Sunday 19 August 2018

INFEST Festival 2018 – Celebrating 20th Anniversary!


INFEST Festival 2018 – Celebrating 20th Anniversary!

23rd-26th August will see the return to Bradford of the UK's longest running annual industrial/electronic music festival! And it's going to be a peach.

INFEST bills itself as an 'EBM / Industrial / Noise / Synthpop' event but it encompasses so many more musical 'shades of black' than it credits itself for.

Last year's festival highlights included: the glorious return of REVOLTING COCKS, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their debut album 'Big Sexy Land'; with Front 242's Richard 23 leading the first half of the set before Chris Connellytook it all to a whole other level and together with Paul Barker (Ministry) on bass and Jason Novak (Vampyre Anvil), the band were the dominating force of Infest 2017. 'Beers, Steers and Queers' was the honorary anthem for the weekend after that masterful performance.

New(ish) contenders for the 'who stole the show' competition last year were the masked (and possibly crazed) Swedish EBM duo, WULFBAND, who pummeled the Infest crowd with a high octane live performance.

Anonymous; relentless; unstable; raw and high octane, WULFBAND have to be seen live to really get the full experience. EBM at it’s finest.

Alongside electronic wizards ROTERSAND,the glorious stalworths of german industrial-metal DIE KRUPPS; a powerful and inventive(iVardensphere) and many more, Infest 2017 was consistently enjoyable, exhausting and worth every penny.

2018 will be a poignant INFEST Festival....20 years and alot has changed. The regular crowd and crew have lost some loved-ones but a few things have always remained with Infest: clever and up-date line-ups and a really fun, irreverent atmosphere. Infest never takes itself too seriously; even though it really could. The festival raises the bar musically every year and it also raises money for different charities every year. It hosts a market hall which gives a platform to small 'alt' businesses/makers/record labels; it hosts cringe-tastic karaoke sessions and incidental 'off-campus' activities like group trips to the ice-rink or

This year's line-up is dominated by the monster booking of Peter Hook + The Light (of Joy Division/New Order infamy) which will be a joy to fans of the old school. But also on the bill are those other musical shades of black we mentioned already. Bristol's MESH; L.A.'s AESTHETIC PERFECTION; the mighty CUBANATEare obvious crowd-pullers for fans of electronica but also the opportunity to see newer musical acts like ACTORS and V>lh>ll and LIEBKNECHT is like being given a beautifully curated taster menu of what is going on in alternative electronic music 2018. Genius line-up.

Flights from Ireland to Leeds/Bradford are still dirt-cheap; accommodation in Bradford is easily got; University campus venue bar prices are a gift....you have no excuse! See you there!

For more info: infestuk.com

Article & photos by Fiona Killeen / Ministry of Agröculture Promotions


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