Damnation 2025 Preview

The evolution of the Damnation festival has been a joy to behold. It is the true definition of an underground success story. This is not a corporate giant forged within a soulless focus group. This is a twenty-year-long tale of overnight triumph. Damnation started two decades ago as a ramshackle attempt by a bunch of wide-eyed amateurs to put on the bands that they wanted to see, as opposed to the ones they felt Live Nation was force feeding them at Download. A chaotic day at the now-defunct Jilly’s Rockworld in Manchester was headlined by the then high-flying Raging Speedhorn and the Swedish legends Entombed.

The metal world is full of homegrown events that have burnt bright and then disappeared into obscurity (Temples and Lords of the Lord to name two). However, somehow, Damnation has not just survived but thrived. It has become a unique truly fan-led oddity. The organisers feel like mates as opposed to faceless promoters looking for every conceivable way of squeezing every penny out of every punter. The bill is curated via committee with the usual cries of “why don’t you get…” not derided or dismissed but instead embraced and acted upon.

The 2007 move to Leeds (initially the poly but then from 2008 the University) allowed the festival to  find both its feet and its market. It pulled in an older and more discerning audience that was not just interested in big-name bill toppers, with venues being packed from the 1pm start each and every year. This desire to watch new talent in the smaller venues started becoming a regular headache for the organisers as the dreaded room full sign came into play with alarming frequency. The solution was major but heralded the next iteration of this beloved institution. In 2022, Damnation moved back to Manchester and into a god darn arena. The BEC in deepest darkest Trafford hasn’t got a great rock pedigree beyond the odd visit by Outbreak, but for any Mancunian raver worth their salt, it has been a destination of choice for the last decade or so. The transition had a few bumps, but the sight of 6,000 losing it to Pig Destroyer made it all worthwhile.

2025 is the big one. Two days to celebrate Damnation’s twentieth birthday. Two days of the finest extreme metal or extreme metal adjacent acts you will ever find. As we write, there are less than five hundred weekend tickets left. All the Saturday and Sunday day passes are now gone, so there is only one way that you can be part of this preposterously excellent party, and that is to snap up one of those last weekend packages and be there for the whole darn thing. So what awaits? One of the beauties of moving home to Manchester has been that the main stage no longer clashes. Over the weekend of the 8th and 9th of November you will be able to watch uninterrupted and without the slightest twinge of FOMO, probably the finest run of bands ever assembled in this fair city, if not this country. On the Saturday you can sample Overhead The Albatross (everybody’s new post metal crush) into Castle Rat (who have to be seen to be believed) into Messa into Orbit Culture (who won't be midtable on any bill for long), into High on Fire into Deafheaven into Perturbator into Corrosion of Conformity. And breath.

And then we have Sunday. A greatest hits of every stupendous band that have ever graced Damnation. Conjurer into Onslaught into Primordial into Pig Destroyer into Anaal Nathrakh into the Haunted into Amenra into Napalm Death. And then there are two other rooms (which sadly will clash) giving you over the weekend Irish post rap (Meryl Streek) to homegrown hardcover heroes (Stampin’ Ground). From full on nihilistic noise (Wormrot) to emotive doom (The Warning). Its insane and there is still a chance for you to be there. What are you waiting for? Your grandkids will thank you!