Radar Festival 2024: The Review

Proghurst as a unit has recently been out and about at Radar Festival this year, trying to locate some good bands and good friends. Both of those are found aplenty – and it’s no wonder, then, that Radar has quickly become a key fixture of the UK prog festival calendar – bringing along a more contemporary and laid back style to the festival experience with no camping required!

Radar itself comes from humble Guildford beginnings, even winning a Best New Festival award in 2022, before expanding to Manchester last year and unexpectedly becoming a sanctuary for an avalanche of Sleep Token fans at the peak of their TikTok vitality. In 2024, Radar’s organisers bring forth another edition – its second in its new Manchester home, the Victoria Warehouse.

It’s this writer’s first Radar, so I couldn’t personally tell you how previous editions have been, but it does leave a great first impression: the organisers have done a great job pushing inclusivity, with a wide range of vegan and gluten-free catering options available – and altogether there’s been a real effort from its organisers to support not just the musicians playing the festival but providing space for local businesses, gear manufacturers, and even an indie gaming studio or two.

But it’s a music festival, so inevitably the primary focus is, well, music. I’ll be walking you through some of my personal highlights across the weekend – even with no clashes (a blessing) – you need a crazy amount of stamina to catch every band at a three day event, so here are just a few!

Friday

It all begins on the Friday with some very large sounds from Giant Walker, a band with a great case for nominative determinism. The vocals soar above crushing riff after crushing riff, with the guitar tone on tracks like Halcyon sounding so large that the impact could probably be seen from space. Their sound reminds me of if Moon Tooth decided to slow down a bit – definitely one to pick up before their next record drops in September.

A small conflict of interest note: I’m on friendly terms with Earthside’s guitarist, so I won’t touch on his specific performance here – the band as a whole, however, brought an interesting premise to the fore. In lieu of a touring vocalist, they feed through their various guest features through the venue sound systems. Technical difficulties prevented this, but the band more than made up for it in their adaptability, even more so their showmanship – keytar flips and furious drumming elevating their experimental premise. At their peaks, they get ludicrously heavy – but the builds to actually get there are just as satisfying.

Ichika Nito jokingly declares himself a samurai, coming onstage equipped with only a guitar and a chair. The Japanese virtuoso spends most of his set simply vibing out, as though an extremely competent “bedroom musician” has merely swapped his backdrop for a sizeable concert hall. He certainly can shred, and here and there he absolutely does, but keeps it light, breezy, restrained. Making it look all too simple in the process.

Vower are one to watch in the future – for those unaware, it’s Rabea Massad (of Toska and more) coming together with members of Palm Reader and Black Peaks as a new collective. It’s their fourth live performance ever, and yet they come across as seasoned performers. The vocals are the clear highlight, and the massive crowd the band have produced so early in their existence is a testament to the quality of the music now just as much as what came before.

That crowd does eventually disperse, knowing that the next band to take the stage is VOLA – the Great Danes play a set of mostly heavy hitters with tracks like Paper Wolf producing the largest pits of the Friday fest. Vocalist Asger Mygind has the crowd completely entranced, and his voice is impressive, even moreso when harmonising with bassist Nicolai Mogensen – a talented vocal performer in his own right. Nobody on stage is having quite as much fun as Adam Janzi though, sailing through the whole set with the goofiest smile refusing to leave his face and his limbs refusing to leave his drum kit alone.

All this before Friday’s headline act: The Midnight seemed out of place when originally announced – a synth-driven singalong act in a sea of distorted guitars and breakdowns. Within minutes they had distorted that opinion – the crowd were absolutely loving it. A bevy of 80s inspired synth, a lot of guitar and saxophone solos and enough hooks to make an ocean barren – tracks like Gloria and Vampires in particular getting a lot of traction with the crowd. An unexpected treat to end the evening.

Saturday

Warming up the second stage with their unique brand of spooky synth-driven metal was Brighton-based Tribe of Ghosts. This was the main surprise of day two for me, their haunting atmosphere really brought something unique to proceedings. Ethereal synth and huge guitar tones such as those found in False Gods were the main story of their half-hour set, with vocalist Beccy Blaker bouncing around as though she had consumed several blue Smarties.

Following this was Kyros – admittedly I have another conflict of interest, being on friendly terms with the band members, crew and management, so I won’t endeavour to critique here. It was, however, very cool to see them perform in front of possibly their largest crowd yet, and I’m really excited to see their continued push into the musical stratosphere.

It was shortly after Kyros’ set that I walked into a day rave – or alternatively just Seething Akira. In a previous post on this here website, I highlighted their Enter Shikari styled propensity, with a less serious subject matter – and it completely, totally meshes with the much smaller second stage’s overall vibe. They weren’t technically proficient powerhouses like so many of the bands here, but their music serves an important purpose within the context of festivals like this: vibes.

Car Bomb landed onstage, with their incredibly compelling mathcore set focused primarily on their seminal Meta record. Lots of “pew pew” noises as one would come to expect from their recent output. The absolutely nonsensical energy flummoxed me even as a mathcore enjoyer. I did very much enjoy it in the moment, and their set left me with much to ponder over afterwards.

The Fall of Troy shortly followed and continued the trend of absolutely unrelenting, high-octane guitarfare. Absolutely nothing in their set let up: no room for rest or a breather and the highest energy guitar playing witnessed all weekend. The previously mentioned Hail the Sun’s vocalist (also a good performance in their own right!) even popped up for a guest appearance on the iconic F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X. – a nice surprise indeed.

A swing to jazz pop perfection shortly follows, Dirty Loops return after headlining Radar in its previous Guildford stead. They bring with them a good mix of originals and covers, kindly asking for a circle pit during their “heaviest song” – a cover of Justin Bieber’s Baby. As always with Dirty Loops, the highlight is the absolutely unhinged bass playing of one Henrik Linder, who makes truly impossible feats on the bass look like child’s play.

In sharp contrast to the clean sound of Dirty Loops, the best set all weekend comes in the form of Conjurer immediately after. It was hard to truly process the room around me as their gigantic riffing and dual harsh vocal approach had all present utterly enthralled. Closer Hadal had the crowd utterly spent by the end. I just stood there in awe throughout – Conjurer are absolutely worth your time live. Part of me hoped for their infamous Mastodon cover to make the set – can’t win ‘em all…

Headliner Tesseract brought with them a huge production, easily the biggest of the festival – lasers, backing vocalists, the works. Despite the astounding amount of time and effort that must have been spent arranging the performance, and undoubtedly impressive musicianship from the band themselves, I’m afraid to report it did absolutely nothing for me on an emotional level – though I could see the rest of the crowd were absolutely loving it so I concede I’m in the minority here!

Before moving on to Sunday, it must be said: I knew day two would be stacked just from looking at the line-up, but I never quite expected the level of glee I felt throughout. A genuinely expertly crafted day with no shortage of fun.

Sunday

A fun little start to my Radar Sunday came from Ashen, who provided a serviceable cover of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit among numerous original pieces. Vocally, they were very Dillinger-coded, which certainly held my attention!

The Omnific appeared a little while later, bringing their two-bass one-drum setup, having a little fun onstage. I particularly loved the bass interplay and the two bassists’ different approaches to the instrument, but the drummer produced some quality fills in the mix. It all felt very tight, with the propensity to carry itself into jams – a very satisfying instrumental set to watch.

Siamese unfortunately pulled out of Radar at the last minute, with the organisers promising a great mystery replacement. It was a pretty open secret among my circle of friendly Radar attendees, many of whom had previous geeza experience, but the festival at large was simply not ready for Pintglass.

The afterparty band for Saturday were now asked to work “double-shift”, as frontman Barney Warner opined. A flurry of hats and hi-viz whizzed around the massive pit – also a guy in a mime costume (who wouldn’t speak to us when approached for comment). A moment of warmth arrived when a considerate member of the crowd delivered Warner a cracking can of Stella Artois, a firm favourite in the Pintglass canon. And then the surprise schedule of carnage of the highest order rolled on.

Blood Command were definitely the most fast-paced and frenetic of the bands to perform on Sunday, with their vocalist Nikki Brumen getting genuinely emotional at times. Of all the acts that were booked this year, they seemed to be the most outwardly chuffed just to be there. Their set primarily focused on new album World Domination – an ambitious aim that doesn’t seem beyond them – with a few cuts from earlier albums. The band’s somewhat novel sound calls for a lot of dancing and moshing intertwined, and the audience responded duly.

But it was, of course, headline act Leprous that soaked up all the remaining energy. A conveyer belt of crowd surfers formed as the band pummelled through a set of crowd favourites, the most crowd excitement generated from The Price and From the Flame. Occasionally the decisions would fall to the audience, with the band using an old school “hands up” system to decide their set. Some close calls yielded a couple of surprises, most notably the phenomenal choice by the crowd to eschew the regularly played The Sky is Red in favour of a live deep cut, Contaminate Me. The Ihsahn-less rendition works almost as well as if the man himself had been welcomed – a thrilling finale to a thrilling festival.

It must be said…

A huge shout out to all those involved in organising festivals like these, an increasing rarity in these difficult times for the industry in the UK and beyond. I had a really great time and appreciated great venue hospitality, great bands and great moments with old and new friends. Thanks for the memories, Radar. See you next year?

Thank you for reading this far – you too have a role to play now, same as those of us writing these reviews: with the UK festival sector in crisis mode, you, the reader, should also do what you can to support the grassroots efforts of Radar and other festivals like it. Doing so helps diverse selections of talent grow in an industry where it’s increasingly difficult to get noticed.