Margarita Witch Cult – Hippie Death Cult – Kanaan – Dopelord – Greenleaf
Words: Marisa Adams
Photography: Artur Tarczymil
Margarita Witch Cult
Having always had a decent audience throughout, the venue filled up for this devilishly infectious three-piece from Birmingham. They were clearly a crowd favourite, and they got right down to business, bringing a fuzzed-out occult heavy metal energy to warm, laid-back, meaty grooves, giant doomy riffing, infernally catchy songs with bewitching vocals and duets and tight, frisky but unrushed performance even in pacier numbers.
They played several songs from 2023’s debut S/T including bassily groovy crowd favourites Diabolical Influence and The Witchfinder Comes, and the frenetically up-tempo Annihilation and Death Lurks at Every Turn.
The guitarist/singer was also a high-level mage in the black sorcery of Crowd Singalongery, and to add to that they induced mass possession with a fantastically doomy psych cover of White Wedding.
To be fair, the crowd was most of the way there from the start, singing their own songs back to them, but these guys could make the party happen at a Bishops’ Annual Liturgical Updates Conference. They clearly had a ball up there, and so did we. Fun, banter and demonic hordes of weirding energy and charisma.
Hippie Death Cult
Hailing from Portland, Oregon, this doomy 70s psych trio’s most recent album, Helichrysum, takes the listener through some dark places with warmth and a wealth of groove and soul, as if in the middle of arid desert they made a deeply coloured oasis and had a wild party there where all personal demons and bad memories from the past were exorcised amongst friends.
With clear, powerfully unrestrained vocals from the female bassist and intricate work from the guitarist and drummer, they opened with a storming rendition of Arise, the first song on that album, followed by Red Giant which set us up for Toxic Annihilator. That last one is powerful on record.
Live it was like riding a comet, a sensory overload of auditory and visual pummelling streaking through Highbury and Islington and landing on the Garage stage in an explosion of bassy high octane riffs. Shadows brought a gentler, beautifully melodic passage into some heavy stoner rock and playfulness from the band.
The last song, Circle of Days, from their 2021 album of the same name, was an extended journey of reverbs and loops creating complex, layered swirling colour, with potent vocals alternately beautifully melodic or invoking the banshees, in another exhilaratingly immersive journey which took us in surprising directions before landing neatly like a bird amidst curtains of reverb.
This was a searing, visceral and beautiful feast for the senses with some clever, unexpected touches and a little tribute to Hendrix for good measure.
Kanaan
This Norwegian trio opened their fuzz-bathed set with some complex psych rock with all the knobs turned up before metamorphosing the Garage into a labyrinth of frenetic jazz fusion, with two tracks from 2023’s Downpour – Amazon and Downpour.
Laying down a solid base of doomy stoner rock, they then embarked upon Return To The Tundrasphere from 2021’s Earthbound, a blues-heavy tune which morphed over this base several times, changing time signatures or phrasing, always keeping something unchanged while the rest shifted around, like a sliding blocks puzzle or a moving maze.
They were very personable and highly skilled, adding some fun theatrical choreography to their energetic performance.
In the final section of their set, they created a totally immersive journey which began with dreamy lyricism and drums like the wind through trees, and then very gradually gained weight and momentum, going to places which I remember thinking the term ‘psychedelic’ didn’t really cover as I gradually melted into the floor and my head went into orbit.
The band told me that the first part was a freely improvised jam and the second was No Star Left Unturned, also from Earthbound. It was epic stuff, a journey through all types of space – inner, outer, in between, the space between particles in an atom and whatever else there is that isn’t any of those.
It was also a very moving set in its second half, and seeing friends embracing each other in the audience, it was clear this sentiment was shared.
With an hour between bands, we went to the park to catch the last of the sun before heading back for some crushing doom.
Dopelord
Well, the Occultists certainly had it on Saturday, with the venue packed again after the hour’s break for these witchily charismatic stoner doom merchants from darkest Poland, bringing a sound which echoed directly from the crypt.
The crowd came to Hail Satan, and the four-piece delivered in fiendish style with dolefully heavy, insidiously catchy numbers such as The Witching Hour Bell and Addicted to Black Magick. Tight, clear vocals alternated from eldritch to demonic, depending on who was singing.
There was also plenty of laid-back chat and entertaining irreverence between the hugely appreciated songs. They closed their set with a couple of numbers like express trains to hell, leaving a very satisfied crowd which disembarked and dispersed to wait for the headline band.
Greenleaf
The final band, only one of whom is actually from Sweden as we learned from the many entertaining bits of anecdote and banter that came pouring out of the singer along with his immense soul and vocal talent, delivered a set of rampantly upbeat stoner and hard rock bristling with giant riffs like a thickly old-forested, solid haunch of mountain with a torrent of blues running through it.
After an upbeat, heavy, stoner opener, they played Going Down, a virulently catchy, fuzzy mammoth of a song which epitomises their hefty groove. Their themes include the huge difficulties people face in life – and overcome.
The tone of their music and lyrics, and of their performance, is of a bear hug optimism and zest for life and freedom which the packed audience reflected at them in spades for songs like Tides from 2021’s Echoes From A Mass.
Up on stage, the singer roved and bounced around his three bandmates with boundless energy, and they also clearly loved to perform – the bassist’s huge grin throughout was particularly infectious. The audience was given plenty of opportunities to get involved in the performance, and many long-term fans were there.
This was a set of anthems made for a big-hearted celebration of life which doesn’t turn from hardship but embraces it, played to an up-for-it crowd who all seemed to be dancing – an absolute barnstormer in other words and a fantastic way to round off the Saturday and the main festival.
Verdict: see you at the bar next year!
