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Doom metal bills don’t come bigger than this. Hell, doom gigs don’t come much bigger than this: Acid Bath’s first-ever UK show in a sold out 2,600-capacity Manchester Academy with homegrown heroes Conan and Green Lung – who’ll headline this same venue later this year – in support. It’s massive, it’s exciting and it’s a miracle it’s even happening.

When Acid Bath broke up in 1997 following the tragic death of bassist Audie Pitre, they were lucky if they could play to more than 10 people, guitarist Sammy Duet telling Hammer last year that “While we were together, nobody really gave a shit.” But in their absence, the fondness grew.

Which brings us to Manchester Academy, on the hottest day of the year, watching the hottest reunion in metal right now. The room’s already a furnace when Conan take to the stage, the Liverpudlian brutes issuing some ungodly force that takes New Orleans sludge metal and drags it so far and deep it ends up suffocating under a tonne of lumpen riffs.

Next up are UK doom darlings Green Lung. New tunes Evil In This House and Necropolitan Line have the kind of killer hooks and swaggering riffs that could make them into a real breakout band, while the likes of Mountain Church, Let The Devil In and One For Sorrow are already well-worn anthems.

Before Acid Bath arrive, Black Sabbath’s genre-defining eponymous track plays over the PA, and there doesn’t seem to be a soul in the house who isn’t singing along. It sets a tone, and as the bonus poem tones ominously overhead casting vivid, violent images with just a few lines of apocalyptic poetry. Then all hell breaks loose.

Opening with Tranquilized, the Manchester Academy greets Acid Bath with an orgiastic frenzy as the floor explodes with moshers, dancers and crowdsurfers while cups fly overhead offering sweet – if all too small – relief from the clammy press. This is doom set through a psychedelic prism and enough ecstasy and performance enhancers to get Hugh Heffner bouncing back from the grave.

Even the slow, brutal drag of a song like Bleed Me An Ocean becomes a euphoric sing-along, fans singing along with such fervour you’d think someone was handing out hymn sheets at the door. There’s no corny patter, no insistence on “give us a circle”. The crowd hardly needs encouragement to lose their minds, and the band play with a brooding intensity befitting their status as long-lost legends, vocalist Dax Riggs channelling Jim Morrison via Jim Jones.

At just over an hour, Acid Bath leave the crowd wanting more – inevitably. Some of their biggest ‘hits’ – Scream Of The Butterfly, Cassie Eats Cockroaches – are left out. But the mix of bad-trip psych, end-of-life blues and guttural sludge is just too potent not to love, and when the crowd belt out “Dying felt so goddamn good today” from Paegan Love Song, there’s a sense of overwhelming gratitude that Acid Bath are even back at all, let alone bigger than ever. Doom metal has never felt so utterly euphoric.

Acid Bath support System Of A Down in the UK on July 13 and July 15.

Acid Bath Manchester Academy Setlist June 25 2026

1. Tranquilized
2. Bleed Me An Ocean
3. Venus Blue
4. The Bones Of Baby Dolls
5. Dead Girl
6. The Mortician’s Flame
7. New Death Sensation
8. Graveflower
9. Paegan Love Song
10. The Blue

This week in the World Cup of rock, Parker Barrow romped to victory at the top of the group, while Alex Henry Foster and Beth Hart both went through to the knockout stage. What’s more, VAR wasn’t required once. So congratulations to all of them.

This week, another eight teams will take to the field, and that’s the last laboured football analogy you’ll hear from us. Keep hydrated, y’all.

Pieces Of Molly – Alligator

Kiwi rock’n’rollers Pieces Of Molly are back with another single from their upcoming album, and hallelujah. For Alligator is a masterclass in no-fucks-given chaos, careening along in a righteous, headlong rush towards damnation, a trail of spent pistons in its wake, gang vocals giving the chorus a degree of singalong friendliness at odds with the pandemonium elsewhere and an utterly savage guitar solo. A word of caution: the video is not vegetarian-friendly.

Green Lung – Necropolitan Line

Doomy heavy metal Londoners rock the bejeezus out of this rip-roaring cut from their forthcoming album, Necropolitan. One of the punchiest tracks on said record, which promises to offer the most fun you can have in the name of historic cemeteries (seven noted sites in London, to be precise). Plus they look and sound like they’re having a total blast in this artfully, lovably lo-fi video – all swirling psychedelic backdrops and face-melting performances. Nice.

Bad Nerves – Network

Midway through a breakneck year, in which they’ve pogoed between continents at a phenomenal pace – as both headliners and support band – Essex’s finest power-pop punks release their heaviest track yet. Still fast, still furious and now with a darker heart, guitars are newly beefed up and stretched out over three turbocharged minutes, without losing the lightness of touch that made them such a charismatic prospect in the first place.

These Wicked Rivers – Horse To Water

And now for a lovely summery, loose-limbed barrelful of southern rock’n’roll by way of Derby – complete with stylishly granny-chic helpings of paisley, lampshades, bolo ties, serious hats and various other visual accoutrements of the TWR miniverse. Imagine rocking up at a BBQ with Blackberry Smoke, armed with a cooler of beers, at sunset, and you’re in the right space for Horse To Water.

The Meffs – Where Did It All Go Wrong?

Perhaps our favourite slice so far of the Essex punks’ second album, Business (coming out in September), Where Did It All Wrong? rides on a rolling tide of powerful, light-footed drums and buzzsaw guitars. Catchy and appetisingly enraged, with a voice to match – courtesy of peroxide-headed singer/guitarist Lily. Going to one of the Joan Jett & The Blackhearts UK shows this week? Get there early and catch these guys, who’ll be supporting.

Radio Everything – Ignoramus Stupidatus

This came out on one of the hottest days of the year so far, and it offered the sort of bright, zingy boost equal only to a freezerful of Fab lollies. Or some quality time in a supermarket chiller aisle. But yes, the latest tune from Chris Catalyst’s gleefully daft cartoon robot metal side project thing is a banger – light, bright pop rock with the expansiveness and urgency of Devin Townsend and lyrics full of incisive disenchantment at the world today. And what says ‘happy summer!’ more than that?

Bywater Call – Is This Thing On?

Built on delicate acoustic guitars, percussive beats and cascades of strings punctuated by lead fiddle touches, the Canadian rock n’ soul ensemble’s latest is stripped-back without sacrificing the lushness that seems to imbue all their work. Fancy more of that soulful Americana, with healthy echoes of Tedeschi Trucks Band in its sound and overall spirit? Their new album, Broken Souvenirs, comes out in July.

Return to Dust – Sweet Escape

This year, we’ve heard a lot of new music from bands whose sound seems almost entirely informed by bands that peaked in the first half of the 1970s, but LA rockers Return To Dust are not among them. Instead, Sweet Escape sounds like it emerged from the Puget Sound murk in the early 90s, with moody Alice in Chains riffing matched by a vocal from Matty Bielawski that could go head-to-head with Layne Staley at his most dramatic. The band’s debut headline London show next month is already sold out, and grunge, it would appear, is very much back.

Raised in a musical household, singer-guitarist Nick Harper – son of Roy –soaked up the music and influence of Pentangle from an early age. He tells Prog about the experience.

“I devised a show years ago to celebrate the incredible fortune of being a toddler in the room with acoustic folk legends who’d come round to our flat in northwest London to jam with my dad, Roy.

These incredibly gifted young people were part of a magnificent little pivotal moment in music history in London. I couldn’t help but be influenced by them and play their songs. I named the show 58 Fordwych Rd, and in 2025 I put the recordings I had in the can with new recordings and cashed in with an album.

Bert Jansch and John Renbourn lived a couple of streets away from us, so were around a lot. While they played, I’d look up at this mysterious fog in the ceiling; it looked like God was up there in Heaven. The ‘fog’ was tobacco smoke.

In the 90s I became friends with Bert and supported him at his residency at the [then] 12 Bar Club in Soho. I got to find out what a beautiful, humble man he was and how his focus was music.

He was totally unconcerned with any trappings either side of playing that guitar and doing the gig, portraying those songs the best he could. He had to speak his truth and have his vision confirmed. That was a great inspiration to me; I could never be someone I’m not.

I met Danny Thompson even later through being friends with Jakko Jakszyk, who was Danny’s great friend. We played a couple of shows together – one time I broke a string and went offstage temporarily. Danny stepped up with some genius improvisation, and I wished I could have watched him all night and not had to go back on.

When Pentangle formed, they were a new thing. There was no one else like them and they were all brilliant – the vocals, the interplay.

Politics was in there, such as the feminist angle in Willy O’Winsbury or Let No Man Steal Your Thyme. But the musicianship was so special – truly artful in that totally improvised section on the Jack Orion epic. That’s artists being free, letting themselves go and seeing what comes out, just like Hendrix.