Infest
2026:
IAMX/Utah Saints/Louisahhh/Agnis/AUX ANIMAUX/Lovelorn
Dolls/Potochkine/NNHMN/ghostbells/Sylvgheist Maëlström/Human
Steel/Wavepeak/Holy Braille/The Gospel/OWLS/Pretty Addicted/The
Dirt/FISTING/Tr4nsients/Bein-E/Nexus Fitz/Mark Reeder
Manchester Academy, Manchester - 21-23 August 2026
"We're
finally playing fucking Infest!"
[My TLDR
for 2026 reads a lot like it did in 2024 despite the change of
city: Venue, sound and lighting all top-notch, lineup okay
(generally not the kind of acts I want) but only one big name,
I'd only seen 3 of the 22 acts on the bill before. Favourite
acts: Mark Reeder, Tr4nsients, OWLS, Nexus Fitz, Utah Saints,
IAMX. Infest returns here over the August Bank Holiday next
year.]
Last year's
Infest was the transitional one - a slimmed-down, two-day dry run
in a new city, forced on the organisers in part by Bradford's turn
as City of Culture and partly because the close and productive
working relationship between the promoters and Bradford University
wasn't what it used to be. This year was the one where we found
out if the new home sticks. Three days again, a week ahead of the
traditional August Bank Holiday slot, and crucially the first
full, 3-day weekend to see whether Manchester Academy can do for
Infest what Bradford University did for two decades.
Spoiler: it
can, and in most respects does it better. Multiple purpose-built
rooms under one roof, a bunch of very decent PAs, multiple bars,
plenty of seats, sofas and benches near the entrance, an outdoor
seating area and enough on-site food outlets that you could
survive the entire weekend without once queuing for burgers, chips
or pizza. But all were available if you did wanted to indulge. (My
£5:50 10” hand-stretched sourdough Margherita pizza was a bargain
dinner on the Saturday.)
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Day 1 -
Friday 21st
Prologue
Doors opened at an early 2pm on Friday on account of a screening of the excellent documentary B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989. It's the story of music, art and chaos in the wild West-Berlin of the 1980s, when the walled-in city became a creative sub-culture melting pot. It's a fast-paced collage of mostly unreleased cine, film and TV footage of a city where the days were short and the nights endless. Much of the footage features and follows the story of Manchester-born Mark Reeder who, largely on a whim, relocated from his home to the city in 1978 and was soon helping his mates' bands, including Joy Division, get their first gigs there, and setting up record labels.
Doors opened at an early 2pm on Friday on account of a screening of the excellent documentary B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West-Berlin 1979-1989. It's the story of music, art and chaos in the wild West-Berlin of the 1980s, when the walled-in city became a creative sub-culture melting pot. It's a fast-paced collage of mostly unreleased cine, film and TV footage of a city where the days were short and the nights endless. Much of the footage features and follows the story of Manchester-born Mark Reeder who, largely on a whim, relocated from his home to the city in 1978 and was soon helping his mates' bands, including Joy Division, get their first gigs there, and setting up record labels.
There was a
fascinating Q+A with Reeder, a natural-born storyteller, in
attendance for the screening and DJing at Infest the following
night. I'd seen him do the same thing with the film in Tokyo in
2018 but, honestly, didn't remember very much of the film. Seeing
it a second time around it made a huge impact on me. One that made
me envious of Reeder's get-up-and-go attitude that resulted in
more than a decade of heady, living-for-the-moment (mis)adventures
and musical encounters. Unequivocally, the best start to an Infest
to date and a nice throwback to when they showed films at the
event many years ago. More please!
Fisting (UK)
Whatever
reservations the name might have generated evaporated at the door
- Club Academy was full front to back for this UK-based opening
act, which is not something I can say happens often. Jessie and
Angela's thudding industrial techno didn't reach brutal, exactly,
and the structure had more pauses in it than I expected, and the
pink-fist graphics and abstract visuals were amusing when the
music didn't quite manage any depth. Good to see two women opening
the festival even if, on this outing, the performance didn't fully
match the concept.
Great name
for a band, somehow not already taken. Emee, performing solo as
OWLS, was a small-scale lesson in less-can-be-more. With a
questionable haircut, moustache, fingerless leather gloves,
black armless t-shirt, he looked every inch like the 'bad boy' in a John
Hughes film. But he's actually from Longford in
Ireland - the self-styled "darkwave capital of Ireland!" -
apparently.
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He switched between vocals, drums and decks
without once losing the room, came to the front to work
the crowd, and by the fifth song Bodybags(?) a
state-of-the-world piece that had a startling number of
people waving Longford flags, had this lot eating out of
his hand. Falling back into his Hughes bad boy persona
fleetingly at the end of his very entertaining set, he
banged the mic off his own head on the penultimate song
for good measure. There's a lot to like here. Punk anger,
darkwave and ethereal, diluted a touch by the odd more
generic track, but the potential is real.
Wavepeak (USA)
Rhythmic noise out of Connecticut, and I'm fully on board. Punishing without tipping into brutal, built on real structure and melody rather than just texture, with film-dialogue samples worked in cleverly and vocals that put me in mind of Laibach's Milan Fras at his most deadpan. The Occult (the title track of their most recent release) had a proper groove to it, and there was something quietly satisfying about a band clearly delighted to have Zuckerberg in their crosshairs. My one gripe, and it's a first for me at Infest, was that they weren't loud enough - I actually wanted more volume out of that quality PA.
ghostbells (USA)
Second time round for me, having first caught
them supporting Ashbury
Heights in London in February, and I liked them
a little less on this outing. They were more
lightweight than I remembered, though the Academy's
subwoofers were doing their level best to compensate.
The bald guy covered in white makeup and wearing
sunglasses has a definite touch of Andrew Eldritch
about him, and the set was jauntier than the
"brooding, icy" self-description online would suggest.
Their real strength is the contrast between the two
vocals, which landed best on Your Secrets -
enough that it got singled out as a favourite by more
than one person I was stood with. Still, what on paper
might have been a messy fusion of goth, darkwave and
EBM turned out again to be pretty catchy alt-pop. They
went down a storm.
Lovelorn Dolls (Belgium)
I had a fairly strong idea from the name and
the write-up on the Infest
website that this Belgian goth-metal act wasn't
going to be for me, and so it proved. The opening
track's backing faltered at one point which was
unfortunate but didn't put them off their stride. Quite
a high billing for a band making their UK debut and
still finding their feet live. Underwhelming for me, but
there was enough sweetness in the Infest audience to
give them a decent reception.
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Louisahhh
(USA/France)
Closing out day one was the New
York native now based in France producer and DJ
making her UK debut. Billed as punk-fuelled techno
and "The missing link between Nine Inch Nails and
Yeah Yeah Yeahs" according to NPR - undersells
how confrontational this actually was live. All
barbed wire and brazen vocals over punchy
post-industrial, and exactly the kind of curveball
booking Infest does better than anyone else in the
UK. Top notch storytelling which was smart,
confident, balancing innovation and comfort.
Surprisingly strong.
The only real complaint of the first day
was structural rather than musical: just
fifteen-minute turnarounds between most of the bill
made it a bit of a scramble as the bands alternated
between the largest, first-floor hall and the club
venue two floors below, if you needed to do anything
as basic as visit the bar or pop to the loo (or,
heaven-forbid, eat something) in between sets.
Something for the organisers to look at for next
year.
Day 2 - Saturday 22nd
I already felt at home in the venue by
the start day two. Whatever an indoor festival
needs to deliver, Manchester Academy delivers it,
and while Bradford University was Infest for the
better part of two decades, I'm not sure I missed
it once this weekend.
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Bein-E
(UK)
Photos
[L-R]: The Gospel (RD), Human Steel
Their brief, five-song set including three eclectic covers featuring Spacemen 3 (Lord Can You Hear Me?), Madonna (Like A Prayer) and Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel (Tumbling Down) and felt like a fever dream throughout and afterwards. The frontman had a habit of wandering off stage-left whenever he wasn't required, which read as either deference to the rest of the choir doing the heavy lifting, or simply odd. He did this half-way through what turned out to be the final song, not that the audience knew this, so it ended as abruptly as it began - house lights up before the crowd had processed the set was actually over, applause arriving in a confused, fractured ripple at an emptying stage. An extremely clever Mormon outreach project or a Laibach-inspired art project? Place your bets now!
Human Steel (Germany/Poland)
Photos
[L-R]: NNHMN (RD), AUX ANIMAUX, Utah Saints
If anyone thought Saturday might ease them
in gently, Bein-E (aka
Beinaheleidenschaftsgegenstand
[Bein-a-hel-den-shafts-gegen-stand] Noun: The thing
that is almost - yeah, I can see why they've
truncated that in recent years) put that notion to
bed immediately. Now a four-piece live, formed by
former partners Simon and Tiffanie, this is exactly
the kind of act Infest exists to platform - one with
zero interest in making concessions to anyone.
Three on stage, a fourth pacing in front of
it and the crowd. The witch-like female voice
against the harsh male one worked well, building to
a wall of Gregorian chants, crashing cymbals, some
genuinely engaging ambient soundscapes and tortured
vocals that the bar stage's PA handled without
breaking a sweat. This is not something you’d want
to listen to or watch live on a daily basis and
that's a compliment to its efficacy.
Setlist: MMXIX, Stalker, Leviticus
Complex, All Cut Up, Bleed Between the Lines, In
The Nursery, Monsters, Falling Back
The Dirt (UK)
About as rock n roll as Infest has ever got
in my experience. Jack and Sachiko are a
Pennines-based UK/Japan duo built around looped
guitar and percussion, and their garage punk a
dramatic change of tone after Bein-E. A friend
described them as a darkwave version of The Fall,
and he wasn't far off. Chatty frontman Jack with his
massive pork chop sideburns could have been David (Komputer)
Baker’s wayward brother. Chaos went properly psychedelic,
Jack left the stage to get into
the crowd, and by the penultimate song their
pile-driving guitar groove had the Academy's club
space jumping with joy. Visibly grateful just to be
the leftfield act on this year's bill, which they
undeniably were. Much fun.
Setlist: End Game, Bed of Nails, Chaos,
P.A.I.N, Rant 2
The Gospel
(UK)
Hallelujah indeed! A cinematic Manchester
act trading in vintage analogue synth grit and
theatrical drama - think Nick Cave fronting a
Goldfrapp session. Whether tongues were in cheeks
throughout I genuinely couldn't tell you, and I'm
not sure it matters. Visually the most arresting
thing to grace an Infest stage in a long while. A
stage full of women: two guitarists, two drummers
all four wearing black and white uniforms, six
backing choir singers clad in full black-hooded
robes and one suited and booted male lead vocalist -
everything enveloped in vivid green vines and red
roses. The kind of unexpected but unforgettable
performance that Infest has been so good at serving
up down the years.
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Their brief, five-song set including three eclectic covers featuring Spacemen 3 (Lord Can You Hear Me?), Madonna (Like A Prayer) and Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel (Tumbling Down) and felt like a fever dream throughout and afterwards. The frontman had a habit of wandering off stage-left whenever he wasn't required, which read as either deference to the rest of the choir doing the heavy lifting, or simply odd. He did this half-way through what turned out to be the final song, not that the audience knew this, so it ended as abruptly as it began - house lights up before the crowd had processed the set was actually over, applause arriving in a confused, fractured ripple at an emptying stage. An extremely clever Mormon outreach project or a Laibach-inspired art project? Place your bets now!
Setlist: Burning Like A Fever, Lord
Can You Hear Me? (Spacemen 3 cover), All
Time Low, Like A Prayer (Madonna cover), Tumbling
Down (Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
cover)
Human Steel (Germany/Poland)
A Polish-German EBM pairing. Not
sure I want 'real' drums with my EBM - I'd
prefer if it were all synthetic, this was built
around pounding electronics on a backing track,
a live drummer and lead vocalist, both stood
stock-still through the intro before the singer
struck some very deliberately slow-motion poses
for the (us) pit photographers. The vocal range
was limited, with a lot of hollering, though the
tracks leaning on kick, toms and sequencers
rather than crashing cymbals fared noticeably
better. We Are Steel had real echoes of
Die Krupps in its motoring groove, and by the
closing Slave Society the lyrical themes
running through this year's whole event were
laid pretty bare. There's a pattern, and it's not
subtle.
NNHMN (Germany/Poland)
The Berlin/Polish duo I'd expected to click
with, and it mostly did, even if it stopped short of
blowing me away. Ghostly vocals over analogue
textures, dancefloor-focused rather than
experimental, and by the fourth song - properly
Hi-NRG, verging on territory served so perfectly by
Emmon at Infest in 2024
- they had the crowd fully dancing. About as close
to the textbook Infest act as this year's bill got.
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AUX ANIMAUX
(Sweden)
The Stockholm-based darkwave artist Gözde
Düzer making her Infest bow with
real commitment - the makeup and costume must have
taken serious effort, unless she really does pop
into Tesco looking like that. Self-taught,
alternating between theremin and bass while singing,
and unsurprisingly the tracks that leant more into
the theremin were the ones that landed best for me;
the vocals read a touch dry at times. A one-woman
show that never stopped moving, delivered with real
passion despite having played in Portugal alongside
IAMX the day before - travel-weary? It barely
showed. The crowd seemed unsure quite how to receive
something this deliberately hard to pin down.
Utah Saints (UK)
The word going round in advance was that
these days the set is a couple of the old hits
padded out with Prodigy covers, which did not fill
me with confidence - I can get cover bands at my
local council do. How wrong I was. I'd mistakenly
thought this was a band performance, when it was
actually more of an elevated DJ-set. From the
airhorn onward this was the first full-on dance set
of the weekend, and easily the most animated I'd
seen this crowd so far.
A rinsed, brutal remix of Depeche Mode's Enjoy
the Silence and a monumental Head Like A
Hole had the whole room singing, and - nice
touch - one of the duo spent the day wandering the
venue checking out the rest of the bill rather than
swanning in to do their thing and leave, then
thanked the crowd properly at the end. Genuinely one
of the best-received sets of the weekend, and proof
that ignorance (mine, in this case) really can be
bliss.
Mark Reeder
(UK/Germany)
A special mention for the first DJ set to
close out Saturday from the Manchester-via-Berlin
veteran, weaving in John Foxx's Underpass in
a suitably sinister remix and a run through
Westbam's haunting You Need The Drugs in a
setlist built around the many remixes Reeder has
created for artists down the decades. Bonus effort
points for the video projections that not only tied
in with the music along the way but provided a
narrative (via captions) of Reeder's fascinating
journey from northern England to the underground
heart of Berlin before the wall came down. On the
decks, stylistically Reeder is not far off Wolfgang Flür, and a
compelling reminder of just how deep this scene's
roots go, delivered by someone who was there for
much of it.
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Day 3 - Sunday 24th
Tr4nsients
(Romania/UK)
There's a particular pre-set murmur that
builds around certain acts and not others, and
this was one of them. The man behind the Ambient
Leeds events, making his Infest debut, and inside
thirty seconds I knew this was going one of my
weekend highlights. Downtempo, cinematic,
post-Boards of Canada electronics with archival
footage of Edwardian women projected behind him,
memorial photos of Sophie and Fitz either side of
the stage, and I'll admit the music had me
fighting back tears before I'd fully registered
why. Consciously or not, there's distinct echoes
of In The
Nursery's impressive run of silent film
soundtracks. Transcendental in the least
pretentious sense of the word, and the only artist
of the entire weekend whose album I purchased on
the spot.
Setlist: Belle Époque, Incarnations,
Prima Materia, Bellet Robotique
Pretty Addicted (UK)
Based on the Infest website write-up
alone I expected to dislike this. Unfortunately,
for both them and us, they were 11 minutes late to
start on account of the drum kit being used for
IAMX's soundcheck in the main hall just before
Pretty Addicted were due on stage. A male/female
two-piece - him on a live drum kit, her leading
the vocals. Her voice has real balls when she
actually sings; the gurgling theatrics elsewhere I
simply can't take seriously, and the moment she
screamed "Hail Satan!", along with waiving
a bottle of Jack Daniels in hand, was my cue to
leave. The live drums did sound good, and the
contrasting visual dynamic between the two of them
was effective, for what it's worth. A friend
summed it up as: "The kind of music you listen
to as a pre-teen to prove your middle-class
parents don't understand you." - which is
actually bang on.
Holy Braille
(UK)
I expected to like this more than I did. A
Sunderland (male/female) duo trading in darkwave,
electronics and a touch of witchhouse. Refreshingly
this wasn't too loud and that suited their style.
Her vocals were very much up front in the mix and I
liked that. So for once you could actually follow
the lyrics if you wanted to. The sparser, more
atmospheric passages when there were fewer beats
played more to their strengths. While the lead
vocalist bounced around a lot (courtesy of some
sensible trainer footwear), it was good to see the
keyboard player was really into what he was doing
too. When he wasn't rocking is synth back
and forth whilst playing, if he didn't have
anything to do he paced up and down. I liked
their energy but it just never
quite clicked for me, even though they both put on a
show.
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Sylvgheist
Maëlström (France)
Nexus Fitz (UK)
Photos
[L-R]: Potochkine (RD), Nexus Fitz, Agnis
Another Hands-label act, and like pretty
much every Hands act Infest books, this delivers.
French, making his UK debut, and shameless enough
to ask the compère on-mic whether there were any
UK promoters in the house! On this evidence he
should get some bookings. Less punishing than most
Hands output, which is precisely why it worked on
me; call it easy-listening power noise, if such a
thing can exist. Visuals were consistently well
chosen rather than the typical afterthought. Also
worth noting: even at the back of the Club Academy
space, courtesy of the double-stacked,
ceiling-mounted PAs, the sound was still perfect -
something Bradford University always struggled to
manage.
Setlist: Cascade Dark Water, Ghosts,
Grieve, Wrinkles, Avalanche, Swarm-essaim,
Avale, End Show
Potochkine
(France)
The sound here was odd rather than bad -
a lot of deliberate space in the songwriting that
ended up sounding thin and distant in the main
hall's acoustics, as if you were hearing it
through a wall. Presumably a soundcheck call
rather than an accident, since both of them looked
entirely happy with it. This went down well with
the crowd regardless, even if it never quite
reached me the way I suspect it was meant to. An
interesting combination of sounds that came out
more soporific than energising in practice.
Nexus Fitz (UK)
In September last year, Infest regular
Fitz Jones (who played
as SkinjoB at Infest in 2008) sadly died
having been diagnosed with MND. He was way too
young and his death caused a shock that rippled
through the scene. So when Deviant's Jay Smith
came up with the idea of a one-off tribute to
Fitz, the festival organisers not only made time
for the project, but Infest's own Mark Guy
dusted down his drums for the show. This was
clearly a deeply personal moment for the Infest
family rather than a standard festival slot. It
was only two songs: a powerhouse version of
SkinjoB's Beauty Is Your Toy - built
around a sample from Blade Runner.
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Setlist: Beauty Is Your Toy (SkinjoB
cover), Tears In Rain (Covenant cover)
Agnis (Poland)
As if the organisers are developing a trend
of incorporating Eurovision Song Contest entrants
(kicking off spectacularly with Hatari in 2024), Agnis is
Poland's entry for the 2027 contest. Her video
backdrop, in which she prepares a poisonous meal for
unsuspecting dinner guests - recipe included on
screen in full - set the tone for a set with a real
sense of humour. She was self-deprecating between
songs even as the production stayed tight and
thoroughly professional.
Cloaked dancers and dancing skeletons
appeared on stage for the Halloween-flavoured
number, sing-along karaoke lyrics, and a genuinely
inspired reworking of Bach's Toccata and Fugue
in D Minor into the set before the beats
dropped. She finished with an effective cover of
IAMX's Mile Deep Hollow - brave since they
were on next. Agnis' personality effortlessly
carried the room. Hugely likeable and sweet, and a total
hit with the crowd - me included.
Setlist: Creatures of the Night,
Elixir, Baba Jaga, Halloween Night, Wicked Witch
(first time live), Vamp, Nunholy (pre-release),
Antipriest, Gothess, Mile Deep Hollow
(pre-release IAMX cover)
IAMX (UK)
IAMX have been one of my 'must-see' live
bands for many, many years. Few give
their art as much blood, sweat and tears
(literally) as founder Chris Corner does, tour
after tour (even tonight's
setlist looked like it was written in
his blood - see photo below). I've been repeatedly
blown away by just how powerful they can be live.
Corner regularly changes the IAMX live lineup and
for the current tour some big changes occurred
after Janine Gezang (bass/vocals) and last year's
touring addition Sarah Pray (keyboards/vocals)
both stepped away from the touring cycle.
Gezang's departure in particularly was a
major change, but she did so to concentrate on her
solo material. For the current tour then, they're
down to a lean but no less mean three-piece: Gözde
Düzer (AUX ANIMAUX) joined earlier this year
playing bass and theremin, while Jon Siren
continues to maintain his status as a permanent
live fixture on drums (a role he has held since
2015).
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"We're finally playing fucking Infest!"
Chris Corner yelled to a packed and expectant Infest
crowd. Although he's extremely emotionally invested
in the project, Corner isn't beyond playing a few
pranks on stage to keep things fresh for himself and
those around him. This time, being the only other
musician upfront on stage, it was guitarist Düzer
who was the centre of his attentions. They spent the
whole set needling each other, culminating in a slap
round the backside for Chris pushing his luck too
far!
Photos
[L-R]: IAMX setlist (RD) +
Close Encounters of The Infest Kind (RD)
It was a shame drummer Siren was tucked
in the shadows stage left, but the sheer amount of
energy the three of them put out was relentless
from start to finish. After easing us in with Disciple,
it was from the second song - the anthemic Northstar
- that the tempo picked up and we were
treated to an excellent song selection, going
right back to the debut 2004 album Kiss
+ Swallow, the title track
of which got a heartfelt introduction from Chris
thanking the crowd for years of support.
A mid-set run of absolute belters - I
Come With Knives, The Negative Sex and Nightlife
- is about as glorious a 15 minutes of music
anyone can experience. A slower and heavier than
the studio version of Happiness
closed things out - not necessarily better for the
change of pace, but a fitting way to end the main
set. This was followed by a two-song encore
comprising Spit It Out and No Maker
Made Me wrapping up a set that more than
delivered for an ecstatic audience. The long wait
had been worth it.
Setlist: Disciple, Northstar, The X
ID, Aphrodisiac, Party, Grass, Break The Chain,
I Come With Knives, The Negative Sex, Nightlife,
Exit, Kiss and Swallow, Happiness, Spit It Out,
No Maker Mad Me
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Epilogue
Last year's two days in Manchester was very
much a test run for the festival. Three days this
year felt like it had properly moved in. The
turnaround times of the Friday could do with a
rethink, but as a venue the Academy (part of the
Manchester University campus) does everything
Bradford University used to, and more, and does most
of it better - better PA, better food, better
sightlines, better services. For organisers and
punters alike, I heard no-one mourning the loss of
Bradford, and for 2027 Infest returns to Manchester
back in its traditional Bank Holiday weekend slot on
27th-29th August.
Whatever is lost in nostalgia for a campus
many of us knew the back corridors of blindfolded,
it's impossible to argue Infest is worse off for the
move. Twenty-eight years in, still finding new acts
many in the room hadn't heard before, still capable
of reducing a room full of people dressed head to
toe in black to actual tears over a Blade Runner
sample. That's the job, and it's still being done -
very well indeed. 7/10 (for the
lineup) 8/10 as an event
Review: Rob Dyer with additional thoughts from
Simon @ Disturbing
Photos: (C) Simon @ Disturbing
- all others (RD) by Rob Dyer
Infest 2015
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