ArcTanGent Festival 2024 – Wednesday
First established in 2013, ArcTanGent Festival is celebrating its tenth birthday this year and has pulled out all the stops to provide a stellar lineup over four days.
Maths buffs among you (and with a trigonometric eponym there are certain to be many) needn’t check your diary or put on Radio 4 to establish whether we’ve gone back in time – simply recall that 2020 and 2021 fell into an abyss of pandemia and the reason for the misalignment of ATG years and calendar years will become clear.
2021 also happened to be the first year that your reviewers planned to attend the festival – but that was delayed to 2022, whereupon we revelled to the sublime tunes of the likes of Sugar Horse, Pijn, Ithaca, Still, Heriot, Amenra, Mono and Cult Of Luna. Several of these bands are back for 2024 to ensure that the birthday celebrations go off with a bang, and so it was with giddy anticipation that two ArcTanGentlemen set out from London on Wednesday morning to the Mendips.
ATG’s Wednesday is a single-stage affair with a smaller audience than the main three-day event, but with no detriment to the quality of the line up or the fervour of the attendees. Arriving on site we were delighted to find that several weeks of dry weather meant that most sludge would be coming out of the amplifiers, rather than underfoot, and we made a beeline for Hidden Mothers on the Yohkai Stage.
The Sheffield-based post-hardcore outfit provided an energetic start to our ATG experience (having not arrived in time for Host Body – not to be confused with Frail Body or Show Me The Body – both playing on Friday). Hidden Mothers provided an interplay of jagged riffs, high-tempo drumming and guttural vocals, alongside quieter, more thoughtful moments. This melange was enthusiastically received by the audience that ATG attracts – which is probably more mature (both demographically and temperamentally) that other heavy music festivals in the UK.
Din Of Celestial Birds followed thereafter – providing an exquisite metal-tinged post-rock set lit up the stage like a resplendent quetzal. Layers of music built up with expressive guitar-work came crashing down in a frenzy of bliss-inducing riffs. The symphonic melodies filled the tent, and the band bestrode the stage as colossi, with swirling soundscapes at their command. Comparisons are apt to be made with post-rock behemoths such as Pelican and Year Of No Light – and these reviewers are certainly enthused by the prospect of further shows by this heavenly outfit.
After such a musical and emotional journey, Cobra The Impaler were a considerable change of pace and tone. Based in Belgian and formed from members of other European groups, they offered up pacy and aggressive metal fare that was not necessarily to our taste, but which seemed to excite sections of the crowd.
Their compatriots, Psychonaut, however, provided an intriguing mixed mezze platter of slow-building post-metal tinged with menace, aggressive riff-led instrumentalism, bellowing stadium-rock and even some psychedelic grooves. More impressively, this musical smorgasbord was delivered at a consistent level of quality. One of the many bands under Pelagic Records, Psychonaut were an auditory treat.
Following our diversion to the land of moules frites, Curse These Metal Hands brought us firmly back to the UK with their particular blend of enormous riffs, Cro-Magnon vocals and Northern scallywaggery. The latter was much in evidence on the ‘I Can’t Believe it’s not Baroness’ T-shirts sported by numerous adherents in the crowd (Nutrition Facts: Riffs per serving: 666; Baroness Rips: 5g; Original Ideas: 0g etc.).
Although this side project – formed by members of Pijn and Conjurer – might not take themselves too seriously, it certainly did not prevent them from serving up a superlative set – including the sheer brutality of Endeavour and the crashing finale of High Spirits. Sadly, though, despite the promise of 2,000% of one’s daily recommended intake of banjo, it only featured for a brief interlude before being banished backstage.
After such frivolities, the rather more serious matter of LLNN was at hand. Danish androids teleported back to ATG from a future in which humanity battles robots for its survival, materialised from the ether and descended upon the Yohkai Stage. Programmed to seek out avant-garde space metal from Copenhagen, they marched in lockstep to take up their places at the front of the audience. Previous LLNN live performances have opened with the incomparable incantation that is The Horror. Victor Kaas bellows and writhes to a pulsating electronic beat that was seemingly written as a means of raising a demonic army from sulphurous Stygian depths.
But this time LLNN opened with Tethers from their unparalleled album Unmaker and kept the audience waiting for their dose of necromancy. LLNN’s sheer energy, heaviness and stage presence electrified the audience – playing Imperial, Desecrator and to the delight of the masses – as well as sneaking The Horror into the middle of the set, before finishing with Obsidian. As heads nodded in unison, we all became Danish automata from a future too terrible to behold (but with great tunes) – for both of us, this was the apotheosis of Day 1 at ATG.
Any act would find it difficult to follow the intensity and zeal of LLNN, but the promise of post-metal stalwarts Bossk held out hope of further elation. A split in the hive mind of your two reviewers arises here – one holds little interest in the metallic post-everything offering that Bossk have been peddling for nigh-on two decades. The other is enthused by 2016 release Audio Noir and the more recent Migration – detecting therein a finely crafted blend of slow-building atmosphere, elegantly spun riffs and crashing vocals.
On this occasion, Bossk seemed somewhat let down by anaemic sound for their first two songs, before they were joined by Karl Middleton from earthtone9 for an energetic rendition of Tat Twam Asi – again hampered by muddy sound that overwhelmed the lead guitar and impeded the melody. Thereafter matters improved somewhat and Bossk provided some good tunes from the more instrumental side of their catalogue.
Wednesday’s headliners And So I Watch You From Afar (aka ASIWYFA) closed proceedings with a set that was voted for by the ATG faithful – who gyrated gleefully to the high-tempo, high-energy syncopated beats of the lads from Belfast. By this time, however, the toll of driving several hours across the country and the creeping chill of a fresh August night overwhelmed the urge to remain to listen to ASIWYFA’s diverting math-infused offer, and we retreated sleepily to our lodgings to recharge in preparation for Day 2.
