by Devourment, but genuinely, every band played their part in making this an absolute pleasure of a festival to attend.
Early announcements for 2027 more than suggest Offal Fest 5 will be a heck of an event. It’s just great to see the extreme music scene being so well represented and supported.
See you all next year!
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