Damnation Festival 2013: Here's To Eternal Damnation!
Friday, 18 October 2013
Written by Ben Bland
Damnation Festival has come a long way since it first came into being. Back in October 2005, metalhead Gavin McInally, disenchanted by the fact that so many great bands were seemingly never booked for the UK’s major heavy music events, organised a two-stage, 15-band event at Jilly’s Rock World in Manchester. Raging Speedhorn and Entombed headlined, and a new favourite on the British metal calendar was successfully born.
In 2008 the organisers scored their biggest coup to date when the legendary Carcass (pictured) played the only UK date of their comeback tour as Damnation headliners. This year they return, to celebrate the release of new album ‘Surgical Steel’, and are part of a mammoth line-up that also includes such celebrated names as Cult of Luna, Katatonia and Rotting Christ.
Carcass’ arrival in 2008 also saw the festival make its debut at the University of Leeds Students' Union, and in 2013 the event will expand to four stages for the first time at the same venue. Damnation is one UK event that seems to be going from strength to strength, seeing off increased competition to remain triumphant year on year. Stereoboard spoke to McInally to get his views on Damnation’s growth and continued success.
How far do you feel the move to four stages represents a triumph for the success of Damnation over the last few years?
It's definitely been great having the opportunity to do it because if fans hadn't put their hands in their pockets, we'd have stuck with what we had. To be honest though, it came out of nowhere. The venue told us that the Riley Smith Hall, which previously didn't have an alcohol licence, had been granted one at the same time as we were bracing ourselves for the 'Carcass and Cult of Luna clash? You morons!' abuse, and it opened up the possibility of doing our line-up more justice with more bands and less clashing, oddly. Whether or not it will lead to a more financially successful event remains to be seen, but as long as it makes for a more successful festival, we'll be chuffed.
You were very honest with fans about what was required if the fourth stage was going to happen. Do you think that honesty is an important part of why so many people come to Damnation year after year and support what you’re doing?
It's a hard balancing act because there are people, even within our own camp, who feel that level of honesty comes across as desperate and perhaps a little unprofessional. Even I admit that, with so much bullshit PR doing the rounds for struggling events which claim to be “selling out fast”, it's hard to get an honest message through to fans, so I wasn't overly confident in putting our cards on the table either because if it failed, it would've been a pretty public failure. However, our fans aren't whining teenagers or keyboard complainers, they are a pretty loyal bunch who've proved they'll show up in their numbers if you give them what they want and treat them with some respect, and that's exactly what we did.
You ended up going for a doom-centric line-up for the extra stage this year. Do you feel you’ve pretty much got all the stylistic bases covered now?
Damnation is as diverse as they come in the UK I suppose, but I'd love to see even more post-rock included in the line-up. There's certainly a fair few fans out there who don't think there's enough thrash or black metal either. We've always had doom bands though: Electric Wizard, My Dying Bride, Esoteric, Conan...we've just got a lot more now!
To what extent do you think the diversity of the Damnation line-up each year is crucial to the event doing well?
It's important because with so many festivals and tours around these days, fans want quite a bit for their ticket price, and rightly so. Therefore, having a more exciting mixture of bands does help. However, 20 of the most diverse and interesting bands on the planet won't sell you much unless there's a significant headliner or headliners at the top of the poster, which is a bit disheartening at times because we'd love to blow that budget on flying in all sorts of great, but not massively popular, bands in from the States, across Europe and further afield.
You have a pretty great record of booking bands that other festivals in the UK seem never to pick up upon (for example, this year, Crippled Black Phoenix or Rosetta). What do you attribute that to?
I'm not entirely sure to be honest. But then other than fans calling for Electric Wizard to play ATP one year, I can't think of any UK festivals who've even booked them, so it's probably not as surprising as it sounds.
Finally, who’s your top tip for each of the stages at the festival this year?
Let's go with Palehorse on our newly sponsored Electric Amphetamine Stage. Vallenfyre could be pretty special on the Terrorizer Stage but I'm going to plump for Rotting Christ as they are always great live. I'd watch every single band on the Eyesore Stage with a stupid grin on my face but I can't see how any band at the festival could possibly beat Cult of Luna. Of course, the mighty Carcass on the Jagermeister Stage will be a sight to behold again.
In case Gavin’s selection of bands hasn’t got you excited enough, here are five more picks on the line-up that Stereoboard rate as essential:
Iron Witch (Electric Amphetamine Stage, 13.15)
This Liverpool quintet have been making waves with their ultra-heavy, Eyehategod-style sludge.
Voices (Terrorizer Stage, 14.45)
Blackened death metallers Voices released an excellent debut record earlier this year and feature former members of sadly deceased Damnation favourites Akercocke.
The Ocean (Eyesore Merch Stage, 17.15)
Always an essential live band, the Ocean have been a hit at Damnation many times before and you wouldn’t bet against their set being one of the most highly praised of the day this time around.
God Seed (Jagermeister Stage, 18.00)
Controversial ex-Gorgoroth vocalist Gaahl returns to black metal with God Seed, and is sure to inflict a blistering blast of icy cold Norwegian darkness on the Damnation main stage.
Crippled Black Phoenix (Eyesore Merch Stage, 18.45)
Something a little different for Damnation, Crippled Black Phoenix are one of the UK’s finest purveyors of widescreen progressive rock. They’ll make a nice change of pace after God Seed!
Damnation takes place this year on November 2 at Leeds University. Tickets are a very reasonable £34 and are still available from Leeds Tickets. For more information about the festival please visit the Damnation website. You can see the stage times below. See you there!
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