Photo Credit: Kevin O’Sullivan
After venturing through a veritable maze of passageways to get to the press area and check in at Takedown Festival, it was soon time for our first band of the day — so, please welcome Stone Soup.
Fronted by the wild-eyed Paul Davis, Stone Soup felt an eclectic group on stage, which felt entirely fitting given their music. From the offset, classic rock riffs collided with Davis’ gravelly growls, making them the perfect way to kick off Takedown’s Total Rock stage. Throw in a tambourine, some harmonica — heartbreakingly low in the mix for the first half of the set — and flashes of jailhouse blues, and you had one very happy crowd.
Caught between the blue stage lights and the fluorescent glow of the café fridges behind them, the whole thing felt like a strange collision of the everyday and the heavy. Somehow, the Farnborough group made it work. By the end, with sweat soaking through Davis’ shirt to the point it practically changed colour, you could tell the band were giving it absolutely everything; with tracks like Steam Roller, Broken Scales, the new Chronos and closer Fuzzy Brain — with guitarist Chris Gilday venturing into the crowd to play to the masses and down a pint — Stone Soup delivered a set full of the same joy as that written all over the faces on stage. 8/10
While Stone Soup may have smashed their opening set, it was still in a rather small room — enter Kill The Lights, then, who felt positively enormous on the renamed Phil Campbell Stage. More importantly, though, they brought the kind of heaviness a main stage at Takedown promises.
Pounding drums, both clean vocals and guttural screams from Jason James and James Clark, and riffs thick enough to flatten the room made for a suitably hulking set. There weren’t any pits yet, but the headbangers were out in force. Although the mix occasionally blurred the songs together a little too much, tracks like WATCH YOU FALL, SCAPEGOAT and THE FACELESS still let the mini-supergroup — featuring former members of Throw The Fight, Still Remains, Threat Signal and Bullet For My Valentine — show off their hedonistically heavy wares. 8/10
The beauty of Takedown being contained within one building is that you can bounce between stages with relative eases, capacity permitting anyway. In this case, that meant catching both King Kraken and The Fear.
First up: King Kraken. It was immediately obvious why there was so much of their merch dotted around the festival. Frontman Mark Donoghue’s voice dominated the room, somehow blending gravelly yells, huge roars and soaring croons into something genuinely awe-inspiring. At times, he practically drowned out the trio of talented musicians behind him, somehow managing to be mounded than the guitars and drums both.
Tracks like Berserker and I Am The Apocalypse gave the crowd a feel for the band’s heavier side, but it was the passionate beauty of Hero — Donoghue’s face twisted in emotion — that really won the room over. 9/10
Meanwhile, over on the Metal For Good stage, The Fear were reaching their crescendo. Smoke hung thickly over the room as the band tore through the cinematic Satellite, the nu-metal tinged Moths To Fire and finally White Noise, playing up to the crowd Even without Kellin Quinn physically there, his presence was still felt in the backing vocals pumping through the speakers. Good fun. 7.5/10
Over to Asomvel next. Raspy vocals, hearty rock and roll and just a touch of surf-rock swagger — especially on Louder & Louder — were the order of the day. They were as much fun to watch as they were to hear, all devil horns, headbanging and denim-clad energy.
Their Phil Campbell-dedicated cover of Born To Raise Hell went down exactly as you’d expect, while The Nightmare Ain’t Over, dedicated to original vocalist Jay Jay Winter, who tragically died in a car crash in 2010, brought a little more emotion. Frontman Ralph Robinson spent most of the song racing across the stage as if trying to outrun drummer Ryan Thackwray’s frantic beats — which, let’s be honest, is a name for someone always destined to be a drummer. 8/10
Then came Devere.
The chain-link mic stand was a nice touch. So too was the general aesthetic: bassist Will Vaughan in eyeshadow and a cowboy hat, vocalist Sam Cassidy somehow belting out improbably high notes while dressed in little more than a vest — that was swiftly discarded during the group’s second song — and enough swagger to fill the room twice over. Tongue-in-cheek egos and strut-heavy rock and roll made them feel like a toned-down Steel Panther — or maybe a metal boy band who had grown up on Rock Of Ages? Whatever it was, they were four hairstyles away from being hair metal!
Fuck Shit Up arrived early, while Empire opened with a foreboding intro that felt distinctly Hell’s Bells-adjacent, even if mic glitches interrupted some of the vocals. And, in a true vaudevillian performance, Like Lightning was introduced with an appropriately melodramatic laugh.
Whether it was Cassidy posing dramatically with his guitarist’s head in his hands, the knowing winks to the crowd, or the sheer amount of hair flicking on display, Devere didn’t just look like they were having fun — they felt like they existed to be fun. At times, the set bordered on parody. But the band were simply too talented for it to ever tip over into self-spoofing. 9/10
Looking (and sounding) like the love-child of Motionless In White and Creeper, South Of Salem arrived with LED coffins lining the front of the stage and a graveyard backdrop looming behind them; from the band’s theatricality, you could tell that in an ideal world they’d be climbing out of them instead of walking on stage. Keys drifting over the speakers felt like the soundtrack to a slightly camp horror flick. Even some special guests over the set felt like something out of Scary Movie (in the best of ways), though more on that in a minute. There was nothing camp about the actual songs, however: despite technical issues leaving frontman Joey Draper struggling to hear anything in his in-ears, for a large chunk of the set, the band still sounded huge. Static landed hard, before pom-pom wielding cheerleaders emerged for the anthemic Let Us Prey. Pretty Little Nightmare was, naturally, “for the ladies”, while Death Of The Party saw the cheerleaders return — this time armed with whips as well as pom-poms. By the time Jet Black Eyes rolled around, the band were clearly racing the clock, desperate to squeeze in as much as possible before eventually closing with Cold Day In Hell. 8/10
Then came the emotional centrepiece of the day: a tribute to Phil Campbell on the main stage. Hearing a packed room clap and cheer in honour of one of the most influential figures in heavy music felt fitting. There was talk of his work in Motörhead, his impact on Takedown, and the music he made with his family in Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons. Combined with the main stage being renamed for the day, and a shrine in the corridor for fans to pay a more personal tribute to the rock and roll legend, it felt like a very deserved gesture.
Still, when the minute was over and The Wildhearts backdrop rolled out to the sound of Chuggaboom’s 7 Rings, there was an unavoidable sense of… emptiness. This was supposed to be a celebration of Takedown 2026 with Phil himself. Instead, it became something much more bittersweet.
Still, onwards and upwards. Led by the unmistakable Ginger, The Wildhearts brought exactly the kind of chaos needed to shake the room out of that more sombre mood. The opening ten minutes were largely instrumental, Everlone and Slaughtered Authors book-ending a medley that let the whole band flex, riffs and drums playing call-and-response across the stage while good-natured pits broke out to the delight of a crowd already awash with grins. Even if tech gremlins forced them to restart the intro to their cover of Cheers, it hardly mattered. The love in the room was impossible to miss — particularly given the recent news about Ginger’s health diagnosis, and his promise to keep rocking ‘till the end. 9/10
With the main two stages both running a little behind, timing when to leave for InMe felt like a gamble, and we were (mostly) successful. By the time we reached the Metal For Good stage, Dave McPherson and co. were already deep into opener 7 Weeks. The Essex band had been touring playing 2004’s White Butterfly in full — mostly in order, with a few extras thrown in for good measure — and Takedown marked their last stop. At twenty-one years old, the album can now legally drink in America, but that’s the beauty of a full album show. A record as beloved as White Butterfly, one which has been around long enough for parents to introduce to their kids, means something different to everyone in the room, but the result is the same: a crowd full of jumping, shouting fans hanging on every word. So You Know and This Town hit exactly as hard as you’d hope, with McPherson barking, “You have one assignment. Sing louder than the person next to you”, and unsurprisingly the crowd obliged. Last year’s Confession, introduced as “the first song I wrote when we got out of rehab”, felt raw and heartfelt, while Otherside and You’ll Get There both gained an extra fragility live through McPherson’s breathy falsetto, even as piercing guitars and pounding drums crashed around him. You’d think InMe’s performance effortless, but the alarming shade of red Dave’s face had turned — and the sheen of sweat soaking through his shirt until it practically changed colour — suggested otherwise.
For White Butterfly, McPherson ventured into the crowd, making the most of his wireless mic for one of the slower, more emotional moments of the set. Safe In A Room — apparently Dave’s personal favourite — and Just A Glimpse followed, even as the audience slowly began to thin out thanks to the increasingly loud sounds of Therapy? bleeding in from the main room. Almost Lost and A World Apart kept the energy high, while Chamber, “the last song on the album”, saw phone flashlights a-swaying. And then, of course, the album playthrough’s omission — they might have struggled to make it out of the room without Faster The Chase. Combined with a surprise Underdose, and with the promise of being at the merch stand afterwards to meet fans — though Dave did note, rather understandably, that he’d probably need to change his shirt first — completed the surprisingly wholesome set, and thus our first day. 10/10
Written By: James O’Sullivan
