It’s the first day of Hammerdown Festival 2025, and in an extremely wet seaside Brighton, fans from all over the UK are gathering for the two-day line-up, which is spread over at Dust & Chalk. With 18 bands on the line-up, we covered the first 8 bands.
We start down at Dust for the first part of today, with a small crowd forming outside due to sound checking taking longer than expected (With a bit of an unimpressed Dust staff member who sat in the clock room and kept telling people to go back outside). Leading festival organiser Harry came to rescue the day and got us all situated out of the lovely Brighton rain and into Sero, whose bassist Richard was wearing one of the most incredible t-shirts of the day with his face on it. Their full-on metal sound captured the crowd with heads nodding and moving, making it a strong opener for today’s festival.
Heading off a few minutes before the end of Sero, we climb the two flights of stairs and take a short walk around the building, up another three flights (something you will hear a lot about today) to Chalk for the opening number of Chvpters. With our first female artist of today’s festival, they had a decent crowd who had not come down to Dust, which gave them a nice crowd to start with. The new band on the block brought in a mixture of different elements to their set, with one song even beginning with a short style poetry read. With some crowd staging for the rest of the set, most people started the long walk downstairs back to Dust.
With the room being a little bit quiet for the start of Cages For Preachers due to the back-to-back sets of Chalk & Dust, the room quickly filled up. Cages For Preachers brought us the grudge style of today’s festival with a mix of metal. They fit the dust stage just nicely, bringing in quite a good mix for today’s festival.
Back to two of the main issues for today, Stairs and having to leave one band’s set early to make it to the start of the next band’s set on time. We make it back to Chalk for a band that I have taken an interest in since I first saw their name, The Hellfire Club. The rock band, which you can see is another one of today’s problems arising, is starting off to a quiet set, many fans still making the walk up from Dust, but that didn’t stop them from putting on a show from the second they started! They are a band that I want to see again; they capture the audience’s interest.
Back down to Karmen Feild, who had quite a strong crowd from the start of their set with their good mix of grunge, metal, both visually and extremely entertaining. With the starberry balloons floating around the stage. Karmen Feild captured their crowd and captured the audience.
Now, at this point in the day, I will admit the stairs had begun to take their toll, as well as a lot of other festival goers had also been caught in earlier rain showers, which had turned to lovely hot weather but being wet, carrying multiple bags around while waiting to check into hotels and local food having up to 30 minutes wait on food, and very little places to sit and relax. We decided to capture our last few bands for On to our last three bands captured for the day: One Last Day, Eulogy, and Land Captain.
After grabbing a quick photo set of both One Last Day and Eulogy, it’s back to Chalk for the Land Captain set. Their rock and Metal style fit perfectly within the four-piece band that can’t stand still for a second. They draw the crowd in, capturing them with such grace. Land Captain won the online votes for their place at Hammerdown Festival this year, and it was an amazing choice by the fans. They had an amazing crowd around them, which made them fun and easy to watch. They are extremely talented, and they will go far!
Overall
Hammerdown Day One was a success. The perfect part about being able to do this feedback is reading already through Hammerdown’s Facebook page, they want this feedback and are a festival willing to grow from it!
Some of the main feedback from fans was;
- Stairs & accessibility to one of the venues.
Although this was something that was marked on the festival question and answer page. Many people didn’t realise how many flights of stairs you would be doing (if you had travelled in). Although Chalk did have a wheelchair ramp, which, if you needed the extra support through the festival, Hammerdown would have sorted you out in a split second. It was tough on the body for sure.
- No wear to store bags
Unfortunately, with the festival being over two venues, you ended up having to carry your bags around for a few hours until you could get to your hotel. Even at that point, you were deciding if you wanted to carry your bag or miss a few bands to go check them at your hotel. Especially with the heavy rain from Saturday.
- Seating
Lack of Areas to sit; I only found out on the Sunday that there was another flight of stairs in Chalk that you could walk up to sit down (if they were free). Although you did have the pub across from the venue, and a few local takeaways to sit in, you were away from the live music and missing bands.
- Stage times
Now, Hammerdown had an extremely well-organised flip time, and not a single stage ran late. However, at times, fans were leaving 5-10 minutes early from the stages before to make it to the start of the next act or bands were starting to half-empty rooms from people moving back to the other venue. Maybe a 15-minute break between bands would have made that walk over a little easier, especially for Food, Drinks and Bathroom breaks.
All this feedback, though, is exactly what has been fed back to Harry and the Hammerdown team already, and the response from them has been on point. Considering I saw roughly 6 main points of feedback on the Facebook page, and that’s also exactly how I felt, shows how perfectly run Hammerdown is!