Live at Newcastle University Student Union in Newcastle upon Tyne: EMPLOYED TO SERVE & CABAL (co-headline show)

Vocalist Justine Jones and guitarist /co-vocalist Sammy Urwin first met in their teens, starting the band with the intention of standing shoulder to shoulder with the local scene bands they admired. Now, after evolving from the feral mathcore chaos of their early EPs to detonating a full-throttle career high with 2021 album ‘Conquering’, they’re clearly lifers; make that lifers with a mission…

“We want to fly the flag for heavy metal and the traditions that it holds,” offers Sammy, acknowledging his life-long love of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Metallica, iconic artists he now finds more inspiring than ever. “But at the same time we want to play our part in taking things forward.

“We’re both super nerdy about music; however, if you just want to turn up and enjoy the show, that’s good too. The question is: does the music do something for you? If so, awesome!”

“When I was younger, I hated that you had to be either a metalcore fan or an emo metal fan,” adds Justine. “There was such a big divide, whereas now it feels a lot more unified.”

The gospel that Employed To Serve are preaching is Heavy Metal Unity. In any group where passions run high there are inevitably factions: questions of authenticity, sonic purism and true kvlt gatekeepers sometimes lend this outsider art an oddly conservative air. But with streaming breaking down barriers and genres blending more potently than ever, they believe it’s time for a new era of inclusivity and open-mindedness. After all, whatever bands people are into, they’re still part of the same metal community.

Rooted in a wide array of musical influences ranging from black metal and hardcore, to death metal and industrial, CABAL have cemented themselves as a band at the cutting edge of the extreme metal scene, ready to tear down all genre borders.

CABAL first emerged from the the shadows in 2016 as their first release Purge pushed the boundaries of the extreme metal scene in their homeland. Two years later, their debut album Mark of Rot ripped CABAL out of the Danish underground, establishing the band as an international act with a promising future. Soon after, the band began playing their first big festivals and toured through Europe, Japan and North America. But the cultists had bigger plans..

CABAL released their sophomore album Drag Me Down in 2020 - a dark descent into a personal hell brought to life by crushing instrumentals, an oppressive atmosphere and dark personal lyrics delivered with relentless intensity, while still leaving room for experimentation and expansion of CABAL’s signature sound. Drag Me Down took CABAL to new heights, as the shows got bigger and the attention of the music industry grew immensely.

With guest appearances on their previous albums from none other than Trivium’s Matt Heafy, Jamie Hails of Polaris, CJ McMahon from Thy Art is Murder and Filip Danielsson of Humanity’s Last Breath, CABAL no doubt have friends in every corner of the metal scene.

In the early winter of 2022, CABAL marked a new era with the release of Magno Interitus. Singer Andreas Bjulver Paarup says: “The main theme on the album is the great decay happening all around us. It seems that everything just falls apart in these days. This applies to politics, society in general as well as some personal things. We tried to translate the feelings that we have about the state of the world into music.”

CABAL are not only charting new territory with their visceral and doom-laden sound but are also moving out of the comforts of their dark, black and white signature aesthetic into bright colours inspired from Ari Asters latest masterpiece, ‘Midsommar’. Flowers, vines and eerie cultist May Queens are amongst the new visual elements that define the aesthetic of Magno Interitus.

Andreas, who is the art director and lyricist in the band, is excited about the new direction of the album: “We have a kind of base sound, our safe home. From there, we can experiment and try something new. On Magno Interitus we really left our comfort zone and went deeper into the details and extremes than ever before. You can hear it on the title track, as well as on the opener “If I Hang, Let Me Swing” or on “Exsanguination”. These are my personal three favourites on the album at the moment.”

Once more, CABAL brought in some extraordinary features on the album such as Joe ‘Bad’ Badolato of Fit For An Autopsy on Magno Interitus, as well as Simon Olsen from the Danish band BAEST on the track “Insidious”. This time around, CABAL also experimented with a completely different format by inviting the dark, industrial duo ‘John Cxnnor’ to co-create the unique track “Blod af Mit”.

The album was released in October 2022 through Nuclear Blast Records.

With the release of their 4th studio album ‘Everything Rots’, released through Nuclear Blast Records in 2025, the band shows their most ferocious and bleak side yet. Like a rabid hellhound this album is foaming at the mouth and is ready to once again unleash the rot upon the world.

Emerging Danish band COLD CULTURE continue to establish themselves on the post-hardcore scene with their distinctive electronic-infused take on heavy music.

COLD CULTURE first burst onto the scene with their debut EP ‘Afterthoughts’ (2023), which included standout tracks such as ‘Low’ (featuring Philip Strand of Normandie), and ‘Faded’. Since then, the band has performed at Denmark’s official heavy music award show Den Hårde Tone in 2024 and toured extensively across Europe and the UK with SIAMESE, CHAOSBAY and DEAD POSEY, before closing out 2025 with their biggest show to date, supporting SIAMESE at Poolen, in Copenhagen, DK.

With a rapidly growing fanbase and a reputation for delivering intense, emotionally charged music, COLD CULTURE is on the path to becoming a prominent name in the heavy music world.