Metal, Hardcore, Indie, Rock
We are back at Fortress, and this year it’s burning. Not metaphorically — Scarborough greeted us with wall-to-wall sun and that particular coastal heat that somehow hits harder than it should when you’re surrounded by black metal. As early arrivals, we’d been looking forward to the Friday pre-show headlined by Wode, with Blood Countess and Andracca in support. Our train, though, had other plans. We arrived to find everyone else already warmed up and ready for the weekend, seagulls circling overhead and a stunning view doing its best to make up for the delay. Frustrating, yes. But honestly, that view is enough to remind you why this place is worth the journey every single year.
Day one brought some stanning performances — so let’s dive into it.
Groza opened their set with the tight, controlled energy that anyone who’s followed them through the Nadir (AOP Records, 2024) era has come to expect. The digital backdrop made the whole thing even more striking — visuals that moved with the music rather than just sitting behind it, deepening the atmosphere without overshadowing what was happening on stage. We couldn’t have opened the show with a better band. Their sound was an awakening to everything waiting for us the rest of the day, and for forty-five minutes the band played like they had nothing to prove. The crowd felt it from the first note.
The final song anchored everything in something real. Dedicated to their late bassist, it was a moment of genuine weight in a performance that had already been technically stunning. You can rehearse tightness, but you can’t rehearse that kind of sincerity.
Photo: Peterson Marti.
By the time Mesarthim arrived on stage just after 2 PM, it felt like we’d been teleported to a different reality. The Australian project’s first worldwide live appearance had come at London’s Cosmic Void Festival in September 2024 — and here at Fortress, they went even further. Within minutes, the site around us stopped feeling like a festival and started feeling like something much further away.
It’s hard to describe a set that feels infinite when you’re living inside it. The crowd stood, mostly speechless, while Mesarthim did what only they can do: make you feel genuinely small in the best possible way. No theatrics, no fuss — just that immense wall of cosmic black metal settling over the room like it had always belonged there and the digital screen on the singer’s face.
Photo: Peterson Marti.
Hot room, icy vibes. That contrast is probably the best way to describe what Ossaert brought to Fortress, and it stayed with me for the rest of the day. The Dutch atmospheric black metal project from Zwolle is one of the rarest live presences in the underground — a worldwide exclusive booking here, and one of the most significant of the entire weekend.
From the first scream, the room shifted. That petrifying delivery landed differently than you’d expect. It wasn’t just the intensity; it was the space left around each note, the deep reverb vibrating right through you, each song consuming the room until the last note finally let everyone breathe again.
The singer’s cloak, in contrast to the rest of the band’s look, felt almost jarring at first. But that contrast is a key part of what Ossaert are — the tension between the singer’s presence and the rest of the stage mirrors the tension running through their records. At certain points the sound broke into territory outside what you’d strictly call black metal, and those were some of the most gripping moments of the whole set.
Photo: Peterson Marti.
If I had to pick one set that defined Day 1 for me, this was it. Akercocke are a force. Opening with a scene from Guardian of the Abyss — the tenth episode of Hammer House of Horror, in which an occult mirror is used to summon Choronzon himself — they immediately set the tone: technical brutality, delivered with the kind of precision and passion you don’t see often.
Choronzon — the full 2003 Earache album — was performed in its entirety, and the London band did it justice start to finish. Somewhere in the first half, the room erupted into the first moshpit of the weekend. By the end, it was boiling hot — partly the crowd density, mostly Akercocke’s delivery.
The business suits, the synchronised physicality, the sheer density of the compositions: it all translates live, every time. But what impressed me most was how technically precise they stayed while simultaneously pulling the crowd into that first moshpit — that’s not an easy balance to strike, and Akercocke made it look effortless.
Photo: Peterson Marti.
I honestly don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like Dødheimsgard live. The Norwegian avant-garde black metal pioneers brought something to Fortress that I’d struggle to call just a performance — it was closer to theatre, or maybe a ritual, though neither word fully covers it.
The back vocals gave the whole set a depth that was almost disorienting, in the best way. But it was the singer, Yusaf “Vicotnik” Parvez, who held everything together. He arrived with a red veil over his face and uncovered himself after the first song, as if to say: right, now we begin. After that moment, there was no looking away.
The projections running behind them felt like clips from a noir film that doesn’t exist yet — avant-garde, unsettling, and completely in sync with the music from Black Medium Current (Peaceville, 2023) filling the room. An expansive 70-minute journey through the bleaker corners of the human condition. The passion and intensity on that stage was unlike anything else on the day’s lineup.
Photo: Peterson Marti.
Closing out an incredible day was Old Man’s Child, and the UK exclusive headline slot carried real weight going in. After Galder parted ways with Dimmu Borgir in August 2024 and turned his full focus back to OMC — and with original drummer Tjodalv back in the fold — there was a lot riding on this one. The band delivered.
It was, honestly, an extreme highlight — and a simple one too, in the best sense. No distractions, no gimmicks, just fantastic music and Galder’s presence holding the whole thing together. “Twilight Damnation” was a standout, and the symphonic bombast that has always been at the heart of OMC’s sound filled the Fortress stage like it was built for it. Galder’s guitar work remains as sharp as it’s ever been, and having Tjodalv back brought a weight to the rhythm that felt exactly right.
As a way to close a day that had taken us from cosmic trance to avant-garde theatre, Old Man’s Child felt like exactly the right ending — big, dramatic, and completely sure of itself.
Photo: Peterson Marti.
