The big review: Supersonic 2025

Supersonic is as innovative and intelligent as festival bills get. Spread across the buzzing industrial creative hub of Digbeth in Birmingham, its boundary-shattering line-ups proudly provide a home for the heavy, the weird and the experimental. It wears its values on its sleeve, championing individuality, solidarity and defiance in the face of oppressiveness from the gloomy world outside.

There’s a lot to be gained from the experience simply by arriving with an open mind and an appetite for discovery. Prior knowledge of the artists playing could almost be an optional extra. Inevitably, if you just drift with the crowds crisscrossing between their main stages at the O2 Institute and XOYO, you’ll stumble across at least one artist unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. This year’s line-up is, as ever, a tasting menu of eclectic sounds, from Witch Club Satan’s feminist occult black metal, to the looping soundscapes of Water Damage by route of Divide And Dissolve’s fusion of classical and doom, and Funeral Folk’s existential elegies.

All in all, it’s a testament to the mind-blowing distances that human creativity can take us. We go exploring, and this is what we find…

‘Maximal repetition, minimal deviation.’ This is the mantra Texas drone collective Water Damage live by. It might sound like they’re beating an idea to death, but they aren’t – in practice, they’re taking a concept and elegantly skating in a circle with it. Propelled by the low thrum of the bass, their two drummers play facing each other like they’re about to duel, while the shriek of a violin lends an unsettling undertone to their glacially paced music. There’s a vast space to listen to each layer and contemplate what you’re hearing, which is what the intrigued Supersonic crowd seem to be doing, nodding and swaying as they drift wherever Water Damage’s meditative sounds might take them.

Space is at a premium in the Irish bar that Supersonic have taken over today by the time Skloss rock up. The Austin-via-Glasgow duo perform obscured by the haze onstage and the glow of the lights, studiously playing their instruments as if they’re in reverence to the titanic noise they make. Toying with groove but never entirely surrendering to it, there’s a rhythmic, insistent heartbeat propelling their music, their dense walls of riffs occasionally crumbling to a mere quiver. Everyone here is held in thick suspense, and it’s hard not to get invested.

“Three… two… one… the disco is open!” Big Special are loud, lairy and bursting with cutting insights and deadpan humour. “It is past our bedtime,” admits vocalist Joe Hicklin as the clock ticks closer to 1am. “Get us a Horlicks and a blunt and we’ll have a good night.” Even without any hot malt drinks in sight, when the grooving PROFESSIONALS, the squalling SHITHOUSE and the wonky TREES sound this fun, it’s a very, very good time regardless. By the time Joe’s got in the crowd and started whacking a cymbal he nicked from drummer Callum Moloney, everyone’s dancing. Supersonic’s idea of a party is a genius one.

Local psych-doomers Meatdripper have only been playing live for just over a year, there’s nothing naive about their deliciously swampy riffs. Drummer Kai’s been forced to sit this one out – “If they played their spleen would explode,” we’re told – but they press on, sucking the audience into their glowing green vortex with snaking grooves and sludgy rhythms, as well as vocalist Han’s unusual yet witchy tone of voice. In fact, as they announce their last song Homegrown, the audience groans. “It is eight minutes,” they point out, but they make every second count with a feast of spidery solos. If they’ve been drinking from the same fountain that Sabbath did all those years ago, they must be destined for incredible things.

Watching Bunuel is tantamount to following them down a rabbit hole, zigzagging with them in whatever direction they choose no matter if it disorients you or not. With zany electronic-like sounds woven within their thrashing, angular riffs, they make a perplexing sort of noise, amplified by former Oxbow vocalist Eugene S. Robinson’s madcap stage presence. He’s energetic and restless, his shoulders lifting and dropping constantly, and then there’s the matter of the way he caterwauls his lines. Ever heard anyone say “How now brown cow?” with venom dripping from their every word? Now you have. It might raise an eyebrow, but it never stops being intriguing.

“I want you all to scream with me like we are giving birth together,” Witch Club Satan's Johanna Holt Kleieve hisses to the crowd. Not unlike childbirth, theirs is a bloody, bestial sort of feminism, coagulating with a brooding occult sensibility. She communicates in an unholy screech as the Norwegian trio thunder through vicious cuts from Birth to Fresh Blood, Fresh Pussy in an entrancing, theatrical ritual that fearlessly stares into the abyss. It is as vital as it is wild – one minute, they are calling for “no fucking mercy for Benjamin Netanyahu”, the next, they appear topless and then wearing masks. Nobody performs quite like them. They will make you believe Satan has been skulking the streets of Birmingham, and they'll have superficial girl bosses feminists running for the exits.

Yesterday, Death Goals released an EP titled Survival As An Act Of Defiance. Their live show feels like the epitome of that philosophy. Amid the chilling slash of their panic chords and yowling vocals, the London queercore duo are a proud, furious presence determined to create a space where anyone can belong, calling for “strength in numbers, strength in unity, more than fucking ever”. They want the women and queer people here to “take up some fucking room”. The atmosphere feels different here – what they have created is both an inclusive space and one to strength your resolve. Listen and feel empowered.

As Backxwash, Ashanti Mutinta can be and do myriad things, having metamorphosed from an industrial-rap iconoclast to a purveyor of bluntly emotional, graceful alternative hip-hop. That multiplicity gets beautifully thrown into relief live. For what is only her second show in the UK – the first of which was at this very festival two years ago – she performs songs from new album Only Dust Remains as a quietly powerful presence, modest but majestic against backdrops depicting spiralling galaxies and an inferno behind church windows.

Live is where she blossoms. There's a slight abrasiveness to her voice when she raps that's triply visceral as on record. Along the way, 9th Heaven is a chest-beating masterpiece, especially when she cries in victory, ‘I feel! Say it with me! So motherfucking free!’ and the pulsing Wake Up inspires a hair-raising shout-along. History Of Violence, meanwhile, is especially potent, her excoriation of the violence enacted against Palestinians amplified by the words projected behind her: ‘Never mention the war or you're in league’. As tremendous as it all is, there's an intimacy about it too, and a collective joy as the audience claps and sings. Backxwash’s music has to be experienced in the flesh. This is special.

You don't know whiplash till you've seen HIRS Collective, but they make it exhilarating. Lurching from blasts of pop songs from Shania Twain to Cyndi Lauper into a shrapnel-filled whirlwind of noise, the duo create Saturday night madness in a whirl of movement against the intense pulse of the white strobes flashing above them. “Fucking… uh-oh!” is an unexpectedly hilarious mosh call of sorts from mistress of ceremonies Jenna Pup, who clears space amid the ruthlessness to put the world to rights. “ACAB for-fucking-ever,” she says at one point. All added up, the quickfire tone changes make for a batshit 25 minutes, but every second is hugely impactful.

There’s a stark polarity in what Divide And Dissolve do that is like watching two completely different performances in one. When Takiaya Reed is holding her saxophone, dovetailing from note to melancholia-draped note, the awe-inspiring sound is like something from a classical concert. Then, she switches to the guitar and it’s like the storm clouds are rolling in. The sound she makes, shifting from foot to foot in front of a giant stack of amps, is apocalyptic. It’s all for a purpose – the repetitiveness of Holding Pattern reflects that “all things that are bad continue to repeat themselves”, while Loneliness evokes the ceaseless sorrow of a life in solitude. Ultimately, it’s to show that resistance can take a wordless, but no less emotive, form. “Change is possible,” says Takiaya, almost diminutive in comparison to the music. “We have to believe it is possible.”

Funeral Folk might be as dark as music can possibly get. Sweden’s Sara Parkman and Maria W Horn, along with collaborator Mats Erlandsson, have concocted a startling ritual meditating on grief and death through the medium of folk, drone and the faint spirit of black metal. It’s harrowing. A violin dirge descends into heart-stopping crescendo, where at one point Sara screams and falls to the floor. Parts of it are deeply uncomfortable. At other times, all you can do is listen and marinate in your own existential dread. By the end, with the crowd lead in communal singing as they fade to silence, the veil has somewhat lifted, but it’s a soul-altering experience. Everyone is on their feet applauding as they finish – in a way, perhaps this is what music, at its core, is really about.

There’s no smoke without fire – and the air in XOYO is thick with fog by the time producer The Bug and performer Warrior Queen arrive to bring said fire. Between his bass-drenched, febrile production and her larger-than-life command, punters from front to back cannot resist grooving the night away. “Energy! energy!” she yells. As the night goes on, she begins to feel the heat a bit. “Do you want to hear this pussy talk?” She then tells us it goes 'Meooow.' “You’re too greedy. One more fuck? You’re too greedy.” Loud and wild from start to finish, it’s an electrifying ending to this mind-expanding festival.

And there you have it – what a brilliant end to an astounding summer. It’s been bookended by one of the most unique events we have, which feeds both your soul and your mind. Put simply, it’s the antidote to your brain rot.

Read this next:

• “Helping the audience take a risk is what Supersonic Festival is all about”
• “Death just exists. It’s not malicious, it’s not comforting, it’s just there”: How Backxwash shed skin and reimagined herself
• The big review: ArcTanGent 2025