Gig review: Froth And Fury Festival at Hart’s Mill, Port Adelaide

Live review: Froth And Fury Festival at Hart’s Mill, Port Adelaide on Saturday, November 9 2024

By BRIAN GIFFIN

HART’S Mill is a former industrial site that’s now the cultural hub of Port Adelaide and today it’s the site of what is now probably the state’s biggest music festival. What started out as a couple of days of local bands taking over the grounds of the Pirate Life brewery four years ago is now a huge 12-hour festival on the bank of the Port River. After watching it grow to this size, it was time to finally get along and check out the action, especially with the line-up they’d pulled together for the event. Looking over the timetable for the day showed a variegated bill that started and ended at death metal with diversions through sludge, melodic metalcore, pop punk, grunge, hardcore, black metal and loud as fuck rock and roll, some big names and a couple of very anticipated reunions. Only one real clash is going to have me running between stages later in the day, but that’s many hours away.

There’s almost no waiting to get inside once the gates open and not a single cop or sniffer dog to offend the eye. Two huge stages loom over the grounds, warming up to the sounds of young Adelaide melodic death metal unit Impetus to start a day of contrasts. It’s a big job to open a show like this but they were undaunted, exuding confidence in the role as they swept through a good set. A bit of a wander at this early stage revealed an alley of food trucks and a huge hall full of merch, a bar and a pop-up tattoo studio for the truly dedicated who want to spend half a day at a music festival getting ink done. After a short burst of queer pop punk from Left on Seen, Bifurcation began pulverising the metalheads at the smaller stage, while femme duo Witch Spit stomped through some angry yet self-deprecating grunge-laced punk at the main arena before Sundowner engulfed the place with an abrasive sludge immensity with enough crushing riffs and shrieking vocals to make Mike Williams’ hair stand on end.

The everything-all-at-once deathcore of Signals is heavy and energetic but seems to exist just to be as full-on as possible and over at the Explosive Stage, Lumen ad Mortem’s efforts at some early afternoon black metal were hampered by the vocals cutting in and out – mostly out, unfortunately.

There were no such dramas on the main stage for Fangz and their beer-swillin’, back-flippin’, punk rock party, getting the good vibes flowing. Their regular high energy hijinks got the punters dancing but it wasn’t enough for singer Josh Cottreau who decided he also needed to climb the stage rig all the way to the top. Some of the backstage crew probably freaked out a bit about that.

From one party band to another, Pizza Death’s set of blazing crossover is one ode after another to western civilization’s most important and adaptable dough-based food*. Jokes fly thick and fast as they pass a few freshly made pizzas around to the fans, hurl a pineapple into the crowd for it to be torn apart and generally make sure everyone’s having a great old time. Also, “Psilocybin Pizza Suicide” is the best song title of the day. Or maybe ever.

(*I also caught a little of Future Static doing their lively and bright proggy djent thing and will certainly seek them out further in the… um, future!)

Between acts on the Explosive Stage there’s a performance troupe called Ironclad, which is blokes in medieval armour sword fighting, wrestling each other to the ground and punching the shit out of one another. It’s almost as cartoonishly violent as veteran maniacs Blood Sucking Freaks blasting out furious splats of old school hardcore, and only slightly less chaotic.

Of Virtue and Sienna Skies are taking turns bringing modern melodic metalcore to the main arena but the smaller stage has revealed the wonders of a Taiwanese Buddhist death metal band – a description I never thought I’d ever write. Dharma perform crushing death metal with Buddhist sutras as lyrics, one of the guitarists plays Eastern melody scales on a plank-like silver-necked eight string guitar and a bhikkhuni chants and offers blessings between songs.

It’s so utterly fascinating I’ve forgotten about what might be on over at the Froth and Fury stages and that doesn’t matter anyway, because now old school Adelaide hardcore champions Day of Contempt are killing it. The first of two big reunions taking place here at the festival, DoC are absolutely on-point, smashing it out like they’ve only been gone a week, not 16 years, and the crowd respond in kind, welcoming back their heroes as the cloud cover pulls back and things warm up a little by the Port River.

Next up is C.O.F.F.I.N., straight off a national tour with Viagra Boys, and if they’re not the best rock and roll band in Australia right now then I’m giving up. Everyone here knows it; the riffs explode and the crowd behind me goes nuts. All those signs around the place warning against moshing might as well be written in Sumerian as C.O.F.F.I.N.’s wild and catchy rock descends, Abijah Rado peeling off endless leads while Ben Portnoy sings, cracks wise and keeps the engine room running effortlessly. Someone gets assisted out of the pit with an ankle injury, the band ask if he’s ok, then plough straight on. Fantastic.

Then Psycroptic came on. An unstoppable death metal hurricane, they laid the place to waste. It’s almost redundant to review this band now – in 20 years I’ve never seen them play a single bad show. Today they owned the place. I had a plan to catch a little of Thornhill at the main stage at some point, but unless Metallica suddenly appeared here, nothing was going to drag me away. Until now, none of the bands had dared to instigate a circle mosh due to those signs I mentioned earlier, but Jason Peppiatt doesn’t care. Nor should he. Psycroptic can do whatever the fuck they want. Faultless and crushing. Two hours later, Tim Rogers was singing their praises to the Hard-Ons crowd. He knows what he saw. Psycroptic are terrifyingly good.

On the Froth stage it’s time for the return of more hometown heroes as alterna-rockers Testeagles hit the stage again after 16 years. It’s a testament to their legacy that they’re so high on the bill, and Adelaide is there to see them. With only a small private warm-up show behind them, the techno rock trio take full command of Froth and Fury. The goodtime vibes of their thudding metallic rock and deep electronic beats sweep the crowd with more than just nostalgia, it’s a magic being rekindled under the waning Adelaide sun. Halfway through, their Snap! cover has even the most self-conscious metalhead swirling and when the opening samples of “Turn That Shit Up” finally come in, it’s like the party to end all parties. The Testeagles had returned, and they were awesome. If you weren’t there – suffer.

Now it was Fear Factory time. Having missed Adelaide on their earlier Aussie jaunt with Machine Head, Froth and Fury gave them the chance to right that wrong – and they did not disappoint. Some might say they’re something of a Theseus’ ship of a band these days, but Dino’s there and New Guy™ Milo Silvestro is spot on. The build-up and release of “Shock” is insurmountable; “Edgecrusher” is suitably crushing. “Damaged” follows as the band divert from earlier setlists to uphold their promise of an ‘old-school’ set (although “Fuel Injected Suicide Machine” is still there, but that rules, so why argue?), but then for me it’s a quick dash to the Explosive Stage to catch The Hard-Ons ripping it up. It’s the final show of their 40th anniversary tour and while they’re clashing with big guns, they aren’t about to let anyone else steal their spotlight. The frenetic pop-punk of “Buzz Buzz Buzz” inspires the dedicated fans to follow Tim Rogers’ jerky dance moves while Murray Ruse is absolutely fearsome behind the kit, Blackie’s battered SG somehow sounding like two guitars. There’s a brief pause for the shirts to come off and then it’s more breakneck ragged power pop punk rocking fun highlighting their three most recent releases with the occasional deep dive into their esteemed legacy. I certainly wasn’t sad that I’d skipped out on Fear Factory, but with this set over there was still time to go back, returning in time to catch the end of “Scumgrief”, which they haven’t played in over a decade. Then, despite the singer being different, it’s like the 1997 Big Day Out: I’m standing in the middle of a crowd bellowing “I’ve got no more regrets!” and “My life in disarray/And I fade away” like an angry 20-something, and it felt amazing. Fear Factory brought it; New Guy™ nailed it.

From a thick haze of fog and blaring light, Thy Art is Murder then appeared. Another band for whom the Theseus’ Paradox could apply, unlike Fear Factory they are now very different, having learnt lessons in both songwriting and stagecraft. Their New Guy™ also nails his parts, without his predecessor’s odious tough guy posturing and the band take full advantage of being the first act to play in full darkness today. The light show throws them into silhouette, heightening the dark aesthetic of their dense death metal and Marshy’s soloing has a genuine spooky element.

It’s the home stretch now but as I wander back around to the Explosive Stage it’s still a vibrant night. The food trucks are still doing good business, the bars are maybe a bit quieter, and nobody seems to be being too much of a late-night dickhead.

My final stop for the night – Dutch death metal pioneers Pestilence. Again, I had plans to see some of Northlane headlining the main stages, but before the first song was done that idea had gone out the window. Pestilence were astonishing. Gruff and stoic, Patrick Mameli glowers at the crowd as he peels off incredible lighting fast riffs and solos from a guitar that is basically just a fretboard. Between songs he swigs from a two litre bottle of milk, turns, and goes back to his swaggering stance, barking song titles before the band rips back into their sweeping, blazing technical death metal, angular riffs and structures. It’s simply amazing how tight and fast they are, utterly captivating in the ease with which they deliver with such faultless alacrity and skill. At the end of the set, Mameli declares there will be no encore, then Pestilence bring the whole night to a close with another whirlwind of death metal savagery. This was an incredible finish to the festival.

Froth and Fury is excellently organised and run, well curated with a wealth of diversity across a range of genres, safe and plenty of fun. The venue is the perfect size so there isn’t too much distance to cover between stages and the crowd numbers are manageable. There’s definitely much to be learned here for others looking to put on big events, and for the punters, you couldn’t really ask for a better day of heavy music.