Well, what a weekend that was.  I topped and tailed Damage Is Done 4 on the Thursday and Sunday at New River Studios.  Both were excellent shows and, by the sounds of it, the days in between weren’t bad either!

One of the beauties of London’s longer running hardcore festivals is how well they complemented one another.  Both Static Shock and Damage Is Done obviously took / take a hardcore punk starting point, but then their line-ups would ripple out in contrasting fashions – Static simultaneously entertained both the rawer and more experimental, whereas Damage is, perhaps, happiest when indulging its more metallic instincts.

As the latest Damage Is Done approached, you inevitably began to think of stand-out performances from prior years.  For me, that was undoubtedly Division Of Mind at Damage Is Done 3 in November 2022.  The band, who hail from Richmond, Virginia, had released their self-titled debut LP back in 2019, and this was their first, and, to date, only foray outside of the US.  And what a foray it was.

The New Cross Inn was packed to the rafters as the first ominous riffs were unfurled, and you at once sensed that we were in for something special.  Their full-length brims with a darkly menacing intensity, but this was amplified well beyond anything that might have been realistically anticipated.  As vocalist Tye Decker prowled the stage with demonic intent, the industrial-inflected rhythm section laid down a truly brutal groundwork for the relentless waves of sinister metallic riffage.  It seemed as if the whole room was locked in synchronicity with the band’s remorseless groove.  At the time, it felt to me very much like the legacy of Entombed being channelled through a hardcore prism by Foundation, and I think that’s still a pretty decent benchmark.

But what about this year?  Sunday’s highlights for me were my first encounter with Warsaw’s Träume, who injected their rapid fire hardcore with flourishes of dark melodicism and a healthy dash of rock’n’roll swagger. And if ever there was a band designed to tap into the final energy reserves of a fourth day festival crowd, it is the rampaging Sheffield-forged sledgehammer that is Rat Cage.

Of course, Thursday night’s bands had the benefit of a crowd bursting with anticipation rather than one fighting through fatigue, and that was a crest that Subdued rode with quite some aplomb.  My highlight though was that evening’s headliners, New York’s Fairytale.  The band’s debut LP, Shooting Star, was undoubtedly one of last year’s highlight releases, but I was also intrigued to see how it would translate to the live setting.

The base tenets were amply in evidence – blistering, distortion drenched guitar and a furious, cymbal awash d-beat drumming assault.  But the bass felt notably more forward in the mix, which lent their sonic battery a much burlier, muscular complexion.  The album benefits from a truly virtuoso vocal performance from Lulu Landolfi that veers from rasping rage to sardonic observation to the almost ethereal, without a breath ever being taken.  Live, this was taken to an even more impressive level.  The performance was rawer, the stage presence utterly dominating – an invigorating blend of venom and disdain, leavened with a knowing humour.  The rage that simmers throughout the album was now a full-on firestorm.  In short, it was properly visceral.

As always, a big thanks to the Damage Is Done collective for pulling everything together.  It’s hard to imagine just how much work must go into organising an event of this complexity in your spare time.  But they can rest easy that it was certainly time well spent and that damage was, indeed, well and truly done.