Fortress 2026: Saturday – Festival Review

Fortress Festival 2026 – Saturday
Scarborough Spa, North Yorkshire
30th-31st May 2026

Fortress Festival delivers an intense, thoughtfully curated, and hugely enjoyable black metal experience.

Fortress Festival is a well-run annual celebration of the black metal genre, in all its wide-ranging variations and unstoppable musical journey. At its heart black metal offers a creative vortex of ringing, anthemic sound, driven by powerful and complex rhythms, and a reflective, often dark thematic, that is expressively both screamed and sung. A cinematic like atmosphere and surprising melodies are the less dissonant companions in the genre.

It is a music that is constantly evolving and has a fan base that is open to other forms of music that seem to have an affinity with black metal; something that is reflected in the Theatre stage at Fortress being given over entirely on the Sunday to the dungeon synth genre. There is, moreover, a very knowledgeable and informed community that has grown up around the music, and Fortress with, its curated approach to showcasing the music, seems to understand and reflect this. Evidenced in the international line up, full playthroughs of classic albums in the genre, debut live UK appearances, and sometimes the debuting of material never played live before. The festival, now in its fourth iteration, is of course completely sold out.

Scarborough in some respects might seem an incongruous setting for a black metal festival. Yet with the Scarborough Spa venue being situated on the sea wall with waves crashing against it, it has a brooding unforgiving quality that seems to fit. The Spa itself offers three stages, Grand Hall (the main stage), and the Theatre and Ocean Room stages. The Grand Hall offers good views and sound from most locations and generously has seating upstairs, while the Theatre stage is all seated, offering an almost studious ambiance. The more edgy Ocean Room can be subject to a little queuing, but if you make sure to arrive a little before stage times, you generally won’t experience any difficulty getting in. The market stalls with records, t-shirts and limited-edition artefacts, seem in some ways like an art exhibition, with the imaginative artwork that runs through everything.

So here is our journey through two days of intriguing music that inspires, envelopes, grooves, and sometimes disturbs, and some of the highlights we experienced, with your forgiveness requested where we missed something that really spoke to you.

Early in the set, the sound of eerie rumbling wind, introduces a stunning rendition of The Redemptive End. A sequence of sharp snare drum strikes, unleashes rolling waves of sound accented by crashing cymbals. The number is then broken by a beautiful repeating folk like guitar figure, drawing your attention to the screen backdrop of a gently undulating sea. This is post-metal territory skilfully executed by the band. Leading into an epic crashing finish with strobe lights snaking the stage. It is music with depth, played with dedication, that has an emotional impact.

The band near the end of their set thank the audience for turning out in numbers for such an early start. It is a mark of the black metal community’s respect for musicians that they do this, something not always a given at festivals.

Mesarthim, a cosmic black metal band from Australia, are second onto the main stage. Their vocalist is a striking figure, adorned in a hood, and mask with rotating lights that seem to swirl around his face. There is a stately lilting aspect to their sound, with some beautifully shimmering guitar figures a defining moment in the first number.

They follow this with a fascinating musical contrast that juxtaposes blast beats that you can feel through your body, and a melodic shape that evokes the legendary Cocteau Twins. The screamed wordless vocals add an otherworldly counterpoint, and the screen back drop of rotating geometric shapes and colours is completely immersive.

It is a very well received set, with the interjection at points during the set of electronic dance beats further endearing the band to the audience. Check out the Isolate X release from 2025, that includes reworks and reinterpretations of the tracks on their debut album, with the help of other artists. It is adventurous and laced with some great electronic dance versions.

Ossaert, from the Netherlands, on the main stage, in their only live show of 2026, assault the senses with a howl of raw and melodic black metal. Led by vocalist/guitarist/songwriter P. they create a mist of dense music from which a guitar solo or an industrial interject will momentarily emerge, before being engulfed again in a squall of sound. At points, the music seems to loop around the hall, with new sound crashing in as old sound resonates at back. It is a completely unforgiving sound, and a perfect complement to the vocalist, dressed in a cassock and corpse paint, throwing themselves into the microphone. A full-on set.

Akercocke make two appearances at the festival. A full live performance on the main stage of one of their defining albums, Choronzon from 2003, preceded by an interview on the Theatre stage as part of the Fortress Forum talks. The interview conducted by Jackie Smit, with Jason Mendonça, David Gray and Sam Loynes from the band, is by turns fascinating, humorous and illuminating. We learn some surprising things about the recording of Choronzon, a much celebrated album in the Akercocke canon, including that it was the first Akercocke album to be recorded in a professional studio, and with a name producer, Neil Kernon, doing the mix. Neil Kernon, interestingly, had in complete contrast produced some of the key albums by the Philadelphia soul duo Hall & Oates. Reflecting on when it was recorded and the technology available at the time, Jason Mendonça engagingly describes that the music files had to be burnt to CD and FedExed to America for Neil Kernon to mix.

Sam Loynes describes that in rehearsals he had learnt that the album wasn’t recorded to a click track, allowing the more natural ebb and flow to the tempos we hear on the album. David Gray reveals that the original sequencing of the album started with Scapegoat, and not Praise The Name Of Satan, with its sample from the Hammer House of Horror episode Guardian Of The Abyss. If that had remained the track sequence, as David indicated, it might have been a very different album. To complete the circle, Martin Bonsoir, who recorded the original album, will be at the front of house mixing the live sound for the Akercocke set today. From the questions from the audience, and the applause at the end of the interview, the affection and respect the band is held in is very apparent. You can listen to the interview courtesy of Into The Necrosphere here.

Akercocke take to the main stage in striking white shirts and black ties, with new band members Keiran Allen on bass and Quinton Lucion on guitar. An extract from the Hammer House Of Horror episode Guardian Of The Abyss is showing on the screen above them. It is a very atmospheric moment, and as it ends, the band slam into Praise The Name Of Satan, the powerful opening track on Choronzon.

Leviathan is an early highlight, with its ringing guitar phrases and shifting rhythms, punctuated by blast beats and ride cymbal accents. The familiar mid song keyboard refrain introduces a sequence of soaring guitar solos as the complex rhythmic onslaught continues without let up. In the earlier interview, Jason Mendonça describes Choronzon as a challenging album to play. Leviathan illustrates this perfectly, and Akercoke deliver it with playing that is wondrously precise, powerful, and full of impressive musicality, that fully engages the enthusiastic audience. In fact, during the set the pit opens up, and there is even a lone crowd surfer. This is unusual at a black metal festival, and a testimony to how the band are able to fully capture and move their audience.

Before the sensitively performed Son Of The Morning, Jason pays tribute to fallen band member Federico Benini, who recently passed away. In an incredibly moving moment, the audience respond with a chant of his name and applause.

An unexpected playing of the magnificent Verdelet, from the Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone album, at the conclusion of the set, illustrates the quality of the live musical range of the band, with elements of progressive rock frantically competing with a death metal like impetus. The set justly receives a tumultuous appreciation from the Fortress audience.

Whoredom Rife, from Norway, take to the Ocean Room stage in an uncompromising fashion. A siren type sound is interrupted by the drummer hitting the toms, and the musicians break into a crescendo of sound. The effect is feral and dramatic. Vocalist K.R. is an imposing figure, in corpse paint, brandishing the mike stand, and delivering the most tormented of vocals, including later in their set an unearthly sustained scream.

There is something about their live sound that is compelling and quite hypnotic. Mountainous waves of guitar, and clattering cymbals among the blast beats, reverberate around the more intimate setting of the Ocean Room. Standing in the vicinity of the mixing desk, the sound encircles the listener.

Old Man’s Child, from Oslo, are the Saturday headliners on the main stage. Their combination of melodic and symphonic black metal has a distinctive tonality, that live takes flight and melds all the instruments into an anthemic rush of sound. Galder, on guitar and vocals, establishes an immediate rapport with the audience and it is evident that he is enjoying returning to live work with the band.

Halfway into the set, Twilight Damnation from the Vermin album, really sets things alight with its driving slashing riffs, and loping melodic phrases. Galder leads a chant from the audience with the words “Let’s do this”. The forest scene on the screen backdrop adds to the almost mystical feel of the song.

The intensity of the set never lets up, and The Millennium King from The Pagan Prosperity album is a great set closer, with its symphonic swing and thrash metal like energy. The sound crashes around the hall, with cymbal strikes and idiomatic distorted guitar breaking through the sound mix. It is of course a very well received set to conclude Saturday at the festival.

On this first day, there can be no doubt that the Fortress Festival delivers an intense, thoughtfully curated, and hugely enjoyable black metal experience. Look out for the review of Fortress on the Sunday to follow.

You can find out more information here about the Fortress Festival and plans for Fortress 2027 as they emerge: Website | Facebook