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Depravation Fest 2024: Day 1

When you live in a town where not much happens, you often have to travel outside to see the bands you love. Fortunately for metal fans in Swindon, we're not far away from London, Bristol or Cardiff, so it's not as much of a problem as for fans in say Grimsby or the Scottish Highlands. Still though, one dreams of something special happening in their hometown and this past weekend, that's exactly what happened, as the team behind Depravation Promotions put in a hell of a lot of work to give Swindon something to be proud of, Depravation Fest.

The first edition occured last year as a one day event, but this year it expanded across the whole weekend, including Friday evening, taking place at a club named Levels, which has previously gone by such names as Level 3, The Furnace and Underground and is now a drum and bass club, though the new owners were gracious enough to allow the already booked metal festival to take place this year.

As one might expect from a small festival taking place in a club and the pub next door, many of the bands performing this weekend either had a small but loyal fan base or were complete unknowns to the local audience, but that's part of the fun, being exposed to new bands. First to bat at this exciting venture was Atarka, from Birmingham. Though not as busy as it would become later in the evening, the band still put in a hell of a shift to entertain those who had arrived early, treating them to their groovy brand of death metal. Unfortunately, Atarka also had to contend with some sound issues, including a lot of feedback and a microphone which broke, so it's a little hard to judge their music, but they should definitely be commended for working through the problems.

It will become apparent when reading these reports that for a lot of the bands, there won't be a huge amount of detail, and that's because the average set time was half an hour. Thirty minutes was all that was needed for the next band however, as Scotland founded, Worcester based technical death metal outfit Desecrator took to the stage. Despite having a few issues with the sound themselves, their music really shined during their set, offering attendees a clever, but catchy approach to the genre where one could just as easily mosh as stand back and respect the stellar musicianship on display. Frontman Mark Dubanowski, who started Desecrator as a solo project in 2007, has a natural talent for chatting away to the crowd and it helps make the band all the more endearing. Definitely seek out this band if you're a fan of technical death metal, or songs about video games, because they have real talent. More...

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