Festival review: Essence Festival 2024

Hidden between an Officeworks and a Bing Lee in the industrial suburb of Belconnen in Canberra, The Baso didn’t seem to be a viable space to host Essence Festival 2024 an entire two-day music event, especially given the current climate for live events. 

And yet, the inaugural Essence Festival managed to defy the odds and succeed in gathering an exciting line-up of local ‘heavy music’, falling somewhere between the lines of a music festival experience and rough-around-the-edges bar night. 

The festival was jam-packed with continuous music on both days, alongside some subtle extracurricular experiences. Artists alternated between two stages – the bigger stage in the main room equipped with a backing screen, and a smaller more intimate stage on the side.

It was a welcome relief from the usual festival dilemma of schedule clashes, though the non-stop line-up meant missing out on an act to take a breather, as well as the potential of going on a three-hour bender to see desired acts. The sets were admittedly condensed, all falling between 30 and 45 minutes to keep in line with the rigid timetable, but as such it set the stage for two nights of exposure and exploration. 

The first night felt like an ode to the local metal scene, featuring acts from across the spectrum. Midnight Odyssey played ethereal black metal, alongside Subterranean Disposition, who played a deconstructed blend of doom and dark ambient complete with a saxophone solo. Even Essence Festival organiser, Dan Nahum’s own band, Altars joined in with a bout of death metal – a reminder that Essence had been organised from within the community. 

Highlight of the night was Impetuous Ritual, who arrived in leather playing an intense black metal set, but kept a sense of humour as every break between songs was a non-verbal discussion with the sound techs. Australian death metal pioneers, Abramelin closed the night with a pummelling set that felt like a celebration of the local death metal scene. 

The second day started much earlier at 3pm and was more expansive, with many acts departing from the metal band format that had dominated the night before. It was an open day for the non-metalheads to come out and explore adjacent genres like industrial and noise through a range of artists. 

On the main stage, Caustic Grip caught many off guard through their athletic EBM beats and a tinge of 80s nostalgia with old Transformers animation footage that gave all the metalheads something to dance to and reminisce about. 

Melbourne doom veterans Whitehorse played to their strengths on the main stage with a loud set featuring a lot of old material for an appreciative crowd that was clamouring for it. The whole festival finished off with a trippy black metal set from Spire, who delivered one last auditory blast. 

Sow Discord, the solo project of Whitehorse electronics member David Coen, was the highlight of the night for this reviewer, with a hip-hop tinged set of heavy industrial beats that managed to reel in everyone in a way that truly personified Essence Music Festival. 

Meanwhile on the smaller stage, Black Aleph played a chilled-out doom metal set, featuring a cello and a daf. Blood of a Pomegranate’s sensational blend of Armenian folk and industrial was crowned by an electric duduk and choral-chanting over a noisy wall-of-sound. The single international act of the night, Mondernte from Iceland, played a spiritual, reflective set mixing ancient Nordic chanting and distorted guitar.

Essence rounded out the festival experience at The Baso with Ghosty’s stall of spooky painted dolls and plenty of band merch. The Baso’s incredible aesthetic and decoration, featuring a set of 70s hard rock-themed pinball machines, an impressive collection of guitars tied to the ceiling and even a playable table made from the innards of a piano, also helped set the scene.

Read: Performance review: The Dilly Dally of Death and Dying, Trades Hall

All in all, Essence Festival managed to pull through with a grassroots festival dedicated to heavy music that put Canberra on the cultural map and this ambition truly paid off. Essence was made for metalheads by metalheads, but with its dynamic line-up, it kept the door open for music explorers, and if given the patience, everyone in attendance would have found something new and exciting.

Essence Festival ran from 27-28 September.