Supersonic Festival announces The Bug Feat. Warrior Queen, Weird Walk x Neoancients collab & more to 2025 edition

SUPERSONIC FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES THE BUG FEAT. WARRIOR QUEEN, WEIRD WALK x NEOANCIENTS COLLAB AND MORE

Listen to the Supersonic 2025 playlist

Supersonic announces more acts and day tickets go on sale:

Supersonic will return to Digbeth, Birmingham on the 29th – 31st August 2025, making space for moments of collective joyful communion and true escapism against a backdrop of a world in turmoil.

“These are undeniably challenging times, and now more than ever we must cherish and protect our creative spaces. Supersonic has always been about more than just music — it’s about collective joy, radical imagination, and building community through sound. It’s in these shared moments that we find strength, inspiration, and hope.”
— Lisa Meyer, Artistic Director, Supersonic Festival

Day tickets are now on sale. Additions to the line up include the earth-shaking return of The Bug Feat Warrior Queen, a full circle moment as they played the first ever edition of the festival.

The Bug photo by Jun Sato

Kevin Martin, aka The Bug, says;

“It’s always a pleasure to come back to Birmingham for the mighty Supersonic festival… Without doubt one of my favourite festivals, full stop. It has never compromised, and always stayed fiercely 101% independent, which I guess you could say I also aspire to myself… So I would definitely call Lisa Meyer and her crew my soul sisters/brothers.

“This year, I will come back to perform with Warrior Queen. Supersonic certainly brings back amazing memories, as Warrior and I played the inaugural Supersonic festival in 2003 (Alongside Coil, and LCD Soundsystem). We have zero intention of mellowing… Fire will be in the house, fully… We are psyched!”

Backxwash Photo by Méchant Vaporwave

“The festival has an incredibly unique curation of many talented artists and fosters a community-driven environment. I’m so grateful to be returning this year to perform my upcoming album and look forward to this year’s lineup.”
– Backxwash

Supersonic Festival 2025 proudly features three UK exclusive performances as part of its genre-defying line-up. Backxwash returns with the first-ever live outing of her forthcoming album Only Dust Remains, marking an exciting evolution beyond her acclaimed trilogy. Sweden’s Funeral Folk (Maria W Horn & Sara Parkman) make their UK debut with a ritualistic and emotionally charged exploration of death and renewal. And from Norway, Witch Club Satan bring their fierce feminist Black Metal to UK soil for the first time—a spell-casting, sensory onslaught like no other, honouring the voices of persecuted women through blazing visuals and uncompromising sound.

These rare appearances sit alongside a wealth of other unmissable sets—including the return of Rich(ard) Dawson, performing music from his new album End of the Middle with drummer Andrew Cheetham, and the genre-blurring brilliance of Moin, featuring Valentina Magaletti, Tom Halstead, and Joe Andrews of Raime. Supersonic will also welcome Aya, whose visceral performances fuse electronics, stand-up, and performance art into something wholly unique: unpredictable, emotionally charged, and joyfully chaotic.

Aya Photo by Dee Iskrzynska

Jackie-O Motherfucker, the experimental collective founded in Portland, Oregon, in 1994, will bring their dynamic fusion of free jazz, psychedelic folk, drone, and space rock, renowned for their unpredictable live shows. Supersonic is excited to welcome back Six Organs of Admittance, who present an ever-evolving blend of ecstatic melody, acoustic intricacy and spiritual noise. Skloss, the Austin-by-way-of-Glasgow duo of Karen Skloss and Sandy Carson will bring heavy psychedelia, post-metal drones, meditative rhythms, and raw distorted riffs. Rocket Recordings latest signing Rún, an Irish band whose sound is rooted in folk tradition but deeply exploratory and atmospheric (channelling influences from Coil to Pauline Oliveros), will also be welcomed to the Supersonic stage. And Black Country duo Big Special will fuse the grit and spirit of their industrial roots into a raw, urgent and evocative sound that blends the personal with the political.

“We’re buzzing to be on this year’s Supersonic line up. To get the nod from our hometown’s top alt festival for outside-the-box artists is a proper sense of pride. It’s always been the festival that showcases the most interesting experimental genres, and some of the best up and comers from scenes you never knew existed… it’s a festival that helps cement Brum as the cultural hub it is.”
– Big Special

Big Special Photo by Isaac Watson

Supersonic exists increasingly as a political act as much as a festival, and when times become dire, it’s important we have music which channels our fears and anxieties into cathartic rage and noise. HIRS Collective are here to do just that, a dynamic, shapeshifting ensemble rooted in de-individualisation and anarchist ethos. Death Goals will bring queercore fury, with a cacophony that combines post-hardcore, screamo and noise rock. And Divide And Dissolve are returning to perform from their new album Insatiable. Takiaya Reed will provide floor-shaking, life-affirming drones, in music that is a heavy and beautiful acknowledgement of the dispossession that occurs due to colonial violence – it honours ancestors, opposes white supremacy and calls for indigenous sovereignty. Insatiable in particular, is an album about love, and an urgent call to imagine a better world before it’s too late. Recently added to the lineup, Hang Linton is a fearless sonic rebel fusing avant-funk, dance-punk, and breakbeats into a raw, unapologetic sound that challenges the polished and conventional into a chaotic and authentic party.

Supersonic will also be host to a performance from the doom cabaret collective OMO, a band featuring members of iconic Scottish acts like Mogwai, The Twilight Sad, Desalvo, Aereogramme, and Stretchheads. Water Damage are a Texas-based droning supergroup of sorts, composed of experimental veterans from projects including Spray Paint, Black Eyes, Swans, more eaze, USA/Mexico, and more. Adding to the heaviness of the lineup are Meatdripper (featuring Kaila Whyte of THE NONE), an entity summoned from the remnants of punk, experimental, and noise rock bands. Forged in the industrial haze of Birmingham, this band was never meant to exist – Supersonic hosted their debut live performance last year and couldn’t resist bringing them back for more.

Supersonic aims to help attendees unload from the heaviness of the world by bringing the party. Mermaid Chunky will be joining the festival for an expanded performance which can only be described as a kaleidoscopic, hypnotic dance ritual of joyous chaos. They will also be the guest artists performing at the Supersonic Kid’s gig. Nigerian sonic trailblazer Aunty Rayzor (Nyege Nyege) will be delivering commanding rap verses and catchy pop hooks, driven by exuberant bass, playful rhythms, and unmatched energy. Buñuel will return to the festival, featuring Eugene S. Robinson (formerly Oxbow), whose truly wild noise rock takes the listener to extreme places in unpredictable fashion. There’s also Zu, an atypical Italian trio of drums, electric bass and baritone saxophone, who blend math rock, no wave, punk, jazz, and grindcore into a sonic explosion.

Jennifer Reid Photo by Rosie Whinray

Joining the programme, Supersonic have provided a selection of some of the most exciting folk acts in the underground today. Those include Cinder Well, the project of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter/producer Amelia Baker, whose songs carry a heaviness in their words and atmosphere as opposed to distortion. Hedgling are an Irish duo consisting of Natalia Beylis and Willie Stewart, whose music utilises found objects and dissolving tapes loops to evoke the parallel worlds that co-exist around, above and beneath us. Poor Creature are Cormac Mac Diarmada (Lankum), Ruth Clinton (Landless) and John Dermody (The Jimmy Cake). They take songs of love, loss and the supernatural from Irish and American traditions, reimagining them in new arrangements that are by turns sparse, dreamy, psychedelic and propulsive. Bridget Hayden and the Apparitions will also play. Hayden is an experimental musician whose haunting, atmospheric sound draws from the landscapes of Todmorden, West Yorkshire. With a voice weathered by time, her music blends aching folk abstractions with immersive, reverb-soaked textures.

Supersonic Festival has also collaborated with NeoAncients, in association with Weird Walk, for a celebration of folklore, radical histories, and sonic ritual. Curated with a deep reverence for ancestral knowledge and future imaginings, the line-up includes live performances by Jennifer Reid, reviving 19th-century broadside ballads and working-class song; Dawn Terry, whose accordion, hurdy-gurdy, and vocals evoke earthy, intimate storytelling; Calliope, a folk-informed collective exploring diasporic futures and lost pasts through sound and enchantment; and Elspeth Anne, whose stark, spellbinding songs echo with defiance and raw beauty. Plus, two unmissable DJ sets: a folk horror psych set from Fliss Kitson of The Nightingales, and a special guest appearance from long-time Supersonic friend Voice of the Seven Woods, blending deep psych-folk treasures.

Egyptian-born Abdullah Miniawy merges the spiritual intensity of Sufi chants with the improvisational freedom of jazz. Accompanied by trombonists Robinson Khoury (2024 Django Reinhardt Prize from the Academy of Jazz) and Jules Boittin, Miniawy’s sound is one of resistance, ritual, and reimagining—music that doesn’t just cross cultures, but reshapes them.
Penelope Trappes creates immersive, emotionally resonant soundscapes that blend ambient, shoegaze, and experimental electronics. Her music is intimate and atmospheric, with reverb-drenched vocals and minimalist textures that evoke a haunting, dreamlike world. Zahra Haji Fath Ali Tehrani is an Iranian-Irish composer and multi-instrumentalist whose music explores the emotional terrains of intimacy, memory, and belonging through experimental sound.

BBC Radio 6 Music’s flagship experimental show – The Freak Zone – is once again hosting a pub quiz at Supersonic Festival. On Sunday afternoon, presenter and Celebrity Mastermind winner Stuart Maconie will be presenting the annual Freak Zone Pub Quiz. Time to swot up for the Scandinavian Jazz round!

“Daring, challenging, wild, often very loud and always great fun, Supersonic is a highlight of the musical year, bringing global sonic adventurers to the heart of a city that has always celebrate innovation and experimentation.”
– Stuart Maconie, BBC Radio 6 Music

Supersonic have also lined up some extra curricular activities including in conversations and workshops from Do.omyoga to a Black Lodge Press political poster making – find out more on the website: www.supersonicfestival.com