London Metalfest 2026 // Live Review // Camden- London // 12th Sept 2026
There are few better places to attempt something as ambitious as a brand-new metal festival than Camden. On Saturday 12 September, London Metalfest took over three of the area’s most iconic venues. The Underworld, Electric Ballroom and Devonshire Arms created a miniature metal pilgrimage through the heart of North London.
For £45, fans could bounce between venues and genres throughout the day, with everything from underground heavy metal and thrash to gothic doom, industrial metal and dark rock. It was exactly the sort of eclectic bill that makes a festival feel like an adventure rather than simply a collection of bands playing one after another.
And with Candlemass, DOOL, Acid Reign, High Parasite, Genitorturers, Wretched Soul, The Heritance and Aethoria among the names involved, there was plenty to get stuck into.
The festival’s three-venue format worked particularly well. The Underworld provided the sweaty, underground atmosphere, while the Electric Ballroom offered the larger-scale experience for the headline acts.
The Underworld was already beginning to fill when Wretched Soul took the stage, delivering the kind of rough-edged British metal that feels perfectly at home in Camden’s most famous basement.
With the band working in a heavier traditional-metal/thrash territory, the early crowd reaction was encouraging. There was none of the awkward standing-around atmosphere that can sometimes haunt the opening slot of a new festival. Horns were already in the air, and heads were moving before the room had properly warmed up.
At 4 pm it was the turn of The Heritance, continuing the heavier side of the Underworld bill.
The beauty of London Metalfest was that you could walk into a venue knowing very little about a band and still find yourself sucked into the performance. The Heritance benefited from exactly that. Their set had the feel of a band determined to prove that the smaller stages weren’t simply filler between the bigger names.
Before today, I had never heard of the band, but what was clear was the growing energy inside the Underworld. As the afternoon progressed, the crowd became noticeably more animated. With their melodic death metal, they quickly picked up the pace & got pulses racing. Already a great mix of metal on the “Peter Steele Memorial” stage, which was a great feature of the fest, having only Type O Negative tracks playing between bands & the stage soaked in that beautiful lush green we know TON for.
Aethoria followed at 5 pm, and their appearance demonstrated just how broad the festival’s musical spectrum was.
The Suffolk five-piece – vocalist Mecia, drummer Lee Alexander, guitarists Alex Coombes and Jamie Gray, and bassist Connor Sheppard only emerged in 2025, but they have already built a sound around huge riffs, soaring vocals and a mixture of hard rock and metal influences.
There was a youthful, energetic quality to the performance. The band bounced off one another, and that sense of genuine friendship translated into the audience. Their music has enough melody to pull in the casual listener but enough weight to keep the metal crowd interested.
The Underworld was starting to feel considerably less like an opening-stage venue and more like one of the festival’s main attractions.
Over at the Electric Ballroom, things took a very different turn.
Genitorturer have never been a band interested in behaving themselves, and their London Metalfest appearance was every bit as theatrical, provocative and industrial as expected.
Fronted by Gen, alongside Eric Griffin, Kriz D.K. and Ilyn Nathanie*, the American industrial-metal outfit brought a performance that was as much visual spectacle as it was music.
The Ballroom crowd responded immediately. The combination of industrial grooves, electronic textures, metal riffs and the band’s deliberately outrageous stage presentation created an atmosphere that felt completely different from what had been happening down the road.
Tracks like “Cum Junkie”, “Devil in a Bottle” & “Asphyxiate” are enough to get an early crowd to the Electric Ballroom in a frenzy & groups of friends singing along & getting involved in all the depraved yet raunchy stage antics.
It was loud, dirty and gloriously excessive. Exactly what Genitorturers should be.
Then came High Parasite, and the temperature inside the Ballroom rose by a few more degrees.
Fronted by Aaron Stainthorpe, with Tombs (Danny Lambert), Sam Hill, Jonny Hunter and Dan Brown, High Parasite’s blend of gothic darkness, death metal weight, synth-driven atmosphere and huge hooks makes them one of the more interesting new heavy acts around.
Their London set included the tracks “Parasite”, “Concentric Nightmares”, “Grave Intentions”, and “Drag Me Under”.
“Parasite” immediately established the mood, while “Concentric Nightmares” and “Grave Intentions” demonstrated the band’s ability to switch between crushing heaviness and gothic atmosphere.
By the second half of their set with bangers like “Wasn’t Human” and “Hate Springs Eternal”, the crowd was fully invested.
There was something particularly satisfying about seeing Stainthorpe in this setting. The Paradise Lost connection is obvious, but High Parasite are rapidly becoming their own entity rather than simply another project connected to that legacy. And nobody in the room seemed disappointed.
Then came the old-school artillery. Acid Reign are one of Britain’s great thrash survivors, originally formed in Harrogate in 1985 before splitting in 1991 and eventually returning decades later. Frontman Howard “H” Smith remains the band’s connection to the original era, now joined by Pete Dee, Matt Smith, Darren McGillivray and Johnny Grimley.
The band’s reputation as one of British thrash’s great live acts remains entirely justified.
The set opened with “Humanoia”, before tearing into “Daze Of The Weak”, “Alonely”, “Creative Restraint” and “Thoughtful Sleep.”
Their cover of The Nerves’ “Hanging on the Telephone* provided one of the night’s more unexpected moments before “Fantastic Passion” and “Motherly Love” brought proceedings to a suitably frantic conclusion.
“H” remains an outstanding frontman. There is absolutely no standing still.
The crowd responded accordingly, with bodies bouncing, heads banging and the pit becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Acid Reign have always possessed that rare ability to make thrash feel fun rather than merely aggressive, and London received the full experience.
If Acid Reign were the festival’s shot of adrenaline, DOOL were its descent into darkness.
The Dutch five-piece of Raven van Dorst, Nick Polak, Omar Iskandr, JB van der Wal and Vincent Kreyder occupy a fascinating space between progressive rock, post-rock, metal and gothic psychedelia.
The performance began with “The Shape of Fluidity”, moving through “Self-Dissect”, “The Alpha”.
Raven van Dorst has an extraordinary stage presence. There’s something almost hypnotic about the way they command attention without needing to constantly shout for it.
“Venus in Flames” was particularly effective, its dark atmosphere spreading through the Ballroom before the heavier passages dragged the audience back towards the pit.
By “Oweynagat”, DOOL had transformed the room completely.
And then came the moment nobody had quite expected.
Candlemass were supposed to close London Metalfest with legendary vocalist Johan Längqvist at the helm. Instead, news broke that Längqvist had suffered a medical emergency after returning home from Belgium and was unable to perform. The band confirmed that he remained in hospital undergoing further tests.
The show, however, would go ahead.
Stepping into an almost impossible situation was Felipe Plaza Kutzbach, known for his work with Procession and Deströyer 666.
And what could have been a disaster became one of the festival’s defining moments.
Candlemass opened with “Marche Funèbre”, before unleashing “The Well of Souls”, “Demon’s Gate”, “At the Gallows End”, “Samarithan”, “Crystal Ball”, “Bewitched”, “A Sorcerer’s Pledge” and “Under the Oak.” Just BANGER after BANGER.
Kutzbach approached the material with the gravity it demanded. Rather than attempting to imitate Längqvist, he gave the songs his own character, delivering them with a dark, imposing presence.
The audience clearly understood the circumstances and responded with enormous support.
Then came “Solitude.” But this wasn’t simply the final song.
For the encore, the stage filled with guests. Tony Dolan of Venom Inc. joined the band, as did Aaron Stainthorpe of High Parasite and former Paradise Lost vocalist, turning the final performance into something genuinely unforgettable.
Three distinctive voices sharing one of doom metal’s greatest songs.
The crowd knew exactly what they were witnessing.
There were fists in the air, horns everywhere and a huge communal roar rolling through the Ballroom. After a day of different styles, different venues and different generations of metal musicians, everyone suddenly seemed to be standing in the same place for the same reason.
That is what festivals are supposed to do.
London Metalfest 2026 was rough around the edges in the way that first editions often are, but that almost added to its charm.
The three-venue Camden setup worked. The bill was adventurous without becoming completely incoherent, moving from young emerging acts such as Aethoria and Wretched Soul through industrial extremity, gothic metal, British thrash and ultimately one of doom metal’s most important bands.
There were plenty of highlights:, Genitorturers’ theatrical assault, High Parasite’s dark modern metal, Acid Reign’s old-school thrash attack and DOOL’s hypnotic performance.
But the evening ultimately belonged to Candlemass.
Not because everything went according to plan. Quite the opposite.
Längqvist’s absence could easily have derailed the headline performance, yet Kutzbach stepped into the breach, the band delivered the goods and the unexpected appearance of Tony Dolan and Aaron Stainthorpe for “Solitude” transformed a difficult situation into one of the most memorable moments of the entire festival.
For a first attempt, London Metalfest delivered something that London’s metal scene desperately needs. A proper day dedicated to discovering bands, celebrating legends and moving between some of Camden’s most iconic venues.
London Metalfest has now planted its flag & hopefully, it won’t be the last.
Review: Joseph Mitchell
