FESTIVAL PREVIEW: RADAR Festival 2023
Words: Dan Barnes
Relocating to Manchester after spending its formative years in Guildford, RADAR Festival is a three day Progressive Metal celebration that has previously hosted the likes of Animals as Leaders, Rolo Tomassi and Dirty Loops. Following the example of Damnation and Outbreak, Radar is heading north to the 3500 capacity Victoria Warehouse in the Trafford district of Manchester, a mere stone’s throw from Old Trafford football stadium.
Happening on the last weekend of July, Radar promises three days of mind-bending and face-pummelling sets, across two stages, from some of the scenes most uncompromising sonic architects.
Friday Stage One headliners, Sleep Token, are no strangers to a festival’s prime position after their appearance topping the tent at Bloodstock last year. With the recent release of the band’s third album, Take Me Back to Eden, the mysterious Progressive Post Metal collective have laid another marker for shattering expectations and non-conformity, making every record and every performance an odyssey for band and fans alike.
March saw the release of Fauna, Haken’s seventh full-length which finds the band further underscoring their already impressive Prog credentials. Their Opeth meets Katatonia approach giving an engrossing listen.
Ireland’s Post Rockers God Is an Astronaut arrive in Manchester with a reputation for being one of the most immersive performers in the scene. Not only does the audio enrapture but the visual accompaniment serves to hypnotise in equal measure.
Expect Unprocessed to simultaneously sing you to sleep and fill that slumber to horrific nightmares; AA Williams, fresh from a recent UK tour, brings her mesmerising musings back to town, while fellow UK tourists, Heriot, will neither seek nor give any quarter when they take the stage to deliver their ferocious modern metal. Playgrounded return after a successful series of shows with The Ocean last autumn in which their post metal assault laid waste to many a venue.
Friday’s Stage Two will be topped by Monuments whose take on Progressive Metalcore and Djent has seen them garnering praise for all four of their currently released albums.
Sweden’s Aviana have been resurrected of sorts by the addition of new frontman and vocalist, once of Walking with Strangers and Oceans Red, Joel Holmqvist who has shown emotional metalcore and shades of Nineties-inspired Nu Metal can make comfortable bedfellows.
Owane & Jack Gardiner will no doubt deliver a masterclass of jazzy noodling and general guitar-god-ary if their Shredemption collaboration is anything to go by; Floya will be turning the emotion up to eleven and Hypno5e hop across the Channel, bringing a decade and a half of experience of combining the abrasive with the mournful. Forager’s confrontational hardcore meets Nu will give everyone the change to let off a bit of steam and to compose themselves after the final show by Progressive Groovesters Shattered Skies.
Radar seems to be making a concentrated effort to frazzle minds with their choice of bands and none more so than with Saturday Stage 1 headliner, Igorrr. The French artist draws influences from such Metal genres as Black, Death, Industrial and Progressive and mixes them with slices of the classical, regional European sounds and even some Trip-Hop to make a thoroughly modern interpretation of what extreme music should sound like in 2023.
Possibly hopping on the same ferry from France will be Parisian dark synthwave pioneer, Perturbator, who has been making musical waves since the release of his debut album, Terror 404, in 2012.
Heading to Manchester from further afield is Australian Alternative Progressive Metalcore band, Thornhill, who have the notoriety of having their song, Lily and the Moon accidentally played on Aussie public radio on loop for four straight hours.
Home grown heroes, Pupil Slicer continue to make waves with their caustic live performances and a brand spanking new record in the shape of Blossom; Allt will be bringing their progressive metalcore all the way from Sweden, while Exploring Birdsong will make the shorter trip along the M62 from Liverpool for their piano inspired progressive rock. Modern Error’s ambient post punk stylings offer some early Saturday respite from the deluge about to come.
Stage 2 on Saturday offers no relief either, with Milton Keynes Metalcore groovers, Heart of a Coward looking to build on The Disconnect album and begin to make headway with their new line up. There has been no let up in the brutality of the band since those early days, so it’ll be folly to expect to get away scott-free from this encounter.
South Wales’s Dream State is offering up influence from Slipknot, Linkin Park and Tool as colouring their post hardcore/ alternative metal sound. Their debut, Primrose Path being filled with edgy, emotionally charged tunes with plenty of raw and aggy moments; expect a broken nose as well as a broken heart.
Finnish prog-metal trio, Wheel, will be bamboozling with their Rush-like tunes and Dream Theater style vistas. US trio, Profiler, take things in a slightly different direction, adopting a more post metalcore and heavy hitting stance. Scots Tiberius blend rock, pop and progressive metal into what can only be described as sounding like a chest-beating, fist-pumpingly good time. Church Road’s Graywave will bring a post rock fragility to the start of the day, while Crushed by Waves will open the second stage with a bunch of unbelievably infectious grooves and earworms that will take some shifting.
The obvious huge draw for Sunday is Periphery who’ll bring Radar Festival 2023 to a fitting close. The DC Djent royalty have become seasoned road dogs over the years, sharing stages with Devin, Dillinger, Fear Factory and many more. Expect the room to be rammed and offer a thought for the guitar tech, who’ll have a busy night getting all those strings into the right tunings for the right songs.
US progressive metalcore crew, Volumes, will no doubt make a challenge for Sunday with their combination of Djent, Nu and Groove metal. The bouncing guitar lines, underscored with keys, give the aggression an unfounded sense of being somehow softened.
The one-time Gojira supporting Car Bomb promise to be furious and terrifying in equal measure. The New York Mathcore mob are as abrasive as their moniker might suggest, with guttural vocals and an ever-changing sea of time and tempo. Meshuggah fans will have a field-day.
Brisbane’s Caligula’s Horse will be proggy as their killing with kindness sound belies a darker underbelly; German’s Long Distance Calling have a wealth of experience and eight albums to drawn on, whose laidback grooves could prove to be a welcome distraction from the weekend’s unrelenting pummelling. Rohan Stevenson, aka I Built the Sky, is also making the long journey from the other side of the world to be at Radar, bringing a hypnotic acoustic mellow to the show, while the home-grown Where Oceans Burn naturally have a more manageable journey to make for their opening slot of metalcore mayhem, getting the blood flowing for what will surely be a raucous final day.
Packing out Stage 2 for this final day will be Loathe. Mere weeks from stepping up to cover for the mighty Suffocation in headlining the mainstage at UK Tech Fest, the Scouse Progressive Nu Metalcore merchants already have a track record of mesmerising and brutalising in equal measure. If their performance at Slam Dunk 2021 is anything to go by, Radar will be torn asunder and gently kissed better.
Parisians Ten56. make a speedy return to the city after the Easter support slot with Alpha Wolf and King 810 in April. Their heavy hardcore and massive breakdowns showed them to be the equal of their touring mates that night and, in a bigger venue, their killing zone will be increased. Face ripping will no doubt be the order of the day.
Danes, Ghost Iris are all about the technicalities of fast, yet melodic guitars, grooving beats and monstrous vicious vocals. Atlantan sextet, The Callous Daoboys will no doubt destroy through a intense combination of metalcore, mathcore and party-violence, making the Dillinger Escape Plan sound like a casual listen. Lake Malice will continue to defy description with their gothic-pop-meets-metal approach to music, Forlorn will show extremity in music is no longer the sole purview of the men and, in the spirit of Venom Prison, Svalbard and Employed to Serve, ably prove to be deadlier than the male and Dead Speaker will show that Newcastle Upon Tyne is capable to giving us more than just the highest quality punk bands by bringing their Blackened Industrial vibes across the country.
In all, Radar is promising three days and forty-odd bands to hardwire your brain and blow your mind. Just three weeks out from ArcTanGent you should have recovered by the time the first bands hit the stage in Bristol. Probably.
Photo credits: Tim Finch Photography
