HARD ROCK HELL NWOBHM 02 ACADEMY SHEFFIELD

It’s clear that the inaugural HRH NWOBHM festival has piggy-backed on or at least benefited from Brofest’s ability to persuade long-defunct bands to reform. Of the army of acts on the two-day line-up, many have already trodden the Brofest boards. But a good idea is a good idea, and the bands themselves are unlikely to care whether they’re revisiting their glory years in Newcastle, Nuneaton, Newport or – for the next 48 hours – right here in Sheffield. While London has a proud NWOBHM history of its own, it’s somehow fitting to witness this particular event taking place beyond the rapacious event horizon of the Capital. Even during the winter of discontent from which the NWOBHM sprang, the regions – in this case the former mining and heavy industrial hub of South Yorkshire – laboured under an investment and infrastructure deficit when compared to London and the South East in general. Sheffield may have come a long way since 1979, and avoided being nuked a la ‘Threads’, but in the frozen half-light of a December dusk, it’s all too easy for the mind to time-hop back to the bleaker days of Saxon’s ‘Hungry Years’.

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What a landmark five years is. Replacing one of our favourite underground festivals Hole In The Sky, Beyond the Gates Festival celebrates it’s half-decade anniversary in style this year. One of our favourite festivals, run with passion and dedication much like its predecessor, we recommend you head to Bergen in Norway between August 24-27. 

So far the festival has announced

Venom Inc (UK) Degial (S) Malthusian (IRL) Saturnalia Temple (S) The Spirit Cabinet (NL) Gehennah (S) Black Magic (N) Sortilegia (CA) Secrets of the Moon (DE) Urfaust (NL) Magister Templi (N)

It reads like an Iron Fist features list and that’s the way we like it, baby! See you there