Outbreak festival review – hardcore and pop hooks collide in impeccable genre-fluid lineup

The Guardian

15-06-2025

'More! More fucking violence!' Jem Siow, frontman with Aussie hardcore punks Speed, is hectoring a crowd he deems to not be moshing hard enough. Perhaps it's the 30-degree heat, or perhaps we're soft southerners compared with those at Outbreak's home in Manchester. Yoking together hardcore, emo, hip-hop and alt-rock with impeccable taste, its first London iteration is part of the wider Lido festival series and so it means there are incredibly un-punk sights, such as a VIP area and branded tequila experiences – but the actual music retains its edge.
Speed's route-one punk is enjoyable enough though the sound in their tent is muddy and elsewhere there are much more colourful fruits of a punk mindset. NYC industrial-dance unit Model/Actriz also seem dismayed by their initially static audience: 'I'm going to come out and scold you,' mock-huffs singer Cole Haden, which he duly does, performing two numbers roaming through the crowd and melting any English reticence. Half the crowd are pogoing, the other half body-popping to this exhilarating jet propulsion. US singer-producer Jane Remover causes similar pandemonium with breakcore-pop full of vocal hooks that hit like a video game power-up, enhanced by an appearance by rapper Danny Brown who later delivers a relaxed yet on-point main stage performance, with not a single word missed in the ratatat flows of When It Rain.
A failing of Outbreak in this format is putting some of the most cult-attracting acts on the third stage, enclosed in a small tent, meaning plenty of disappointed punters are left outside for the likes of Sunny Day Real Estate and Have a Nice Life. I really feel for the latter fans who miss out on the day's best set. This US band went basically unnoticed for a decade before online forum-dwellers amped them up, and the passion of their following, singing back Bloodhail like supporters of a League Two side that's just made it to Wembley, electrifies the room. The band themselves are on superb form, from the foregrounded bass to the Cure-like atmospherics and the oaken heft of Dan Barrett's lead vocals (very unlike Alex G on the main stage, who regularly ends up in an entirely different postcode to the key he's meant to be singing in).
Kentucky metalcore troupe Knocked Loose arrive having supported Slipknot in US arenas and you can certainly tell: this is a well-drilled, very entertaining and ever so slightly corny performance, full of entreaties for us to wave our hands or say yeah (the latter pronounced with eight es). It's like being sped around in the hands of an elite rally driver, seamlessly changing gears from sludge to hardcore in the space of a few seconds, then punching across a bumpy stretch of groove-metal.
Headlining are Turnstile, who epitomise Outbreak's genre-fluid ethos: the insistent high-tempo attack of hardcore is never far away, but there are flute solos, soaring pop vocal hooks and on the wonderful new song I Care, perky and sassy new wave energy. Outbreak will perhaps need more breakout stars like them to thrive at this level, as the festival caters to quite a specific type of inked, bookish demographic – while there will be some who accuse it of selling out, actual tickets seem far from sold out. But Outbreak has cleverly, passionately identified a free-thinking musical spirit and deserves a yearly spot in London's often corporate-feeling festival market.