Portsmouth Guildhall is the perfect venue for Takedown Festival, and it really defines the meaning of a ‘takeover’ event. The main hall served as the Phil Campbell Kerrang! (PCK) Stage this year, supplemented by two smaller performance areas, one of which—The Total Rock Café Stage (TRC)—is usually the café. The press room was hidden away in the maze of the Portsmouth Music Experience Exhibition. Apart from that, we were well looked after in terms of facilities, sharing the green room with the performers. I found it very surreal making small talk with the likes of Milkie Way and Sam (Wargasm) over chicken baguettes as we struggled to take the lids off the buffet trays, or helping Asomvel’s Lenny Robinson find the merch area and the rest of the band.
The site layout includes an extensive merch area, which some acts still don’t seem to make much use of. This makes no sense to me; anyone with a business brain should be advising them to at least show their faces after their sets and say hello to new and existing fans. Some bands are very good at this, though, and I usually end up buying something signed that I wasn’t planning on just to show a bit of extra support.
The scheduling was a bit different this year. The TRC Stage and The Metal For Good (MFG) Stage played simultaneously in between the stage times of the larger ‘headliner’ stage. This meant that I did have to commit to one band or another and be more selective rather than try to catch a piece of everyone. They had to operate a ‘one in/one out’ policy when things got very busy around the bottlenecks of the TRC and MFG stages.
Kicking off my festival were hard rock metallers Blacklight Vice, who were new to me. The first few songs had plenty of satisfying chugging riffs and were crammed full of guitar moments and crashing drums. Frontman Drew can certainly holler with the best of them but still has cleans in his repertoire too. The band had clearly got the memo about wearing something Motörhead or Phil Campbell related; in fact, most of the acts showed their respect to the mighty but fallen today. Filthy riffs from Southampton? Blacklight Vice certainly delivered!
I ran over to the TRC Stage to catch the second half of Farnborough’s Stone Soup. The first thing that hit me was the amount of harmonica emanating from frontman Paul. Not the first choice of instrument for a hard-rocking band, but they pulled it off well; it really added to their unique hard bluesy rock stoner sound. Their set was enjoyed by a decently sized early crowd, with heads being nodded throughout. After a competent display of slamming drums and heavy riffs, they finished off their set with “Fuzzy Brain.” This is a band I will be looking out for in future.
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Kill The Lights deserved a much bigger crowd than they got for opening the PCK main stage. Bassist Jay James’ distinctive gut-wrenching bellows bolster clean vocalist James Clark’s singing to good effect, and their songs are powerful riff-driven affairs with pounding drums—courtesy of Michael ‘Moose’ Thomas—and well-crafted melodic metalcore liberally peppered with shredded solos. The mixing desk didn’t do them any favours, as the volume seemed a bit low, but despite this, I enjoyed their set, and they manned their merch stand afterwards to chat with fans.
I managed to catch a glimpse of The Fear on the MFG stage, who have a happy clean rock sound. However, I needed to spend some quality time with heavy blues rock masters King Kraken on the TRC stage. These South Walians were in full roar by the time I pushed through the crowd to witness the highly apt “War Machine” stomping through the audience’s heads. The heavy groove of “Berserker” and “Shadows” treated us to some wire-bending riffs and solos, with be-kilted Mark Donoghue’s commanding vocals rising above their well-crafted tunes.
One of my most-anticipated bands of the weekend were up next on the PCK stage: Asomvel. I last saw these guys play a brilliant set at Bloodstock Festival in 2024, so I was champing at the bit. They bounded onto the stage to blast through “King Of The World” at a rate of knots. Fans of Airbourne and Motörhead should love everything about Asomvel. They played a fitting tribute to the late Phil Campbell in the form of “Born To Raise Hell,” which was the first of many lump-in-the-throat moments of the day. This was a great set by a no-nonsense band, proving that the spirit of high-octane rock’n’roll is alive and well.
I have to be totally honest: DeVere were much better than I was expecting. They play an uplifting brand of pretty-boy rock, but they play it very well. Their performance was full of energy, reminding me of Mötley Crüe in their heyday, but tighter musically. I then shot across to the TRC stage for the joyfully doomy sludge of Gurt. They play crushing doom but with a tongue-in-cheek approach to song titles like “In For A Penny, In For A Pounding.” I enjoyed their set and grabbed a copy of the new album, Satan, etc.
I was really looking forward to South Of Salem on the main stage, but the start of their set seemed to be plagued by technical problems. Despite this, they put on a professional display with their Halloween-themed stage set. They have great tunes to draw on, including “Vultures,” “Let Us Prey,” and “Cold Day In Hell.” Respect to Callum Downing for stepping in to cover the parts of a recently departed guitarist. Following them was Wall on the MFG stage, a drum and guitar duo from Oxford who blasted out a strangely compelling set of instrumental tracks.
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I made my way to the Phil Campbell Memorial Wall to pay my respects before partaking in the Minute of Noise for the sadly missed guitarist. Another band recently hit with medical issues are The Wildhearts, who were next on the main stage. Ginger Wildheart led his troops in an intoxicating display, opening with “Everlone.” “Slaughtered Authors” and the excellent “Diagnosis” followed. The Wildhearts have always been about enjoying the moment on your own terms, and Ginger briefly addressed the crowd with a lot of love in the room before rounding off with “Chutzpah.”
The appearance of people walking around the Guildhall wearing red pointy hats could only mean one thing: Gnome were in the house. This Belgian rock band from Antwerp play glitchy stoner doom with their tongues very much in cheeks. The riffs are heavy and the drums drive the songs along relentlessly as tracks like “Duke Of Disgrace” and “Wenceslas” kept us entertained with their quirkiness. I have a feeling Gnome will be appearing much further up festival bills from now on.
When Northern Ireland’s finest, Therapy?, were named as the replacement headliners for Phil Campbell And The Bastard Sons due to (at the time) illness, it was a bittersweet moment. Smacking us right between the eyes with their version of Joy Division’s “Isolation” was the perfect start. The band have often veered into mainstream metal and rock territory, which is the secret to their wide appeal. “Trigger Inside,” “Hellbelly,” and “Die Laughing” were just the highlights of the first half. Topping things off with “Knives” and “Screamager” was a great way to end the first day. Saturday now had a lot to live up to!
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