Live Review: Uprising 9 - Very Metal Art Stage
23rd May 2024
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch
The skies are clear and the sun is shining brightly over Leicester for the annual Whitsuntide bank holiday shindig that is the Uprising Festival. Now in its ninth year, today the Academy is hosting seventeen bands from across the Metal/ Rock music spectrum, some of which might not be household names quite yet but give it time.
It barely passed noon when the Very Metal Art Stage fires up with an early set from Peterborough punishers Break Them whose abrasive metallic hardcore found them on this very stage a couple of years ago as part of the 2024 Metal to the Masses Final. Time has not mellowed the band, as the opening combination of Ultra Violence, All Bark and No Steps Back define Break Them’s confrontational attitude. Mixing punk energy with in-yer-face beatdowns, each reflecting the current state of the nation, sets the Uprising bar high; Deadbeat is dedicated to shit parents everywhere, To the Death comes with some two-steppin’ rhythms and there’s a call for a circle pit as the band play their cover of Machine Head’s Davidian.
No strangers to a festival stage, Pryma from Kent already have experience at Bloodstock, No Sleep ‘til Blackpool and Call of the Wild, a show they will play again the weekend after Uprising. I’m also sure I heard someone say the band were Download bound in a few weeks too. Blending clean vocals with heavy barks in an effective manner, combining a gothic sensibility with weighty bass rumbles and rock-solid rhythms, makes for a very competent early set. Recent single, Mask, opens the floodgates, Dead to Me twists and turns, and what looks like the beginnings of a mass Newport Helicopter session is about to break out. GG bosses the stage and the audience throughout Freaky Fright Night, as Pryma manage that difficult task of weaving between the classic and the modern to great effect.
Geordie quintet, Crowley, arrive in Leicester with darkness on their musical minds. Harkening back to the Occult Rock of the Seventies, they revel in fuzzy doom haze, incorporating chill screams into their ungodly sound. Early set tunes Necromancer and Silver Star, the latter of which shows off Lidya Balaban’s voice to perfection. Sadly, a few technical issues derail the momentum of the performance mid-set, but the band take it in their stride and, for a while, Lidya is stripped of some of her vocal power when singing through one of the backing microphones. However, the ship gets put back on course and we have a Sabbath Bloody Sabbath-style intro riff, a fiery Hell Hath No Fury and a folky-vibe to the final track, Pyre.
Dutch/UK quartet Maarkare made many friends after their EMP stage appearance at Bloodstock Open Air last year, so Uprising wasted no time in coaxing them back to the East Midlands for a full-on festival show. Janneke de Rooy, ex-Beyond the Pale vocalist, leads us as guide and temptress through the dark underworld of the band’s aesthetic. 2024 debut record, Rise to Power, provides the bulk of the set as the four fiery females take inspiration from - and pay reverence to – strong and leading women through history. Theirs is a blend of blackened death, fuelled by bands like Nile, Behemoth, Septic Flesh and Arch Enemy; fierce and ballsy, this is no fairytale as we get War Before Peace, the album’s title-track and long Live the Queen. Later in the set comes Judgement Day and Realm of the Dead, showing that Maarkare is not here to cheer anyone up.
Northern Ireland Deathcore terrors, Survivalist, appear to be experiencing the same sound gremlins that haunted Crowley a few hours earlier. While matters are being attended to and the obligatory turn it off and back on again is tried, singer Gavin Sharp keeps up entertained with renditions of Fly Me to the Moon and Stevie Wonder’s Superstitious; admitting the whole band is a front for the sale of hot sauce and pre-warning Uprising to expect the most mediocre set of our lives. Rather an undersell if I’m being honest, as the shortened show shakes the room with heavy brutality, pig squeals and a general scant regard for the public’s safety. Charged with ferocity and Gavin’s Irish humour, it’s half-an-hour of fat riffs and fierce vocals, all served up with a smile.
Sludge survivors, Gurt seem to have been around so long that their recent absence from festival stages has become noticeable. 2024’s Satan, Etc album was their first full-length since 2019’s awesomely titled Bongs of Praise, with only a 2020 lockdown single to bridge the gap. Time hasn’t chilled the band out and they still land with their abrasive sludgecore assault. Newer tune, Doi of the Doid opens the band’s Uprising account with some hazy and psychedelic riffing. Early tune, Sludge Puppies gives way to the traumatic Fever Dream, about singer, Gareth Kelly’s botched vasectomy, and rightly filled with anger. That tune segue ways into Marijuarmchair; and Satan Etc’s In For a Penny, In For a Pound is joined to Skullossus’ Battlepants. Gareth announces the end of the set is going to be as “Heavy as fuck” and the band wheel out the doomy-bass and precision riffing of Rolling Stoned to a forest of waving arms. It was good to see the band again after what seems like an age, just to remind us of what we’ve been missing.
Technical issues certainly appear to be the order of the day and London trio, Hawxx look to be chomping at the bit to get going. When they do they launch into a punk-infused rage against the injustices they see in the world of today. Macho Bullshit comes a wall of friendship; Resistance is Justified gives their opinion of events in the Middle East. Abrasive, edgy and unashamedly making a stand for something, Hawxx’s anger and ire feed the late afternoon at Uprising with renewed energy.
Nearly forty years after their inception, one cannot help but wonder whether the lads in Lawnmower Deth ever imagined they still be playing songs from the 1990 full length when they were closing in on their sixties. But they are… Sumo Rabbit and the Inescapable Trap of Doom, Killer Cobs from the Planet Bob and Weebles Wobble But They Don’t Fall Down were as vital to the kids – of which I count myself – as anything coming out of San Francisco at the time. It’s a set filled with nostalgic and danceable numbers, all displaying the punk influence on the Thrash scene and reminding you of the soundtrack to a mis-spent youth. Hands go into the air for Sheep Dip, the jigging attendees are sent outside to coax in those folk enjoying the fresh air.
But it’s not all about the Ooh Crikey It’s… Lawmower Deth album, as the Nottingham jokers pay several visits to 2022’s Blunt Cutters record: Into the Pit opens the show, Botheration and I Don’t Want To arrive early, Bobblehead slots in mid-set and the Raise Your Snails and Power Bagging bring it all to a close. Pete announces the band have a busy weekend planned with tomorrow find them at Catton Park for the Bearded Theory festival, where they share billing with Garbage, Badly Drawn Boy and ex-Special, Neville Staple.
Headlining the stage is Cheltenham trouble-makers Stampin’ Ground who seem to be having a busy twelve months of festival appearances, starting last November at Damnation’s Night of Salvation, running through the Lords of the Land show, and with Download in a couple of week and a Bloodstock debut pencilled in for August, it would seem the band are making up for lost time.
Their prolific run of four albums in the years between 1997’s Demons Run Amok and A New Darkness Upon Us gave some of the most abrasive sounding music you’d care to put whichever genre label you believe most suits the band. I recall first seeing Stampin’ on sweltering night in the summer of 2003, supporting Sepultura on their Roorback tour, and being amazed at the pure energy spilling from the stage. Twenty-three years later and vocalist Adam Frakes-Sime seems to be rolling back the years with a kinetic performance that sees him having broken sweat before the end of the first tune. It’s wall to wall Stampin’ Ground classics: Pain Is Weakness (Leaving the Body), Mid-Death Crisis and Dead from the Neck Up, all here to remind you that no matter how much you back hurts after standing up all day, participation is mandatory.
Beat downs come and go aplenty and the band manages to get the biggest, or at least most wide-ranging, circle pit which circumnavigated the mixing desk, draining those last drops of Saturday energy before Pitchshifter could claim it later. Only Officer Down could bring this set – and this stage – to an end with the raucous climax Uprising’s Very Metal Art Stage deserved.
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