(Intro: I’m currently going to lots of metal festivals in the range of 200-2,000 people. These are more affordable than big festivals and can be an even better experience: you find rising bands before other people do, and you bump into the same people repeatedly so get a real sense of community.
This made me realise that one useful thing Why Metal Matters can do might be a series of posts aiming to give a sense of the unique atmosphere and approach each festival creates. I’ll be taking not just photos of bands, but of bars, balconies, barriers, and the festival team - mainly to help anyone who wants to try new festivals see what each event actually feels like, but also to provide a record of how each edition shaped up.
The previous post does some of that for Fortress Festival and Dungeons of Wessex. But this post (the first to be written with this purpose in mind) is devoted to the place I’ve just spent the weekend: Offal Fest, at Boundary in Manchester.)
From a distance, Offal Fest might seem slightly unapproachable. The music is extreme. It’s formed round slam: the brand of back-to-basics brutal death metal that Manchester has become renowned for. The visuals revel in gore and horror: this is a genre for people inspired to make music by obscure cult horror films. But maybe it’s that sheer sense of extremity that gives this festival – once you’re inside – such a welcoming feel: everyone knows that everyone else loves the same beautifully nasty things they do.
The most striking thing inside the venue is that the crowd is much younger than at your typical metal fest. Hordes of extremely stylish metalheads in their twenties make the venue – especially the mosh pits – feel ridiculously vibrant.
The three organisers – Sam, Jack, and Jake – are present everywhere to oversee all aspects of their bastard lovechild. They too – unusually for festival organisers – are in their twenties and are exactly the kind of people every scene needs more of. In between two particularly frenzied sets, I caught them taking a rare moment to breathe outside the venue.
This is a single-stage festival, so there’s no need to miss a band all weekend. Including the afterparty, I saw 31 sets across two and a half days. Among its critics, slam has a reputation for lacking variety, but Offal Fest is designed for changes of pace. Among the slam bands, there’s a host of performance styles (watching the legendary Guttural Slug, for instance, feels like seeing the most charismatic hardcore band play slam) and every time there’s back-to-back slam, there’ll be a shift to one of the bands who play Cannibal-Corpse-influenced death metal or to the frantically intense gore noise performed by Lymphoedema. There were even contorted covers of Black Sabbath and Limp Bizkit to round out the full metal experience.
Another part of the design I really appreciated was the after party.
Running from midnight to 3am on the Saturday, this was possibly the best after party I’ve ever been to. It was held in Rebellion – a great little Manchester institution – and it featured REAL BANDS (not just, as so often, DJs). There was a crowd of a couple of hundred diehards, all on wild form (people even started crowd surfing before the stage-side crowd had thickened out to more than 20 people). Liverpool grindcore band, Horsebastard, were an inspired booking: a completely unhinged 1am set that might actually be my pick for festival highlight. No band is better at inspiring feral crowd antics.
The after party was also the only place I’ve ever been where multiple people I photographed insisted on selfies with the photographer (as in the last pic here).
In the main festival, it was possible to see some of the geographies of brutal death metal.
The Scottish presence was strong. Two of my Friday highlights were Dissolving Entity and Scordatura (both Glasgow). Before the festival, I’d had the relentless death metal of Scordatura’s new album, Led into Oblivion, spinning repeatedly, so theirs was one of the sets I was most looking forward to, and the blistering live show exceeded all expectations (can’t wait to catch them again at Bristol Extreme Fest). Then Laceration (Perth) drove home the sledgehammer strength of Scottish slam on day 3.
There was a strong Japanese and Korean component (Japan, Korea, and Singapore seem to be hotbeds of fantastic death and grind). Members of Butcher ABC (Japan) and Fecundation (Korea) were some of the most committed slam fans in the venue, moshing their way through every set including the after party.
Although the current Birmingham scene wasn’t represented here, I loved how many bands, including Fecundation, paid tribute to the West Midlands heritage with their choice of shirts.
Regurgitation (Ohio) were here to represent US metal. Despite their long careers, this was their first ever UK performance and when another US band, Devourment, had to pull out because of visa issues, Regurgitation stepped in and performed an extra set. They got some of the best moshpits of the festival as an expression of the crowd’s gratitude.
Another great, more local, contribution was the culmination of a new grassroots initiative – Battle of the Slams - the brutal death metal version of Metal to the Masses. This represents the Offal Fest team’s genuine investment in the scene, and it was great to see the winners, Warbastard, give their biggest performance yet and show they belong on big festival stages.
But the performance that most summed this festival up was the Sunday headliner (my other choice for festival highlight). Fulci were one of multiple Italian bands on the lineup. I was in the press room when the festival’s reporter-in-chief, Zombie Queen, interviewed them about their set, so couldn’t help taking a quick shot:
I loved listening in on the explanations they gave of their filmic vision, which involves ambitious integration of Italian horror films, their own visual productions, and death metal. I’ve seen Fulci before, when they gave a straight-up metal performance in Birmingham. But this headline set was entirely different. Two big screens showed their edits from Italian horror classics, perfectly integrated with the music. They were tighter and heavier than before. As a result, this was probably the most complete brutal death metal performance I’ve ever seen.
The venue – Boundary (Manchester Metropolitan Uni’s Student Union) – was new for this year. It’s much bigger than Offal Fest’s previous sites and symbolises both the success and ambition of the organisers. (The only downside of the venue might be the lack of space for a full range of catering options, but here a shoutout is necessary for Lucky Palace Szechuan restaurant across the road, who even serve a “Pig’s Blood and Offal Pot” to be on brand - we need a tie-in of some kind next year - and who welcomed the strange horde of metalheads with free desserts. As an additional bit of practical info - because the venue is in a student zone there’s cheap accommodation over the summer – I got 3 nights somewhere good for £136).
So why should you go to Offal Fest?
Firstly, it’s a great opportunity to see metal at its most bluntly extreme and recognise the eternal truth that the more brutal the music is, the nicer the people are.
Second, there’s something great about music that celebrates, as slam does, the exact opposite of the values the most beige and corporate aspects of our society demand we live by. And no genre of metal causes more chaos in a mosh pit, whether you prefer to jump in or watch the carnage from a distance.
Third, it shows off a distinctive local metal scene with all its quirks. I grew up in Manchester, so had lots of exposure to slam, and after moving to Birmingham in the 2010s was surprised to discover that slam doesn’t transfer across scenes (there’s no way Birmingham, for all its strengths in doom, thrash, and metalcore, could ever hold a festival like this). That regional specificity is part of what gives metal its infinite interest.
Fourth, this is the sweet spot for size and value: big enough to host major international bands, but small enough for every fan to get to hang out with the bands they love. With earlybird tickets offering discounts, and even the full price 3 day tickets costing just £100, there are a lot of bands for your money (less than £4 a band if you see them all).
Fifth, and most importantly, it’s the future. At a moment when there’s so much discussion of metal struggling to mobilise people under 30, surely even slam haters have to admit there’s something amazing about the scenes depicted above: a festival packed with commitment and energy from people 18-30. If every city had something like this, for one heavy genre or another, our scenes would be secure.
That last point is why I’d hate to miss a future Offal Fest and why I’m so keen to see what Sam, Jack, & Jake do next.
If you’re reading this from Birmingham, they’ll be at The Flapper on Thursday, bringing a little sliver of Offal to Birmingham’s best small venue. Come along if you can and revel in all the ways great people can be grotesque.
