Live Gallery: Uprising 9 – Main Stage

23rd May 2024
Photos: Tim Finch

We look back at the epic Uprising Festival through the eyes of our photographers Tim Finch!

Pitchshifter

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

InMe

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Breed77

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

The Suns Journey Through The Night

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Ward XVI

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Mayfire

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Foul Body Autopsy

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Fractions

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Photo credits:
Tim Finch Photography

For all the latest news, reviews, interviews across the heavy metal spectrum follow THE RAZORS’S EDGE on facebook, twitter and instagram.

The post Live Gallery: Uprising 9 – Main Stage appeared first on The Razor's Edge.

May 29, 2026

Live Gallery: Uprising 9 – Very Metal Art Stage

23rd May 2024
Photos: Tim Finch

We look back at the epic Uprising Festival through the eyes of our photographers Tim Finch!

Stampin’ Ground

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Lawnmower Deth

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Hawxx

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Gurt

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Survivalist

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Maatkare

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Crowley

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Pryma

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Break Them

Photo Credit: Tim Finch Photography

Photo credits:
Tim Finch Photography

For all the latest news, reviews, interviews across the heavy metal spectrum follow THE RAZORS’S EDGE on facebook, twitter and instagram.

The post Live Gallery: Uprising 9 – Very Metal Art Stage appeared first on The Razor's Edge.

May 29, 2026

Live Review: Uprising 9 – Very Metal Art Stage

23rd May 2024

Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch

The skies are clear and the sun is shining brightly over Leicester for the annual Whitsuntide bank holiday shindig that is the Uprising Festival. Now in its ninth year, today the Academy is hosting seventeen bands from across the Metal/ Rock music spectrum, some of which might not be household names quite yet but give it time.

It barely passed noon when the Very Metal Art Stage fires up with an early set from Peterborough punishers Break Them whose abrasive metallic hardcore found them on this very stage a couple of years ago as part of the 2024 Metal to the Masses Final. Time has not mellowed the band, as the opening combination of Ultra Violence, All Bark and No Steps Back define Break Them’s confrontational attitude. Mixing punk energy with in-yer-face beatdowns, each reflecting the current state of the nation, sets the Uprising bar high; Deadbeat is dedicated to shit parents everywhere, To the Death comes with some two-steppin’ rhythms and there’s a call for a circle pit as the band play their cover of Machine Head’s Davidian.

No strangers to a festival stage, Pryma from Kent already have experience at Bloodstock, No Sleep ‘til Blackpool and Call of the Wild, a show they will play again the weekend after Uprising. I’m also sure I heard someone say the band were Download bound in a few weeks too. Blending clean vocals with heavy barks in an effective manner, combining a gothic sensibility with weighty bass rumbles and rock-solid rhythms, makes for a very competent early set. Recent single, Mask, opens the floodgates, Dead to Me twists and turns, and what looks like the beginnings of a mass Newport Helicopter session is about to break out. GG bosses the stage and the audience throughout Freaky Fright Night, as Pryma manage that difficult task of weaving between the classic and the modern to great effect.

Geordie quintet, Crowley, arrive in Leicester with darkness on their musical minds. Harkening back to the Occult Rock of the Seventies, they revel in fuzzy doom haze, incorporating chill screams into their ungodly sound. Early set tunes Necromancer and Silver Star, the latter of which shows off Lidya Balaban’s voice to perfection. Sadly, a few technical issues derail the momentum of the performance mid-set, but the band take it in their stride and, for a while, Lidya is stripped of some of her vocal power when singing through one of the backing microphones. However, the ship gets put back on course and we have a Sabbath Bloody Sabbath-style intro riff, a fiery Hell Hath No Fury and a folky-vibe to the final track, Pyre.

Dutch/UK quartet Maarkare made many friends after their EMP stage appearance at Bloodstock Open Air last year, so Uprising wasted no time in coaxing them back to the East Midlands for a full-on festival show. Janneke de Rooy, ex-Beyond the Pale vocalist, leads us as guide and temptress through the dark underworld of the band’s aesthetic. 2024 debut record, Rise to Power, provides the bulk of the set as the four fiery females take inspiration from – and pay reverence to – strong and leading women through history. Theirs is a blend of blackened death, fuelled by bands like Nile, Behemoth, Septic Flesh and Arch Enemy; fierce and ballsy, this is no fairytale as we get War Before Peace, the album’s title-track and long Live the Queen. Later in the set comes Judgement Day and Realm of the Dead, showing that Maarkare is not here to cheer anyone up.

Northern Ireland Deathcore terrors, Survivalist, appear to be experiencing the same sound gremlins that haunted Crowley a few hours earlier. While matters are being attended to and the obligatory turn it off and back on again is tried, singer Gavin Sharp keeps up entertained with renditions of Fly Me to the Moon and Stevie Wonder’s Superstitious; admitting the whole band is a front for the sale of hot sauce and pre-warning Uprising to expect the most mediocre set of our lives. Rather an undersell if I’m being honest, as the shortened show shakes the room with heavy brutality, pig squeals and a general scant regard for the public’s safety. Charged with ferocity and Gavin’s Irish humour, it’s half-an-hour of fat riffs and fierce vocals, all served up with a smile.

Sludge survivors, Gurt seem to have been around so long that their recent absence from festival stages has become noticeable. 2024’s Satan, Etc album was their first full-length since 2019’s awesomely titled Bongs of Praise, with only a 2020 lockdown single to bridge the gap. Time hasn’t chilled the band out and they still land with their abrasive sludgecore assault. Newer tune, Doi of the Doid opens the band’s Uprising account with some hazy and psychedelic riffing. Early tune, Sludge Puppies gives way to the traumatic Fever Dream, about singer, Gareth Kelly’s botched vasectomy, and rightly filled with anger. That tune segue ways into Marijuarmchair; and Satan Etc’s In For a Penny, In For a Pound is joined to Skullossus’ Battlepants. Gareth announces the end of the set is going to be as “Heavy as fuck” and the band wheel out the doomy-bass and precision riffing of Rolling Stoned to a forest of waving arms. It was good to see the band again after what seems like an age, just to remind us of what we’ve been missing.

Technical issues certainly appear to be the order of the day and London trio, Hawxx look to be chomping at the bit to get going. When they do they launch into a punk-infused rage against the injustices they see in the world of today. Macho Bullshit comes a wall of friendship; Resistance is Justified gives their opinion of events in the Middle East. Abrasive, edgy and unashamedly making a stand for something, Hawxx’s anger and ire feed the late afternoon at Uprising with renewed energy.

Nearly forty years after their inception, one cannot help but wonder whether the lads in Lawnmower Deth ever imagined they still be playing songs from the 1990 full length when they were closing in on their sixties. But they are… Sumo Rabbit and the Inescapable Trap of Doom, Killer Cobs from the Planet Bob and Weebles Wobble But They Don’t Fall Down were as vital to the kids – of which I count myself – as anything coming out of San Francisco at the time. It’s a set filled with nostalgic and danceable numbers, all displaying the punk influence on the Thrash scene and reminding you of the soundtrack to a mis-spent youth. Hands go into the air for Sheep Dip, the jigging attendees are sent outside to coax in those folk enjoying the fresh air.

But it’s not all about the Ooh Crikey It’s… Lawmower Deth album, as the Nottingham jokers pay several visits to 2022’s Blunt Cutters record: Into the Pit opens the show, Botheration and I Don’t Want To arrive early, Bobblehead slots in mid-set and the Raise Your Snails and Power Bagging bring it all to a close. Pete announces the band have a busy weekend planned with tomorrow find them at Catton Park for the Bearded Theory festival, where they share billing with Garbage, Badly Drawn Boy and ex-Special, Neville Staple.

Headlining the stage is Cheltenham trouble-makers Stampin’ Ground who seem to be having a busy twelve months of festival appearances, starting last November at Damnation’s Night of Salvation, running through the Lords of the Land show, and with Download in a couple of week and a Bloodstock debut pencilled in for August, it would seem the band are making up for lost time.

Their prolific run of four albums in the years between 1997’s Demons Run Amok and A New Darkness Upon Us gave some of the most abrasive sounding music you’d care to put whichever genre label you believe most suits the band. I recall first seeing Stampin’ on sweltering night in the summer of 2003, supporting Sepultura on their Roorback tour, and being amazed at the pure energy spilling from the stage. Twenty-three years later and vocalist Adam Frakes-Sime seems to be rolling back the years with a kinetic performance that sees him having broken sweat before the end of the first tune. It’s wall to wall Stampin’ Ground classics: Pain Is Weakness (Leaving the Body), Mid-Death Crisis and Dead from the Neck Up, all here to remind you that no matter how much you back hurts after standing up all day, participation is mandatory.

Beat downs come and go aplenty and the band manages to get the biggest, or at least most wide-ranging, circle pit which circumnavigated the mixing desk, draining those last drops of Saturday energy before Pitchshifter could claim it later. Only Officer Down could bring this set – and this stage – to an end with the raucous climax Uprising’s Very Metal Art Stage deserved.

For all the latest news, reviews, interviews across the heavy metal spectrum follow THE RAZORS’S EDGE on facebook, twitter and instagram.

The post Live Review: Uprising 9 – Very Metal Art Stage appeared first on The Razor's Edge.

May 29, 2026

Live Review: Uprising 9 – Main Stage

23rd May 2024

Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch

Break Them and Pryma had already done their thing on the Very Metal Art stage by the time the Main Stage began, opening up a stacked bill from all corners of the Metal world. Local Leicester lads, Fractions have the honour of being the day’s first act, bringing their crushingly heavy attack back to Uprising. Their hard-hitting death-infused progressive bludgeoning is somewhere between Periphery and Meshuggah, with them aiming blows into both the brain and the gut. It’s modern brutality that has no let-up and an ideal way to start the main stage programme.

I believe I owe Foul Body Autopsy’s Tom Reynolds an apology, after naming him as the player of the most outrageous guitar imaginable when Nagasaki Birth Defect hit the stage at Grind Before Death back in February. Turns out it wasn’t him, and I looked quite the ‘nana. But it most definitely is him tearing up the main stage in Leicester this afternoon, shredding brutality against crushing backing tapes. Most recent EP, 2024’s The Discovery of Witches gets a selection played, along with the brutal and the melodic for one of the most interesting sets of the day. Harsh lights and the liberal distribution of plectrums, alongside destructive riffs were the order of the day, but the set just wasn’t long enough.

Norwegian progressives Mayfire were here to show Sleep Token how to be both mysterious and metal at the same time. Dressed as dark monks and making their debut UK festival appearance, the masked mob have only their 2023 album, Cloudscapes and Silhouettes to draw from, but do so in a remarkably engrossing way. There’s very much an Eighties feel about the band’s music, mixed with Classic Rock and performed with precision; there’s even a folky-feel to the closing, anthemic The Age of Kings.

While we’re considering theatricality – and without wanting to be bias, just because we’re from the same town – but Ward XVI arrive to play a truncated show, compressing all the storytelling magic into a tight thirty-minutes. The whole entourage is boiler suited for We are Legion’s bombastic chants; the Inmates have brought their stage props with them this afternoon, with the cage of the asylum being swifty erected. Psychoberrie makes the first costume change of the set, emerging for What’s In the Box’s nursery rhyme opening, without boiler suit and dressed more for the scandalous subject matter of the Id3ntity album. It’s Kiss and Alice Cooper on a budget, with the overblown theatrics modified for a medium-sized festival stage.

Another costume change – Psychoberrie really is the scene’s Taylor Swift – for the debauched and hedonistic Macaberet. Cry of the Siren is the only tune that pre-dates the Id3tity record and the main hall is chocked full of Ward XVI shirts, wielding inflatable chainsaws; the fiery and full-on Blood is the New Black, after which another engrossing show is sadly over.

Black Metal artists The Sun’s Journey Through the Night is a popular addition to Uprising’s bill. With an equal amount of their own theatricality, Sun’s Journey…’s show starts with a swelling introduction, cold riffs and demonic rasps. The combination of raw black metal, ambient passages and bombastic symphonic elements makes for a blasphemous sermon of icy blasts and sweeping orchestration, spewing unholy, grim theatrics. Singer, No One swings a light around, Deimos builds a huge percussive framework for guitarists Aphonos and Satis. The obvious point of reference was the band’s dark rite at Damnation 2023’s Night of Salvation and it feels The Sun’s Journey Through the Night would benefit from a detour back to Manchester sometime soon.

The closing trio on the Main Stage takes us back to the early noughties alternative metal scene for nostalgic trip down Memory Lane. Gibraltar-based Breed 77 make a return to the Academy and to Uprising, following their 2024 festival appearance, and last year’s Bloodstock show with Undeath and Static-X, showing that there’s still a huge hunger for their hard rock/ nu metal/ flamenco hybrid.

Releasing half-a-dozen albums over the space of a little over a dozen years at the start of the millennium, the band’s set is a wander through their formative years with 2004’s Cultura record, World’s on Fire and La Ultima Hora later in the set; the title track of Insects opens the show, newer tune, End of the Line shows the band still have the desire to intertwine hard-edged rockers with alternative sounds. The twenty-year old Blind is bookended by another newer tune, Outside, a dirty riff and a driving rhythm suggesting Breed 77 still have much left in their creative tank. The cover of The Cranberries’ Zombie, which takes the antiwar theme of the original and runs it through with fist-in-yer-face guitars and a defiant attitude.

There was a time when Essex’s InMe were slated for greatness. Back in the early days of the century they could be found rubbing shoulders with the likes of Ministry, Marilyn Manson and Iron Maiden at the inaugural Download festival in 2003. Constant presence, Dave McPherson is no stranger to Uprising, having played here as a solo artist as well as with his band, it’s like a meeting of old friends as they step onto the Academy’s stage.

Celebrating thirty-years as band, InMe might not have the savage nature of Foul Body Autopsy, the theatricality of Ward XVI or the darkness of The Sun’s Journey Through the Night; what they do have is a history that has seen them face down the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and still remain standing; bruised, but unbowed. Still sporadically producing new music, there are enough InMe shirts at Leicester this evening to prove they are still close to many hearts.

And, before you know it, it’s time for Pitchshifter and the closing phases of Uprising 2026. Reliable accounts suggest booking the band was easy as pie after last year’s appearance by Earthtone9, and a simple telephone call to seal the deal.

Half-a-dozen album in eleven years through the Nineties and Pitchshifter were being lauded as the great British hope for industrial music. Back-to-back years at Milton Keynes bowl, with Black Sabbath in 1998 and Metallica in 1999 sealed the deal for one the countries most imaginative and dangerous bands. Those shows, coming off the back of the extraordinary www.pitchshifter.com record, placed a marker into the ground, stating that these Nottingham lads would carry UK hopes into the new millennium.

Wearing identical shirts, the band take the stage to Triad, from the 1993 Desensitized album, after which some wag calls for an “older one”, to which JS makes a quip about the age of the band, introducing Microwaved to great appreciation. He belies his supposed age by making continuous leaps from the monitors and general high energy that may challenge to output of Stampin’ Ground’s Adam.

he wag doesn’t get his wish as Triad is the oldest tune from the band’s back-catalogue, with only Infotainment’s Virus airing from around the same time. Understandably, the focus of the set is shared between .com and the most recent record – relatively speaking – 2002’s PSI.

Eight Days, We Know and Shutdown are interspersed with What’s In It For Me and Deviant’s pairing of Scene This and Hidden Agenda. This is my first Pitchshifter show since they headlined at Damnation Festival back in 2008, and it doesn’t seem that the years have been unkind to either the band themselves or the significance of their music.

PSI’s Down takes us into the closing trio of .com tunes, the 8-bit stylings of W.Y.S.I.W.Y.G., which might not mean a whole lot to folk below a certain age; the chaotic Please Sir takes us up to the limit and the closer, Genius, stomps its electronic boots all over the wearied souls of Leicester, who rise to the occasion one last time.

The future of the Leicester Academy seems in doubt going forward, with contracts coming to an end and uncertainty surround any new operator, yet Uprising have confirmed the 2027 show will go ahead at an as-yet undisclosed venue. Perhaps not the country’s most glamourous, must-attend, festival, but Uprising is the heartbeat of what makes festivals of such vital importance. Not only do they give people like me the ability to chunner-on for three-thousand words, but also the chance to catch up with folks you don’t see from one event to the next.

More importantly, it allows bands to showcase their wares and lets up hear your soon-to-be new favourite band for the first time. And long may that continue.

For all the latest news, reviews, interviews across the heavy metal spectrum follow THE RAZORS’S EDGE on facebook, twitter and instagram.

The post Live Review: Uprising 9 – Main Stage appeared first on The Razor's Edge.

May 29, 2026

Live Coverage: Uprising 9

Reviews

The full rundown from all the action at this years Uprising Fest

Main Stage

Very Metal Art Stage

Galleries

The visual rundown from all the action at this years Uprising Fest

Main Stage

Very Metal Art Stage

Uprising 9 Interviews

All of our interviews from this years festival!

For all the latest news, reviews, interviews across the heavy metal spectrum follow THE RAZORS’S EDGE on facebook, twitter and instagram.

The post Live Coverage: Uprising 9 appeared first on The Razor's Edge.

May 29, 2026

“The music was always the star of this band, and not personnel.” With no original members left, Foreigner are still proud to be Foreigner

As Foreigner prepare for their 50th Anniversary tour, bassist Jeff Pilson refutes those pesky “tribute band” accusations

May 29, 2026

SEAHAVEN: Seahaven

Out June 5, 2026 Via Pure Noise Records Words by: CECILIA PATTISON-LEVI Seahaven is an American alternative indie-rock band from Torrance, California. Their self-titled album ‘Seahaven’ is a gorgeous “winter blue” melancholic album of 12 songs with real melodic heart. The band comprising of Kyle Soto, Cody Christian, Mike DeBartolo and Eric Findlay have brought together […]

May 29, 2026

“The prog scene was so clean. The bands smelled of nice soap and didn’t think farts were funny. I thought, ‘I don’t like this at all’”: Devin Townsend on being a jerk, never fitting in, three minutes of sex and four of crying

He might be permanently confused – but he knows how Pink Floyd works, why Captain Beefheart was better than Frank Zappa, what’s wrong with being a rock star, and how it feels to spend two years in a mental institution. Let him explain

May 29, 2026

Meshuggah – Release Remastered Versions Of ‘Shed’ And ‘Future Breed Machine’

Meshuggah have announced digital release dates for newly remastered anniversary editions of Destroy Erase Improve and Catch Thirtythree. Newly remastered versions of the tracks “Future Breed Machine” and “Shed” are now available for streaming below.
Read more…

May 29, 2026

Boundaries – Release New Single

Boundaries have released “Only Endless”, the latest single from their forthcoming fourth studio album Yearning: The Unbeautiful After, scheduled for release on July 17th.
Read more…

May 29, 2026

Category: news

Live Gallery: Uprising 9 – Main Stage

Pitchshifter

InMe

Breed77

The Suns Journey Through The Night

Ward XVI

Mayfire

Foul Body Autopsy

Fractions

Live Gallery: Uprising 9 – Very Metal Art Stage

Stampin’ Ground

Lawnmower Deth

Hawxx

Gurt

Survivalist

Maatkare

Crowley

Pryma

Break Them

Live Review: Uprising 9 – Very Metal Art Stage

Live Review: Uprising 9 – Main Stage

Live Coverage: Uprising 9

Reviews

Galleries