Saturday at Desertfest 2025 arrived with a fine sense of anticipation. The legendary Roundhouse in London stands proud as the perfect crucible for a day steeped in heavy riffs and unforgettable performances from the not-so-light Konvent to the united brilliance of Zeal & Ardor.
Desertfest London – Friday 16 May 2025
Words And Photography: Ash Nash
History time now. Originally built in the 19th century as a railway engine shed, the Roundhouse has long been a cultural beacon, transforming over the decades into a creative hub that has hosted everyone from iconic rock legends to boundary-pushing experimental acts. Desertfest being here fits perfectly into the fold.
It is a vast, circular space (looks a bit like a UFO) with a soaring ceiling and a raw industrial character, creating an atmosphere like no other. This is a place where music does not just fill the room; it reverberates through the very bones of the building.
On this Saturday, as Desertfest’s relentless energy filled the air, the Roundhouse once again proved why it remains one of London’s most revered venues for live music—offering a stage worthy of the fierce, intense performances about to unfold.
Torus – Underworld
Torus might have been first on at The Underworld, but they brought Friday night energy to Saturday morning’s schedule.
Kicking off the Saturday at Desertfest with a proper punch of adrenaline down in the depths of The Underworld, Torus stormed the stage and wasted no time turning early risers into instant converts.
Despite being the first slot, the London-based trio brought headliner-level energy, proving that riffs hit just as hard before lunch—maybe even harder when delivered with this much fire.
From the first fuzzy riff, it was clear that Torus were not here to play it safe (at least not with that kind of sound). Somewhere between muscular stoner rock and grunge-drenched desert fuzz, their music landed with a satisfying thud, instantly waking up the crowd like a sonic jolt to the system.
With nods to Queens Of The Stone Age, Red Fang, and even early Soundgarden, they channelled their influences into something fresh, sharp, and unapologetically loud.
Frontman and guitarist Alfie Glass commanded the stage with the swagger of someone twice his age, his vocals gritty and gutsy, delivered over thick walls of distortion and groove-soaked riffs.
Behind him, bassist Harry Quinn locked in hard with drummer Jack Orr, who deserves special mention for his thunderous, no-holds-barred playing. Together, they formed a rhythm section with serious bite.
Crowd-wise, the room filled quickly, so word had clearly gotten out. Heads were banging, bodies were moving, and there was that rare sense of unity that only happens when a band completely connects with its audience.
Torus didn’t just warm up the stage. They set it ablaze, proving that an early slot does not mean background noise. If anything, they set the bar sky-high for the rest of the day.
With just the right blend of swagger, songcraft, and sheer volume, Torus made a statement. They might be young, but they are already a force to be reckoned with.
As openers go, this was one of those sets people would be talking about for the rest of the weekend and likely well beyond.
Conan – Roundhouse
As the mighty Conan emerged from the shadows and took to the Roundhouse stage, it felt like the earth cracked open beneath Camden.
The atmosphere thickened. The crowd braced. Then came the first note, and with it, the air turned to stone.
There are few bands in the heavy music pantheon that conjure sonic weight like Conan. Slowly carving and cracking away at the rockface of the Metal scene since their formation in 2006, the Liverpool trio have secured their own brutalist path through the sludge and doom underground.
Conan wield together primal riffs and unforgiving tempos into a sound that feels older than time.
But live — especially on a stage as grand and resonant as the Roundhouse — they become something else entirely: elemental.
Visually, the set was stunning in its restraint. Stark lighting cast long shadows across the band as red flares and pulses of backlight created the effect of some hellish sunrise, searing behind a monolithic wall of amps.
This was a ritual. As the lights twisted and swelled with each thunderous downstroke, the venue transformed into a coliseum of sonic violence.
Jon Davis, cloaked in silhouette, stood at the edge of the abyss, becoming one with his guitar, a doom general conducting slow-motion warfare. His vocals were raw and apocalyptic, somewhere between a death chant and a war cry, especially during the crushing Hawk As Weapon and the towering Levitation Hoax, where it felt like the ceiling might finally cave in from sheer low-end pressure.
Bass tones reached tectonic levels and a grumbling presence that did not just fill the room but seemed to possess it. And at the back, Johnny King battered his kit with clinical force, locking the chaos into a groove so tight it felt like the world might snap in half.
There was nothing passive about the audience’s experience. People did not watch Conan they survived them. And yet, within the barrage of distortion and feedback, there was an unexpected euphoria. The kind of slow, crushing catharsis that leaves you both flattened and uplifted. Each riff was like an avalanche; destructive, yes, but weirdly cleansing, too.
What made it even more powerful was the sheer intent behind it. Conan channelled something ancient and defiant. This music snarled in the face of time, music that asked nothing but offered everything to those willing to endure the weight.
Their sound is often called ‘caveman battle doom,’ but that does not do justice to the visceral artistry on display here. This was Metal as myth, as legend, as warfare and worship.
By the time they reached the devastating final notes, the Roundhouse was not just shaking. Conan had unified an audience twisted into a single mass of necks snapping in slow synchronicity, sweat-glazed and blissfully obliterated.
Conan delivered a sermon in distortion, and the faithful roared back in kind. In a festival packed with highlights, this was one of Desertfest’s heaviest and holiest moments.
Pallbearer – Roundhouse
Pallbearer’s return to London is always steeped in emotion, but their 2025 appearance at the Roundhouse elevated things to something near-spiritual.
As the sun dipped behind the rooftops of Camden and the air inside the venue buzzed with anticipation, the Arkansas doom giants took to the stage not with bombast but with reverence—mourning and majestic in equal measure.
Arriving just fifteen minutes before their set time, they emerged like ghostly figures, launching into a set that felt less like a concert and more like a shared catharsis.
From the very first notes of Silver Wings, the venue was bathed in soaring sadness and graceful decay. Brett Campbell’s vocals are ones that are simultaneously fragile and defiant. Here, they rang out over layers of slow-motion riffs and delicate leads. Each note hung in the air like a prayer, drifting beneath the domed ceiling of the Roundhouse and wrapping itself around every soul in the room.
Pallbearer’s ability to shift from crushing heaviness to shimmering vulnerability was on full display with The Ghost I Used to Be, a gentle and so sprawling, shape-shifting epic that saw guitarist Devin Holt and bassist Joseph D. Rowland conjuring waves of melody and melancholy in equal measure.
There was no filler, just deeply felt moments, each one unfolding with patience and weight.
Signals delivered a particularly haunting turn, its brooding introspection and near-post-rock atmospherics swelling into something cinematic. The interplay of clean and distorted tones echoed across the venue with heartbreaking clarity, emphasising the band’s mastery of contrast.
Worlds Apart acted as a moment of beautiful detachment drenched in melancholic but also oddly hopeful as if peering across a void and finding comfort in the distance.
But it was Given To The Grave that truly silenced the room. Its vast, crushing descent into sonic sorrow felt like the set’s final exhale — massive, deliberate, and devastating.
Pallbearer seemed to become one with the ebb and flow of grief itself, heartily dragging each and every listener into the depths with them, only to release them gently as the final chords faded.
The Roundhouse, with its gothic arches and cavernous acoustics, became a cathedral of doom that night. Pallbearer treated us to masterful dynamics, emotional clarity, and devastating beauty.
They offered more than just a setlist. Pallbearer delivered a eulogy for everything we bury and carry with us, leaving the crowd reflective, breathless, and quietly undone.
Amenra – Roundhouse
An Exorcism In Eight Acts; Amenra’s set at the Roundhouse was not merely a concert. That would be kind. It was an ordeal, a sacred reckoning. It moved like grief, slow and all-consuming, demanding not just attention but surrender.
The Belgian Post-Metal visionaries transformed the cavernous venue into something between a cathedral and a void, where silence loomed heavy and distortion became scripture.
From the moment the first image flickered across the monochrome projections—grainy, flickering, often abstract but always loaded with meaning the tone was set.
Sparse lighting cut through the darkness just enough to silhouette the band, who played almost entirely in shadow.
Colin H. Van Eeckhout, shirtless and facing away from the audience, convulsed and stretched as though possessed, never addressing the crowd directly. His silence was a statement in itself.
There would be no banter, no breaks, no comfort. The music—and the pain—would do the speaking.
Amenra led the audience down a slow descent into an emotional underworld; each note rang out like a tolling bell, each scream a prayer laced with rage and sorrow.
The transitions between whispering clean passages and crushing, sludgy walls of sound were masterful, so precise and yet so raw. No ease, no comfort for our vibrating hollowing bodies to enjoy.
Salve Mater followed, and the air thickened. Van Eeckhout’s voice cracked like dry wood under pressure, trembling and broken. The song’s restrained pacing felt like walking through wet concrete, every step an effort, every second heavier than the last. It was harrowing in the truest sense. The audience, silent and unmoving, absorbed every ounce of pain, still no ease. 
With Razoreater, the tempo shifted slightly, but the weight did not lift. The guitars screamed as if in protest, grinding like tectonic plates beneath our feet. It was perhaps one of the most visceral moments of the evening, not in volume alone but in its sense of bodily unease—a sonic wound left open and festering.
Plus près de toi (Closer to You) bled into the set like a whispered confession. The title alone carries a duality of hope and yearning but also the intimacy of loss. The song curled itself around the audience, and in that moment, the Roundhouse felt like a womb or a tomb. The visuals were stark: crumbling architecture, ash, anonymous faces blinking in and out of existence.
Then came De Evenmens, sung in Flemish, the band’s native tongue. The language barrier meant little; anguish translates well. The track carried a wounded majesty, like watching something beautiful fall apart in slow motion. It did not just sound tragic; it felt like it, deep in the gut.
By the time A Solitary Reign unfurled, the emotional toll was visible in the crowd. Heads bowed, eyes glassy. The refrain echoed like a mourner’s chant in an empty cathedral. It was not just played; it was performed, etched into the air and carved into the crowd’s collective memory.
Terziele was relentless, a slab of pure weight and sorrow. Guitars layered like lead blankets. Drums pounded like blood surging through a panicked heart. It was spiritual violence, and we were grateful for it.
With Am Kreuz, Amenra touched on something deeper, something holy. The interplay between the mournful, clean vocals and eruptions of distortion created a liturgical rhythm, like verses and responses in a church without mercy. Van Eeckhout remained turned away, the very image of defiance and submission all at once.
The final blow came with Silver Needle. Golden Nail. The title is ominous enough, but the performance was devastating. The crescendo hit like a funeral pyre being lit, flames rising with every cry.
The audience stood in silence even after the final note faded, as if breathing might undo what had just been witnessed.
Throughout, Amenra offered no direct words, no validation, no entertainment. They offered truth painfully exposed and stripped bare.
The crowd did not cheer so much as exhale, aware they had not merely seen a band perform but had survived something sacred and scarring.
Amenra performed a ritual. A shared catharsis. A harrowing, transcendent experience that left the Roundhouse hollow and hallowed.
Zeal & Ardor – Roundhouse
Closing the Roundhouse on Saturday night was Zeal & Ardor, and if ever there was a band built for this kind of stage, grand, historic, and loaded with atmosphere – it’s them.
With their genre-defying fusion of Black spirituals, Black Metal, soul, and industrial noise, Manuel Gagneux and his formidable band delivered one of the most electrifying and emotionally complex sets of the entire festival.
From the instant they launched into Church Burns, the Roundhouse was theirs, a congregation in awe of the sermon. Gagneux, charismatic and quietly intense, prowled the stage like a man possessed, flanked by two vocalists whose harmonies carried the weight of centuries of pain and defiance.
Backed by a band firing with frightening precision, every shift in tone landed with dramatic impact. The sound was crisp, crushing, and theatrical anthemic choruses clashed beautifully with tremolo-picked chaos and rhythmic industrial pummel.
Their performance was unpredictable in the best possible way, pivoting from the frenetic fury of Run, a track that unleashed glitchy chaos and maniacal vocals that sent the crowd into a wild surge, to the soul-drenched lament of Gravedigger’s Chant.
Here, the Roundhouse was transformed into a space of deep mourning, the band exercising incredible restraint as blues and gospel roots took centre stage. The room breathed with them, caught in a moment of sorrowful calm before the next wave of sonic destruction.
When they dropped Götterdämmerung, it hit like a bomb. Barked German lyrics, mechanised blast beats, and suffocating intensity gave way to a crowd who did not just react — they surrendered, headbanging with militaristic precision.
Götterdämmerung is a track whose Black Metal fury was sharpened into something urgent and unrelenting, a moment of pure controlled chaos.
In contrast, the haunting power that is Blood In The River gave the night its emotional core. Its call-and-response chants, steeped in rebellion and injustice, blurred the lines between battlefield and church in a true testament to the band’s unique voice and purpose.
They ended, fittingly, with Devil Is Fine. One of succulence and stomping, blues-drenched hymn, it brought the show full circle. The repeated refrain “A good God is a dead one” echoed through the crowd like scripture, a defiant chant that solidified the band’s presence not just as performers but as provocateurs, prophets, and pioneers.
The Roundhouse, with its soaring dome and architectural grandeur, proved to be the perfect vessel for Zeal & Ardor’s intense dualities of light and dark, lament and fury, tradition and rupture.
This wasn’t just a headline set. It was a ritual. A reckoning. A redefinition of what heavy music can be in the live capacity. As the final note rang out, it was clear: Zeal & Ardor did not just close the stage. They claimed it as their own and left a mark that will not soon fade from the soul of Desertfest.
Desertfest: Last Thoughts Of Saturday
Saturday had left its mark not just on the ears but deep in the soul. This was a day of intensity, emotion, and pure sonic weight. Every venue pulsed with life, from the pounding rituals at the Roundhouse to the intimate chaos of The Black Heart.
Personally, the crown of the day belonged to Konvent. There was something truly spellbinding in their set; a dark, glacial power wrapped in grace, like a doom-laden echo of Myrkur’s early mystique.
They were thunder and shadow, stillness and storm, and every note struck like it knew exactly where to hurt. The Danish four-piece possessed the room with a perfect mix of weight and atmosphere that hit me square in the chest and did not let up.
There are days like this where time bends, everything blurs into riffs, and all that matters is the music.
