ArcTanGent Festival 2024 – Friday
Down the road from Fernhill Farm stands the village of Compton Martin, the birthplace of Wulfric of Haselbury. Wulfric was an anchorite – a particular type of medieval hermit who, for reasons of religious devotion, would ensconce themselves in cells attached to churches. The process of incarceration was often accompanied by funeral rites, whereupon they would be considered a type of living saint from whom wisdom could be sought – in Wulfric’s case, even by royalty in the shape of kings Henry I and Stephen – and from whom miracles might be issued.
Given the spiritual gifts granted to anchorites by their many years in seclusion, perhaps Year Of No Light also attained their divine skill through twelve months of devotion in a darkened cell, as their name might imply. The French outfit were the stand-out highlight of the third day at ArcTanGent – filling the main stage with music powerful enough to leave lesser stages a mere smouldering ruin and impressing a saintly devotion upon the awestruck audience.
We had begun Day 3 at ArcTanGent with Blackshape, a band whose metal-tinged post-rock suggests a devotion to the holy writ of Year Of No Light, and whose skilful performance whetted the day’s appetite for more such offerings. The band provided a validation of Ian’s Theory of Post-Rock, which is that any post-rock band ought to have two members (ideally including the drummer) who actually want to be playing metal, in order to drive the music forward, give it heft and occasionally ask the question ‘Is this actually just boring’? BLACKSHAPE generally fell on the side of interesting rather than aimlessly melodic, and we happily skipped off for a change of pace in the form of Fange.
Fange, whose name sounds like a slang term for female genitalia to Anglophone ears, means ‘mire’ in French. After the previous day’s rain, we were pleased to find that the sun was out, the ground was generally dry and that the festival had not become ArcFangent. As the band warmed up, it became apparent that they had no drummer and would be relying upon electronic drum accompaniment. And as they played it became apparent why – such was the frenzy of their performance that most drummers’ arms would have fallen off halfway through.
The band launched into a blistering set of raucous vocals, cacophonous guitars and pulsating synth backed by the merciless mechanical metronome of the drum machine. Opening with Césarienne Au Noir from their 2024 release Perdition, they spent the next thirty-five minutes providing a set that was both an exquisite musical performance, aerobic workout, primal scream therapy and group bonding session (the bassist and the guitarist exchanging licks of each other’s sweaty skulls was an interesting moment). It was enthralling and incredibly enjoyable – overall verdict: Fangetastic.
Shy, Low were up next, in a return to the metallic post-rock theme of the day. Having seen a stellar performance from them a few days previously at the Black Heart, expectations were high. The band did not start with the pulsating energy that we had witnessed in London and seemed to take a while to hit their stride, but the closing song Helioentropy from 2021 release Snake Behind The Sun saw them at their peak. Again, demonstrating Ian’s Theory of Post-Rock, this song starts with melodic guitar, using periods of quiet juxtaposed with chunkier riffs and urgent drumming to create an aural experience that rolls like the Mendip Hills and climaxes with final frenzy of crashing noise. Their final song thus provided an excellent amuse-bouche for the feast that was to come with Year Of No Light.
Playing mostly from Consolamentum, they opened with Hiérophante and then moved seamlessly into Objuration – a menacing, slow-building composition like the relentless march of a demonic horde consuming everything in its path before a huge clash of guitars and crashing drums accelerates the pace, leaving the audience overwhelmed with the sheer scale of their music.
This was followed by Alèthia, which opens with the gentle notes of a solo guitar that leads into an elegantly crafted interplay of drums and soaring keyboard, before climaxing in a pulsating welter of punishing percussion and crunchy riffs. Closing the performance was Interdit Aux Vivants, Aux Morts, Et Aux Chiens – an utterly superlative eleven-minute titan of a track that blew away the audience and left them gibbering in dismay at such awesome musicianship. Several may even have taken up the anchorite life as a result.
Next on our agenda were Night Verses – a pleasing math-infused post-rock outfit that went beyond the usual tropes of the genre. Their set provided a stimulating performance with particularly accomplished bass playing and a drummer channelling his inner Animal to the delight of the crowd and the detriment of his drumkit.
Proceedings took a heavier turn with a trip to the PX3 Stage to watch Glassing – who were something of a mixed bag. Opening with ten minutes of what can only be described as turbo-sludge (frenetic drumming, huge riffs, vocals straight from Thou), the band then reduced pace and ambled somewhat with some shoegaze-sludge that was significantly less diverting.
When they were loud and fast, they were good, so perhaps a thirty-minute frenzy rather than a forty-five-minute set would suit the band better. Frail Body were of a similar ilk – another US three-piece that were well-suited to a berserker thrash of full-on drumming, discordant riffs and screaming vocals.
After a break in proceedings, we were presented with the choice of Animals As Leaders or Blood Command. We resolved to try the former and revert to the latter as a backup. Animals As Leaders are clearly incredibly technically proficient musicians, but their jazzy beats with constantly shifting time signatures did not meet the approval of one of the two reviewers, so a case was put to try Blood Command instead.
We knew nothing of this band – on the basis of their name we conjured images of traditional metal being played by men clad in leather and studs – and so we were surprised to find a troupe of Adidas wearing musicians playing Norwegian party metal. Upbeat riffs, enthusiastic drumming, raucous vocals from an adopted Australian vocalist with a penchant for audience interaction – this was sheer fun and we grinned our way through the rest of their set.
The final set of our night also confounded expectations. Show Me The Body were an enthralling conjunction of emotional hip-hop lyrics, with varying doses of ferocious drumming, enormous bass and a banjo with an exquisite tone. Attracting an audience of fanatics who were whipped up into a whirl with a performance of anguish, anger and angst, the band seared and fulminated their way through their set. Show Me the Body are an outfit that rather defy written characterisation and are probably best experienced live to appreciate the power of their performance and its sheer intensity.
