Supersonic festival review
Jul 29 2009 By Peter Guy
Peter Guy runs the Get Into This music blog. Here, he provides an outsider's view of Birmingham's Supersonic festival
Our first trip to the festival in the heartland of metal - Getintothis gets supersonically gnarly.
Reading the Twitter feed outside the onsite Radio Rhubarb hub, guests are encouraged to share thoughts and happenings, but urged to distinguish between 'Supersonic' and 'Supersonicfest'.
The reason: Oasis. The irony couldn't be more obvious.
Where one day experiences at Heaton Park or Wembley Stadium throw up solid, yet supremely safe Britrock, Supersonic Festival is anything but.
Eastern warlords sporting beekeeping headwear playing sitar jams, corpse paint banshees wield droning two-chord guitars, Israeli lunatics use the crowd as their stage while sailing atop of a thousand outstretched arms. And somewhere beneath a mountain of green netting, dreadlocks and what resembles a giant lump of seaweed a portly man bellows about Charlie Manson.
This is but another year in the life of one of the UK music scene's most cherished events. Emerging from its infancy - Supersonic is now seven - and based within the courtyard, surrounding boutiques and warehouses of Digbeth's redeveloped Bird's Custard Factory, the festival has forged a reputation of blending the chin-stroking avant-garde with the finest leftfield artists pop music has to offer while being built on a sturdy slab of extreme metal.
After all, as we're reminded with talks, exhibitions and theatrical celebrations - the Midlands is the home of heavymetal.
But, similarly to it's more indie-orientated cousin All Tomorrow's Parties, what curators Capsule have created is a happening which, while never forgetting first-rate music is the heartbeat, fun is it's soul.
Typifying this ethos are the exquisitely-named Thorr's Hammer; a precursor to the all-conquoring Sunn O))) (who themselves sent shockwaves through to Leicester with their Friday night display), as Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson reprise their first exploration into unremitting heaviness accompanied by Norwegian Runhild Gammelsæter.
Comparisons to their doom-laden dayjob abound; Gammelsæter roars like Olaf's big brother, candelabra beautifully decorating the stage and the music is oily, thick and molten, yet there's much humour too suggestiing perhaps we shouldn't take any of this spectacle anywhere near as seriously as some of the metal fraternity are want to do.
In between banter is at a premium, yet when Gammelsæter does speak - mostly in her native tongue - there's laughs and playful giggles while Anderson and O'Malley make OTT gruffs and gnarly gestures. It's pure theatre, excessively heavy and wildly thrilling.
The effect is matched, and taken to an altogether more brutal territory by contemporaries Corrupted and The Accüsed. The former a Japanese sludge outfit revel in their excessive noize while the latter Seattle hardcore legends bludgeon riff after riff after riff as dreadlocked Brad Mowen windmills and headslams so hard it's a wonder he's not reaching for a neckbrace.
Levels of performance are stretched to the ultimate when the delightfully-named Master Musicians of Bukkake take to Space 2 dressed in flowing red silk robes and beekeeper's masks while a heap of undulating green emits howls of primal rage. All of which would be frankly silly, were it not for the trance-like jams and spellbinding musicianship pouring from all quarters.
Later we catch up them at the merch stall, and it quickly becomes clear that what on first glimpse may seem like a trivial display of novelty has been crafted down to every last detail with music their primary motivating force.
