This summer marks lucky 13 for Scorched Tundra, the smartly curated metal festival that Alexi Front launched in 2011 in Gothenburg, Sweden, and in 2016 began running in parallel in Chicago, which he considers Gothenburg’s metal-and-beer sister city. Though the pandemic clipped Scorched Tundra’s wings, it returned last year with a spectacular three-day lineup, and Front has kept his hand in the game since. In recent months he’s booked a couple of terrific one-off shows featuring the likes of Oregon cosmic-doom trio Yob and New Orleans sludge legends Eyehategod.
Front organizes Scorched Tundra’s lineups according to his ideas about contrast and blending, which also inform the palate he brings to the craft beers he makes to promote the festival. Scorched Tundra has partnered with various breweries over the years, and for this fest Front is bringing back the Metropolitan Brewing collaboration Humbucker Dortmunder, whose annual seasonal release fell earlier this month.
This year’s lineup is a varied lot. Thursday opens with local progressive-metal heroes Without Waves and spooky chanteuse Nicole Dollanganger, who will bring down the volume but not the intensity. She’s followed by headliners Candy, a five-piece formed in Richmond, Virginia, whose lushly violent 2022 album Heaven Is Here travels a twisty, surprising road through hardcore and progressive metal that takes swooping dives into shoegaze.
Friday features Indiana-based heavy shoegaze and space-rock trio Cloakroom, Ohio duo Osi & the Jupiter, whose neofolk style is the Nordic-Appalachian fusion you never knew you needed until you heard it, and punchy Chicago posthardcore group Luggage (featuring Reader contributor Luca Cimarusti), who drop a new album, Hand Is Bad, on September 29. Saturday is the biggest night, with four bands—fierce Austin trio Portrayal of Guilt, who fuse hardcore, metal, and screamo, headline the show, with support from Swedish stoner-doom power trio Firebreather (the only Swedish band this year) and untamed Olympia punks Gag. The strangest band on the bill plays first: Ak’chamel, a fascinating, trippy Texas act who built up their mysterious reputation with unholy invocations released on cassette.
On their first vinyl release, the March 2020 LP The Totemist, they called themselves Ak’chamel, the Giver of Illness, and on this year’s A Mournful Kingdom of Sand, they’re going by Ak’chamel, the Cheek and Jowl Swollen Lymph Nodes. They describe themselves as “fourth world post-colonial cultural cannibalists,” and their music blends field recordings with influences from the Middle East and Africa. They’ve written music inspired by (and have performed in) a ghost town in the Chihuahuan Desert and an abandoned hot springs bathhouse in California, and they employ occult and gnostic themes to disorient and reorient the listener.
Scorched Tundra XIII day one Candy headline; Nicole Dollanganger and Without Waves open. Thu 8/31, 10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $27, 21+
Scorched Tundra XIII day two Cloakroom headlines; Osi & the Jupiter and Luggage open. Fri 9/1, 10 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $27, 21+
Scorched Tundra XIII day three Portrayal of Guilt headline; Firebreather, Gag, and Ak’chamel open. Sat 9/2, 9 PM, Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western, $22, 21+