Firefriend + Smote

Doors 7.30pm

Double headliner
Firefriend • (Brazil. Cardinal Fuzz Records)
Sao Paulo’s Firefriend posit themselves between the shadows of the pandemic and WWIII as a psychic resistance faction, channelled into form across their ten-album back catalogue in torch song rock & roll, high-octane smouldering psych freakouts, and all points between.

Smote

The brainchild of Daniel Foggin, Smote has evolved seemingly of its own volition. “I had the idea for years” he relates, “I love Pärson Sound, Träd, Gräs Och Stenar, Traditional Irish Folk and all sorts of different Drone and Folk music. It was simply finding the opportunity to sit down and get recording. A very heavy influence that affects Smote is fantasy as a genre, and the atmosphere that can be created via story-telling.”

The five vivid extrapolations on Genog conjure differing spiritual realms, yet the verdant flute-and-drum-driven ‘Fenhop’, the resonant, cryptic ‘Hlaf’ and the overwhelming noise-driven intensity of the closing freakout ‘Banhus’ combine and coalesce to offer one unified vision, building furious momentum in a manner that unites the pastoral with the arcane and otherworldy.

18+