Cosmic Void Festival, London 2022

9th November 2022

Cosmic Void Festival was held on 24th and 25th September, offering two days of ear-splitting extreme metal in Camden Town, London. Unwholesomely good fun, celebrating the devil’s music, the event took place across two venues situated within five minutes’ walk of each other: The Underworld and Electric Ballroom—an unholy alliance that has been a hub for heavy metal gigs in London during the last twelve months. I realise it’s a bit late to write a roundup of an occasion that happened two months earlier, but as 2022 seems to have been a year crammed with metal gigs, it seemed a shame not to include it (albeit belatedly).

Day One

Although I’d never describe two days of the darkest heavy metal as a feat of endurance, I realised that stamina would be a key factor in order to make it through the weekend in one piece. I therefore decided to pace myself tactically and arrived each day mid-afternoon, skipping the bands scheduled earlier. I probably missed a lot of great music doing this, but it had to be done.

Day one started for me with Endstille, a German black metal band that I hadn’t heard of before. Their set was brutal and brief, as most afternoon slots tend to be at metal festivals, and it was a good way to kick off the proceedings. Next on were the charmingly named Make A Change… Kill Yourself from Denmark. Although depressive black metal has never really been my cup of tea, I managed to watch the whole set without resorting to suicide.

Some classic black metal from 1993 was served up next by Enthroned, who set the tone fittingly for the rest of the day’s business; a lineup boasting a high pedigree of the scene’s so-called “second wave” from the late 80s to mid 90s. They were followed by Archgoat, a band I was eager to experience live. They were formed in Finland in 1989 and are still producing quality albums. Luckily, the passing of time has not diminished their anger and raw power in any way. They delivered forty-five minutes of furious satanic sounds and were one of the highlights of the opening day.

A set like this could only be followed by a mighty band such as Carpathian Forest, one of Norway’s finest black metal exports and an act that really needs no introduction. With a career spanning thirty years, singer Nattefrost showed no signs of slowing down just yet, delivering the performance of the day for me—a setlist of classics performed with charisma and panache to a lively crowd of excited fans. This was my second time seeing Carpathian Forest, and it was just as exhilarating as the first.

Thrown into the mix next was the only deviation from the classic black metal template during the evening, Forgotten Tomb. A more recent band hailing from Italy, they performed an intensely melancholy DSBM set and provided a welcome change of pace before the headliners of day one—Mysticum—took center stage.

Another group that I have been keenly anticipating, Mysticum, has been around since 1992, and their unique brand of industrial black metal is, to some extent, a departure from what was being produced by other Norwegian bands within the scene at the time. With only two albums behind them, a live performance by Mysticum is indeed a rare prospect; something for the connoisseurs to close the opening day of the festival. The band delivered a skilfully strong set, and showed no signs of rustiness despite lengthy absences between albums and tours, proving that although their output might have been slim over the years, they are more than capable of headlining a metal festival and were another highlight among a lineup of heavy hitters.

Day Two

The first band of the day I saw was In The Woods, who played some avant-garde black metal. The band has been around since 1992, but they sounded fresh and, indeed, appeared fresh-faced, eschewing the usual corpse paint attire. They were swiftly followed by a band from Chile called Hetroertzen, who were new to me and of a completely different tempo and style to the previous act. Two quality performances that set a high standard early in day two.

In the early evening, Harakiri for the Sky were an atmospheric post-black metal ensemble who delivered a densely rich performance and changed the day’s mood completely yet again. Definitely a band to look out for in the future. Next were Akhlys, who packed a punch with some darkly brooding ambient black metal. Their sound could probably best be described as nightmarish, which I believe was the intended effect. Another one that I will be listening to more of in the future, for sure.

And then it was onto the real heavyweights of the second day. Kampfar are a band that I somehow missed playing at Inferno Festival earlier in the year, so I was very glad to get a second opportunity to see them so soon. Their performance was very much in the classic black metal tradition and truly exciting to behold. The ungodly tunes they belted out were scarily intense and brutally euphoric in equal measure and really were a standout spectacle of day two.

Whoredom Rife were also a bunch I sadly missed during Inferno Festival. Their music was sonorous and relentlessly heavy, backdropped by a sinister stage design that could have been taken from a Hammer horror film dungeon, and the band themselves were bedecked in macabre makeup that fell somewhere between a scene from Zombie Flesh Eaters and Michael Jackson’s Thriller. The deeply packed audience loved every ghoulish minute (myself included).

Last up, to close out the festival, was Rotting Christ, black metal trailblazers from Greece with a deservedly huge following. Despite the lofty benchmarks set throughout the festival, Rotting Christ somehow managed to take it a step further and elevate the level even more as they thundered their way through their extensive back catalogue. They proved themselves to be the perfect culmination to an epic weekend of black metal music in London.

As mentioned earlier, 2022 has been a year with a full calendar of heavy metal music. Towards the beginning of the year, I attended the Inferno Festival in Oslo, a triumphant celebration of extreme metal featuring the likes of Gorgoroth, Mayhem, Venom, and Marduk. Then in London, I got to see Emperor headlining Incineration Fest, along with Tsjuder and Bloodbath. Plus, I’ve also managed to see Mortiis, Alice Cooper, Black Label Society, Saxon, Gaahl’s Wyrd, and Behemoth. Cosmic Void was the apex of this, and rightly so.

Inferno Music Festival 2022
Incineration Fest 2022
Mayhem/Mortiis – London 2022
Alice Cooper – Milan 2022