We sent our music journalist Ryan Spearman and photographer Emily Humphries to cover their first festival for us. Where better to send them than along to UK TMF 2012 (UK Tech Metal Fest- a new festival breaking through) to see what the fuss was all about. As our issue featuring the festival, Ryan’s reviews and Emily’s pics won’t be out until the Autumn we asked him to write us a little blog about what they got up to. Here’s what he had to say, enjoy! (Editor’s Note– Becky)
RYAN’S PERSONAL TECH FEST BLOG
So I’m back, and boy do I have a story to tell!!!
UKTMF was held in a community centre, right in the middle of Jane Austin country and after circling the centre Alton a few times with my ‘’road wife’’ Kris, we finally found it and I for one wasn’t expecting what awaited me. In amongst a venue primarily held for coffee mornings and play groups was a festival celebrating the fast rising Djent movement, which is slowly starting to dominate the UK Metal scene. Featuring UK acts such as Chimp Spanner and Monuments, as well as bands from Europe, such as The Algorithm and Uneven Structure from France, Textures from the Netherlands, Modern Day Babylon from The Czech Republic, Disperse from Poland and Destiny Potato, who were coming all the way from Serbia.
Upon my arrival I was shown my lodgings for the night (the rather 5 star rated underside of a merch table!) and introduced to the early arrivals, already there were the festivals organisers, some media, the band Orion and the lovely lads from Nexilva. But for this night shyness reigned supreme, as I’m not a huge fan of being thrown in at the deep end of social situations people’s perception of me may have been one of arrogance, for that I apologise, truly wasn’t my intention. But one thing that stood out for me of that night was the constant ramblings of one Ricky Lee Roper and his inability to comprehend that his pillow had gone missing, I was later informed that he never did find it.
So Friday happened, and the surreal experiences happened as bands started arriving, bands that have had a massive impact on my current music tastes over the past couple of years, but being the professional that I am such feelings had to be pushed aside for the task at hand. Admittedly there were a couple moments where said feelings would resurface, but we’ll come to those at a later time. The first band Trajectory opened the proceedings, filling in for Devastating Enemy who had pulled out earlier in the week. Things didn’t go quite as planned for them as they would have liked, as sound problems, a dominating theme for bands over the weekend, plagued them. Which was a shame as this is a band I actually quite liked. But at this point I was introduced to the lovely Emily Humphries, my photographer for the event, my apologies to her boyfriend Maks for stealing her for the weekend, although he did seem cool with it so no hard feelings there!
After those initial teething problems however, the festival started coming into its own. The band 
Virtues were next and boy did they deliver, as well as the next band Chronographs, both with contrasting styles, yet both dominated the stage with their presence, shame the crowd didn’t feel the same way. Interview time! Now this was all well and good…got to interview the likes of Hacktivist and No Consequence, a special mention has to go to Colin, drummer for the latter, as this was by far the funniest interview of the weekend and veered of to being a long amount of time of comparing Japanese Horror movie anecdotes and such, well played sir. But one moment stood out more for me personally interviewise, and that was chatting to Paul Ortiz, mastermind behind Chimp Spanner. Here’s a band that has grown to be one of my favourites over the past couple of years, and I couldn’t resist going to get a photo with him. Silly I know, but he actually turned out to be such a nice guy and a true gentleman.
After interviews were over, I got to bare witness to a band who you know are on the cusp of something huge, anyone else there can vouch for this, and the bands name? Hacktivist, this band is a cross between rap, grime and djent, and oh god does it work. I expected something special hearing them, but live was a whole new matter, regardless to say I was straight in the pit, now how’s that for hands on journalism? It’s a shame Visions had to follow that because, as good as they were, I think everyone was still on a Hacktivist high. The band Aliases deserve a lot of credit for what they did next, especially the guitarists Leah and Pin, because of the unfortunate circumstances of being without a bassist and a drummer they preceded with a guitar master class. With vocalist Jay joining a few songs into the set, the band found a new confidence and with the machine that is Boris De Gal joining for the final song, the 
place was destroyed. Chimp Spanner was the headliner, and being one of my favourite bands, they did not disappoint, but it took a while to get going. To begin with, you got a sense of “OK, so they sound like they do on their records’’, but as a band, Paul Ortiz in particular, have that ability to step it up a gear when needed, and I for one am glad they did, great way to end the first day, but that night, worse was to come….
So the first nights drinking began to get out of hand, as for some of the bands this was a reunion of sorts, but then a very bizarre moment happened, whilst finishing up my notes for the day I look up to notice both Pin and Paul Ortiz in the press room, which for some reason was party central for the night!! Then who should walk into the room but Remi from The Algorithm, very drunk I might add and with a hat fashioned from a dominos box, it was one of many moments like that during the weekend where you think to yourself “ So here I am, a guy from a small ass town on the outskirts of rural Devon and here I am doing shit like this?!’’ Bizarre times that I can’t, to this day, get my head around as here are these musicians who have had a big impact to me personally, especially Pin, whose music I’ve been a huge fan of since his days in SikTh. And Remi for that matter, The Algorithm single handily changed my perception of electronic music, anyway, enough of the soppy fan stuff, on with the blog, must uphold some sort of dignity here….
As people awoke for Saturday, some with cocks drawn on faces, other wearing make up (thanks to some mischievous people who shall remain nameless!) the chaos of the previous night became apparent. Especially as those of us in the press room were hurried out to make way for a coffee morning at 9 in the morning and were told to tidy our destruction, but after 10 minutes and thanks to a team effort it was unnoticeable. So coffee morning proceeds (and take up the press room until two I might add!) but I digress, gave us plenty of time to fill up on fried pork product and sugary caffeine filled soft drinks, but no sign of a shower.
So Saturday began with Subversion, nice solid way to start the day, but what followed was something truly amazing, The Nocturnal 
Chaos…mainly because their drummer Hugo is only 15 and it was their first ever gig, but veering away from that fact, here’s a band which are a cross between God Is An Astronaut and Meshuggah, one to defiantly check out. Unfortunately in some ways however, the rest of the day for me was dominated by interviews, more namely from the boys from The Algorithm (Must note, this was the second and final of my crazy fan moments), Uneven Structure and Textures, who would in turn go on the own the stage later that day, not to take anything away from Cold Night For Alligators, Xerath or David Maxim Micic’s solo set, as these were all great in their own way. But the 3 headliners were epic on monumental proportions.
First you have The Algorithm, the bastard son of Dillinger Escape Plan, Aphex Twin and Daft Punk, and I’m not ashamed to admit to say that I was pulling some rather aggressive shapes down front, and was so glad to actually see what Remi does live with his magic desk filled with knobs and bright lights that I would never come close to understanding. I feel if you didn’t see this however, then the set probably would not have had as big of an impact as it did. The transformation of real life Remi and stage Remi couldn’t be anymore different. Off stage you have this shy, quiet and rather polite unassuming kind of guy, yet on stage, he is an animal, never staying still for one moment. The icing on the cake was Mike Malyan from Monuments on drums, this give the feel a whole new dynamic. Just when you thought no one could top that performance, on step Uneven Structure and kick straight in with ‘Awaken’ cue Goosebumps. That pretty set the tone, as they ripped through ‘Februus’ on stage. And finally, the headlining band Textures owned it, its no small feat to sound like you’re playing to thousands whilst in a room meant for a few hundred, needless to say the final 3 acts blew my mind. Apparently there was an after party, thanks to the services of one Remi Gallego, unfortunately I can’t remember a lot of this, I do remember trying to slam dance to Dillinger Escape Plan, but that’s what gin does to a man, he forgets things!
Finally, Sunday, felt quite fresh all things considered, although did have a feeling that sleep deprivation and a diet solely consisting of chips was slowly catching up to me, but being the ‘professional’ that I am, I soldiered on and fortunately this was a day not dominated by interviews. I only missed 1 band, it was Disperse, and by the sounds of it I missed out on something quite special. I did however catch the opening act, The Colour Line, this was a great wake up call, a little ball of energy that was like a shot of adrenalin to the face. It was a very high octane performance, much akin to early Norma Jean. Another good thing about this day was bearing witness to the vocal talent of Meyrick De La Fuente, doing not one but two shows back to back, more notably with Broken Torment. He was still hitting high notes and ferocious guttural roars, I was very taken aback by it, but Broken Torment as well were a band that I fully wasn’t expecting to be as good as they were. I had heard a few tracks on youtube and thought “meh’’ but after seeing them live and with a new vocalist, all mediocrity had disappeared and what you have is a solid band who can defiantly step to the next level in the Djent scene.
Shattered Skies were a band that people kept raving about, and I can see why. This deftonesesque band was a placed perfectly on the bill, as the melody was a nice break from all the shouting and loud noises thus far. But the best was to come, I mean yeah Modern Day 
Babylon were good, despite a few mistakes here and there, and yes Destiny Potato were too really good, despite a few technical hitches. But the day defiantly belonged to Red Seas Fire and Monuments. First you have Red Seas Fire, who are fast becoming the darlings of the UK scene, and this was especially emotional as this was Nolly’s final performance before joining Periphery full time. They came, they played, they conquered, a fitting send off one would say. Next you had Monuments, late getting started and a cut set time, but that didn’t matter as they destroyed everything in their path, leading some to say, myself included, that they should have headlined. This was another of those “hands on journalism” moments, as yet again, I found myself in the swirling maelstrom of bodies…and it must be noted that I do apologise to a Jen Heath, as a clash of heads left her with quite a shiner! Being the gentleman that I am, I dearly apologise, sorry. Karma would bite back however as a flailing elbow caught yours truly square in the jaw, which is still painful to this day. Headlining the event was Sylosis, somewhat of an anti climax I felt as half the crowd left, and try as they might the atmosphere wasn’t right for a band that, given the right environment, can dominate on stage. Alas, this was falling on deaf ears, and raised the point of why people had raised eyebrows when they were announced to replace Tesseract.
Straight after the festivities we set off back to the west of the country, leaving behind a weekend full of great music, great people and great memories. Massive thanks has to go to Simon Garrod for putting on the event and here’s hoping that UKTMF 2013 is bigger, better and downright even more fun than this year. The Bite Magazine will definitely be there!
Keep up to date with UKTMF 2013 here… https://www.facebook.com/pages/UK-Tech-Metal-Fest/238162749561208
Words by Ryan Lee Spearman
Photos by Emily Humphries
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