Fortress 2024 / The Biggest Black Metal Festival In The UK

August 27, 2023

Fortress Black Metal Festival 2024 - Scarborough - The biggest Black Metal festival in the UK.

Fortress Festival will return to Scarborough over the first two days of June 2024 with a Black Metal lineup that includes several UK-exclusive shows from bands such as Blackbraid, Panopticon, Furia, Obsidian Kingdom and Fellwarden.

This year’s groundbreaking festival debut was sold out and very much a success, leading to the aim to make Fortress the biggest Black Metal festival in the UK. Weekend early bird tickets are available now at £109.

“The festival follows the immeasurable success of 2023’s Fortress,” Fortress organiser and Reaper Agency UK owner Gary Stephenson told MetalTalk. “A sold-out event which has rightly taken its place within the glorious pantheon of UK Black Metal history. Fortress 2023 joins Reaper Agency’s impressive track record so far, which consists of nine sold-out UK festival shows in just three years of activity.

“Fortress 2024 is set to snatch that mantle and wield it a ruinous blow with bigger crowds, more merch stands, more ferocious bands and even greater infamy in its wake… all taking place upon the sun-scorched coastline of this historic North Yorkshire town.”

The First of June. 2024… Under the watchful gaze of the carrion crows that beset the castle’s crumbling battlements…the hordes of darkness will stir. The mournful bells of the woebegone church will ring out upon the hillside: soon to be lost amid the ravenous battery of an ancient warlord. And from the ashes of the past, a new stronghold will arise… “Fortress…” Fortress Festival

“It’s official: Blackbraid will be coming to the UK next year for the mighty Fortress Fest,” Jon Krieger of Blackbraid told MetalTalk. “I can’t express how excited I am to not only bring Blackbraid to the UK for the first time but to be doing it at such a unique festival, surrounded by some of the best Black Metal artists in the world.

“This will be our only UK appearance next year, so we wanted to do our best to make sure it was truly one to remember. A big thank you to Fortress Fest for making this one possible. See you next summer.”

Austin Lunn, the sole member of Panopticon, will bring Roads to the North to next year’s festival. “Roads to the North was the sound of a young man, only 31 years old at the time, reflecting on changes and growth in life, as the symphony of life plays on regardless of mistakes and broken strings,” he said. “2024 will be ten years since its release, and it feels like the right time to bring this album in its entirety to the stage for yet another time of reflection on the simultaneous, incredible beauty and horror of this time we have on earth.”

“Whilst Fellwarden was always conceived as a studio project first and foremost,” Frank Allain of Fellwarden told us, “I’ve always stated from the get-go that I wouldn’t rule out the prospect of performing live should the right opportunity arise. Fortress Festival 2024 is that opportunity.

“Nevertheless, Fellwarden will not be an entity that performs for the sake of it, that plays shows regularly as a ‘gigging band’. As a musical outlet steeped in narrative and atmosphere, it is imperative for us that anything we engage with aligns with this philosophy. So, as it currently stands, Fortress Festival 2024 is all that is in the calendar, and it may very well stay this way in perpetuity, who knows. It, therefore, promises to be a special performance and quite possibly the only opportunity to witness this material in the live environment.”

“We’re going to bring Mantiis to the stage this one time,” Obsidian Kingdom told us. “Fortress Festival seems the perfect place to do it, since the members of its organisation are so very keen on the album, and the UK being one of the first countries which would ask us to perform it back in the day.

“Next 1st June, we will be in North Yorkshire, going through those fourteen bites one after the other and celebrating that there is some beauty – or at least some sense of humour – to be found in the most vile things on Earth. And we sure hope to see you there.”

01jun10:00 amFortress Festival 2023 / ScarboroughScarborough Spa