FERNHILL FARM, BRISTOL

Opeth, Tesseract and Cult Of Luna spread their wings in the West Country

THURSDAY

One of the UK’s real festival success stories, ArcTanGent’s growth is testament to the loyalty instilled through its dedication to all things post-, progressive, noisy and fiddly. Attracting 10,000 fans to a farm in north Somerset for its eighth iteration is an affirmation of this steadfast commitment.

THE HYENA KILL kick things off in acerbic style, with a rambunctious forging ahead of their more experimental wing. Despite their line-up changes, post-metal collective PIJN feel as powerful and vital as ever. SKIN FAILURE feature ex-Black Peaks vocalist Will Gardner alongside members of Memory Of Elephants. They don’t disappoint, approaching thrash with the joyful exuberance of Mutoid Man or Municipal Waste. DVNE’s lush sludgemeets-prog loses none of its intricacies on the main stage and their four-song set feels as epic as the book they take their name from.

A.A. WILLIAMS attracts a busy crowd for her transcendent performance. Control and Belong are extraordinary in their power and frailty but it’s the new material that impresses the most. PUPPY pull a surprisingly small crowd, which is a shame considering recent album Pure Evil has given the power pop metal trio a couple of fistfuls of singalong anthems. CRYPTIC SHIFT’s inter-dimensional death metal is a stunning exercise in imaginative world-building. Planetary Hypnosis delivers the coup de grâce after a bombardment of trailblazing subplots. Sound gremlins rob IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT of a ferocious start, but they soon pummel a captivated audience into all sorts of twisted, distorted shapes. Marrying the ferocity of black metal to fluid jazz rhythms, IT are as uncompromising as music gets but the crowd lap up the stomachchurning changes of pace. An ecstatic crowd greets ALCEST’s blackgaze dreamscapes. Given their monumental influence on a genre that ATG punters have fully embraced, it’s no surprise they’re received so rapturously, with the crowd almost drowning out the band during Kodama and a gorgeous Délivrance.