News: A Weekend Of Black Metal Is Coming To The North Yorkshire Coast In 2024 Courtesy Of Fortress Festival

“The First of June, 2024… Under the watchful gaze of the carrion crows that beset the castle’s crumbling battlements…the hordes of darkness will stir. The mournful bells of the woebegone church will ring out upon the hillside: soon to be lost amid the ravenous battery of an ancient warlord.

And from the ashes of the past, a new stronghold will arise…”

Fortress Festival is set to take place on 1-2 June 2024 in Scarborough, North Yorkshire at the iconic Scarborough Spa.

They have expanded from the ‘Ocean Room’ and will now be hosting the festival across the whole 1,700 capacity complex with two stages, Main Stage and Second Stage.

There will be access to a restaurant, multiple bars, sun court area with food vendors, a music market that connects both stages and free venue pass-outs throughout.

26 bands over two days with ZERO clashes; Worldwide live debuts, European exclusives, UK debuts/exclusives & entire album performances.

Triptykon, Wolves in The Throne Room, Mispyrming and Regarde Les Hommes Tomber will all headline Fortress Festival 2024.

Saturday Line up

Switzerland’s Avant-Garde Extreme Metal act, Triptykon, will return to the UK for a rare UK exclusive headline performance. Tom Gabriel Warrior, one of the most influential figures in the metal scene and founding member of the pioneering bands Hellhammer and Celtic Frost said: “We feel absolutely delighted and truly honoured to have been invited to return to the UK to perform at Scarborough’s exceptional Fortress Festival in 2024. Anybody familiar with my extended musical path knows how important the UK has always been for me and my work, both in terms of influence and artistic progress. A concert on such personally sacred ground is thus always something I am looking forward to immensely.”

After their long awaited UK debut at the sold out Fortress ’23, Panopticon will return in 2024 with a UK exclusive and ten year anniversary performance of their 2014 album, ‘Roads to the North’. Austin Lunn, the sole member of Panopticon, said, “’Roads to the North’ was the sound of a young man, only 31 years old at the time reflecting on changes and growth in life, as the symphony of life plays on regardless of mistakes and broken strings. 2024 will be ten years since its release, and it feels like the right time to bring this album in its entirety to the stage for yet another time of reflection on the simultaneous, incredible beauty and horror of this time we have on earth.”

Progressive, Avant-Garde Black Metal experimentalists Der Weg Einer Freiheit have never stopped smashing through the boundaries of the genre they’ve called home since forming in 2009. And after the 2021 release of their fifth album, ‘Noktvrn’, the band return to the UK for an exclusive show on the Main Stage at Fortress Festival.

Ultha are returning back to the UK for a special one-off appearance at Fortress Festival. “The overwhelming reactions to our appearance at Reaper Festival in July of 2023 are still vivid in our minds. We were so humbled and never expected such love from a place of this world we only played once before. If only we had known! But instead of grieving the lost time and missed chances, we are stoked to say we are getting the chance to do it again, sooner than we expected and to an even bigger crowd at one, if not THE, marquee festivals of the UK metal underground: FORTRESS FEST 2024. It is such a tremendous honour to get invited back to play our third ever UK show to so many of you who never tired of asking us to play your beautiful island. Thanks to the Fortress crew for inviting us. It’s truly an honour! We shall bring a special set for you all and play with equally as much heart as we put into writing the music we create. It will be our 10th anniversary next year and we said we will only play some selected and very special shows – this is a prime example. Fortress Fest, we can’t wait and shall see you in June of 2024.”

Obsidian Kingdom return to the UK for a very special UK exclusive performance of their 2012 concept album, ‘Mantiis’ at Fortress 2024. “We’re going to bring ‘Mantiis’ to the stage this one time and Fortress Festival seems the perfect place to do it, since the members of its organisation are so very keen on the album, and the UK being one of the first countries which would ask us to perform it back in the day. Next 1st June we’ll be in North Yorkshire, going through those fourteen bites one after the other, and celebrating that there is some beauty – or at least some sense of humour – to be found in the most vile things on Earth. And we sure hope to see you there.”

Few artists in recent memory have swept through the dark underground with the excited fervour that Lamp Of Murmuur has achieved since first appearing with a string of demos in 2019. We are excited to announce the band will perform a 2024 UK exclusive show at Fortress. Lamp of Murmuur’s new album is a statement of might and power, destroying all preconceptions the project had made in the past, while also serving to cement its position as a driving force in modern-day underground metal.

Fortress Festival will be Fall of Rauros’ first ever performance on European soil and the only planned UK show. Formed as a two-piece recording experiment in the final months of 2005, Falls of Rauros have since expanded into a fully-realized and collaborative quartet. Intent on exploring the common ground between black metal, rock, and folk music, the group’s collective goal is not to build bridges to connect disparate genres, but to chisel the raw materials of each into something seamless and new, rich with detail and texture.

Regarde les Hommes Tomber return to the UK for a 2024 exclusive headline performance inside the Ocean Room at Fortress Festival while Dodsrit deliver to us a UK exclusive set as part of their UK debut performance.

Please welcome the worldwide live debut of Fellwarden to Fortress Festival 2024! This will be the band’s only planned live show. Fellwarden was a concept forged by The Watcher (Fen) back in 2014 to give voice to an epic, exultant form of black metal that nonetheless carries with it echoes of deep lamentation and remembrance. Frank Allain of Fellwarden said, “Whilst Fellwarden was always conceived as a studio project first and foremost, I’ve always stated from the get-go that I wouldn’t rule out the prospect of performing live should the right opportunity arise. Fortress Festival 2024 is that opportunity. Nevertheless, Fellwarden will not be an entity that performs for the sake of it, that plays shows regularly as a ‘gigging band’. As a musical outlet steeped in narrative and atmosphere, it is imperative for us that anything we engage with aligns with this philosophy. So, as it currently stands, Fortress Festival 2024 is all that is in the calendar – and it may very well stay this way in perpetuity, who knows. It therefore promises to be a special performance and quite possibly the only opportunity to witness this material in the live environment.”

Nature-bound and emotional Black Metal act, Waldgefluster will arrive in the UK for the very first time. The band make their UK debut and only 2024 appearance at Fortress Festival.

Atmospheric Black Metal act, Sunken will also descend upon Fortress Festival, and the UK, for the very first time ever in 2024. Check out their sorrowful, intense and extremely personal ‘Livslede’ full-length album, released on Vendetta Records back in 2020.

Sunday Line up

Wolves In The Throne Room will headline Fortress 2024 with a UK exclusive full performance of their legendary record, ‘Two Hunters’, which will be the first time the iconic and legendary album will be performed live in the UK in its entirety. Wolves in the Throne Room said: “We are very pleased to be presenting our classic album Two Hunters in its entirety for the first time on British soil. We have chosen Fortress Fest to host this special event. This album is very dear to us and we are very keen to share it with the metal maniacs who will be in attendance.”

Please also welcome a towering and dreadful benefaction of atmospheric imposing death metal ruin to Fortress Festival! Mortiferum (US) will spew forth onto UK soil for the first time in 2024. The band act as a direct replacement to Sylvaine who have unfortunately had to withdraw from the 2024 line-up.

The solo indigenous Black Metal project, Blackbraid, will also play a 2024 exclusive UK show to mark a much anticipated UK debut. Jon Krieger of Blackbraid said, “It’s official! Blackbraid will be coming to the UK next year, for the mighty Fortress Fest. I can’t express how excited I am to not only bring Blackbraid to the UK for the first time, but to be doing it at such a unique festival, surrounded by some of the best black metal artists in the world. This will be our only UK appearance next year so we wanted to do or best to make sure it was truly one to remember. A big thank you to Fortress Fest for making this one possible, see you next summer!”

Gaerea will bring a mindful mélange of menace and mourning with their dissonant and otherworldly Black Metal act and will teach us all a lesson in punishing and brutal Extreme Metal while Furia will be a UK exclusive with Fortress Festival being their only planned show on UK shores for 2024

Mispyrming, a visceral and unapologetic force from Iceland, will also be welcomed to Fortress Festival 2024 and will headline the Ocean Room stage.

Then it will be time to brace yourselves because drenched in raw atmospherics and folkloric mysticism, and with three incredible full-length albums and many other EP & split releases in their pocket, it is finally happening; After 15 long years, Fluisteraars are coming to perform live in the UK at Fortress Festival ’24. The band have only performed live once in their career, and besides their forthcoming 2024 performance at Roadburn, Fortress Festival is currently their only planned live show. “After Iceland, we are looking forward to playing on another island. Again, an island full of mythical history that we hope to get a taste of. We will play a set with various songs from our entire oeuvre. We’ll see you there.”

Thy Light will make their only 2024 live appearance in the UK at Fortress Festival. A beautiful fusion of depressive and atmospheric black metal. “We are honoured with the invitation from Fortress Festival and the opportunity to manifest our art at one of the UK’s most important festivals when it comes to underground music. This will be one of our few live rituals in 2024 and it will surely be a special one for us.

Hailing from the darkest corners of North East England, Blood Countess deliver a savage take on the classic second wave black metal sound and Fortress Festival will be no different. “Fortress Festival is rapidly becoming one of the UK’s most exciting extreme metal festivals. To perform amongst our peers and well respected bands is an unmissable opportunity for Blood Countess and as always, we aim to deliver an extreme, relentless and maniacal set! See you in 2024!”