Core Festival, Glasgow review: 'a three-day weekend packed with face-smashing alternative metal'

Bringing the UKs burgeoning metal scene right into the heart of Scotland, Core saw its main stage may moved just a few hundred yards this year, from the Maryhill Community Centre to the Woodside Halls. However, with Scottish rock royalty in the shape of Simon Neil from Biffy Clyro headlining with side project Empire State Bastard, Core had upped its ante in 2024.

I had spent the previous day seeing theatre shows at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, so arriving in the mid-afternoon on the Sunday of the festival to be confronted by American post-hardcore icons The Fall Of Troy (****) was definitely a case of “now for something a little different”. And we like that.

The band is fronted by one of the most talented guitar players on the planet in Thomas Erak, and the Seattle native is responsible for me putting my XboX controller through my TV screen in my early 20s, when his riff from FCPREMIX became so difficult to complete it forced a “rage quit” of epic proportions. A song he wrote aged just 16, quite how he plays it all live without missing a note is anyone’s guess. A supreme guitar talent, it has been too long since The Fall of Troy were in Scotland and the baying crowd were treated to a smart selection of new and old songs from their back catalogue.

Then it was time for the main course - Empire State Bastard (****). A super group if you will, Simon Neil wrote debut album Rivers of Heresy alongside long-time friend Oceansize’s Mike Vennart, with Slayer’s Dave Lombardo and Naomi Macleod of Bitch Falcon joining on drums and bass respectively. Volatile and confrontational, the band are quite the departure from what we may have heard previously from the duo of Neil and Vennart, but they are no less exciting live.

Prowling the stage topless and screeching, like a moustached Sweeney Todd, Neil is still every inch the fearless showman he was during his early days in Biffy Clyro. Sure, the Kilmarnock rock god can now headline the world’s biggest music festivals, write UK number one albums and comfortably sell out the Hydro, but this is where his empire was built: playing jaggy guitar lines and releasing blood curdling screams into a battered mic, with the walls dripping in the sweat of his audience. This is a live show that thrives on sheer energy, not pyrotechnics - and the collective know exactly how to do it.

Truth be told, as good as they are ESB won’t hit the Hydro anytime soon, nor will they attract 12,000 capacity crowds. But who the hell would want that, when Neil and his band mates are having as much fun as this?