SOMERGLOOM FESTIVAL – CELEBRATING TODAY’S HEAVY MUSIC

By Rick Fleck

The recent death of Ozzy Osbourne was a huge blow to the heavy metal community. Talk of his immeasurable influence has been focused on mainstream metal bands that he, along with Black Sabbath, helped inspire. The all-star concert Back to the Beginning featured well-known acts like Guns N’ Roses and Metallica. But the Ozzy-years of Black Sabbath also had a massive influence on the more experimental, genre-defying, boundary pushing world of extreme music. That influence was unmistakable at the Somergloom Festival, held August 7–9, 2025. Now in its fifth year, Somergloom has become a must-see annual event for fans of the diverse and often hard-to-define extreme music scene.

“Unencumbered by genre, Somergloom showcases and celebrates the richness of today’s heavy music scene, centered around music that is introspective, creatively ambitious, evoking a melancholic quality that we like to call ‘gloom.’” (Somergloom)

Based in Somerville, MA, the festival began Thursday night at Deep Cuts in Medford, MA. Friday and Saturday’s shows were held at the Crystal Ballroom in Somerville.

Night 1: Kicking off the fifth year of Somergloom was Main Era, a post-rock/noise rock/shoegaze band from Boston. They opened with a sound reminiscent of doom/drone legends Bell Witch, setting a heavy, crushing tone. Vocals shifted between clean and harsh styles, complementing the band’s multi-layered arrangements. At times, Main Era even flirted with mainstream metal, but their sound was far more oppressive. Intricate, King Crimson–like rhythms introduced a progressive edge, while loose, jazz-influenced timings gave the music added complexity. Brief sound clips were used sparingly but with purpose, adding color without disrupting the flow of the music.

Photos Rick Fleck

Next up was Lesotho, an instrumental post-rock/post-metal band also hailing from Boston. Their set featured soaring, dynamic compositions in the vein of Pelican. It culminated in their soon-to-be-released atmospheric black metal masterpiece, “A Flashing on Plain Glass,” which evoked the groundbreaking sensibilities of Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

GUHTS made the four hour trip from New York City, bringing their unique mix of post‑metal/atmospheric sludge. The band’s bass-heavy music featured vocalist Amber Gardner, who deftly alternated between clean singing and screams. Overall, their performance carried a raw, punk attitude that Gardner brought to life with her energetic stage performance.

Back to Boston-based bands, Slow Quit closed out an incredible first night with their “heavy knuckle-dragger gaze.” Featuring drummer and lead vocalist Lauren Crosser, the band evoked the dreamlike sound of early alternative acts like The Cure, fused with a more extreme sounding raw intensity.

Deep Cuts proved to be an excellent choice for launching this year’s Somergloom. The live music space offers excellent sightlines and sound. The venue serves its own craft beer, features great food, houses a small record store, and has two rows of vintage pinball machines. Since opening in 2022, Deep Cuts has become one of the Greater Boston area’s go-to, midsize venues.

Night 2: Tears From a Grieving Heart, a funeral doom/sludge band from Boston, began their set low, slow and with plenty of doom. Keyboardist and vocalist Michaele Bocchino employed her impressive deep growling vocals, sounding as if they arose from the very depths of her soul. Bass player Haylz McCarthy owned the stage. Their over-the-top performance was pure entertainment. TFAGH’s last song was in various movements, including a blackened section with shrieking vocals.

Vudu Sister are a gothic folk/witch rock/grunge trio from Providence, RI. They are guitarist and vocalist Keith J.G. McCurdy, and classically trained violinist and cellist Diane O’Connor and Isabel Castellvi, respectively. McCurdy possesses a beautiful and arresting voice that defies standard gender conventions. The song “Poor Beast” is a very personal number about a stay in a psychiatric hospital. McCurdy sang it with great depth of emotion. The band sounded at times like a macabre, stripped-down, acoustic Led Zeppelin, with an added sense of melancholy.

Photos Rick Fleck

Making the journey south from the heavy metal hotbed that is Portland, Me., Lepra are a black metal/folk metal/synth punk band. With keyboard, bass and drums, like Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Lepra eschews the guitar and its presence is hardly missed. Keyboardist Kate produces vintage sounds like an Italian horror movie soundtrack from the 1970s. She provided clean vocals while bass player Sarah Ruggiero sang the rough ones. Together, the high-powered trio created a full, complex, dynamic sound that was a perfect fit for Somergloom.

The Keening is the solo project of Salt Lake City’s Rebecca Vernon, formerly the lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter for doom-metal band SubRosa. Performing her American Gothic/dark folk compositions, Vernon held the Crystal Ballroom in stunned silence. Everyone stopped what they were doing, all eyes and ears fixed on the stage. Members of other bands stood on folding chairs at their merch tables to watch. A remarkable guitarist with a profoundly moving voice, Vernon closed her set with a new single, “Hell is a Mirror,” an invigorating protest song in the truest sense of the word. Her performance was nothing short of a revelation.

I first saw Body Void at the inaugural Somergloom in 2021, held outdoors in the parking lot at Boynton Yards in Somerville. From the first bone-rattling note I was transfixed. Vermont based, Body Void is one of the heaviest bands I’ve ever seen. Their music is pummeling – like getting endlessly punched in the chest. They are a sludge/noise/doom band that has recently begun incorporating electronics, synths and samples without losing any of their trademark, brutal sound. Guitarist, synth player, and vocalist Willow Ryan’s vocals are an ear shattering, high pitched scream communicating anger, frustration, and dissidence. Body Void delivers a violently loud, all-encompassing, and cathartic experience.

Night 3: Chainlacing is a gloomgaze/lo-fi band from New Hampshire. Lauren Crosser, one half of the founding duo alongside Rick Martel, is a captivating singer, guitarist, and frontperson. The goth elements and melancholy feel, brings to mind a female fronted version of The Smiths. Playing their brand of heavy atmospheric synth-pop, their show was the entire package of sight, sound and élan. The retro new wave-style keyboard played an integral part of the band’s sound. Chainlacing were one of the more accessible-sounding bands of the festival—and that’s meant as a compliment.

A Monolithic Dome is a doom/punk band from Providence, RI. Unbelievable. Insane. Pure chaos and noise at its finest. The band is the bastard child of Pretties for You era Alice Cooper and 1992-1993 Mayhem. This was extreme art at its most challenging. Guitarist and vocalist Alice is a rock star in the making. Part Johnny Rotten and part Alice Cooper, Alice twisted their face into grimaces, grins, and expressions of pathos. They waved their arms, contorted their body, and collapsed onto the stage in emotional exhaustion—all while playing with unbridled intensity.

Cowardice is a punk-influenced band whose ethos of “sonic despair” made them a natural fit for Somergloom. They traveled all the way from Tacoma, WA, to entertain an East Coast crowd that completely embraced them. Cowardice were the most straightforward rock ‘n’ roll band of the festival, delivering music that would be at home at a metal show, a grungy rock club, or even a shit-kicking dive bar.

From sunny San Juan, Puerto Rico, MOTHS are a progressive metal band led by singer Mariel Viruet, who utilized both clean and growling vocals. Taking us on a journey into the darker side of progressive metal, harkening back to early Opeth albums like Blackwater Park, MOTHS are very entertaining and very polished. They put on an extremely professional show from a band that clearly spends a lot of time touring and honing their craft.

Originating in Kathmandu, Nepal, Chepang is a grindcore band now based in New York City. They proudly call their sound “immigrindcore.” Chepang incorporates elements of thrash to their sound, which helped them create the largest mosh pit of Somergloom. Lead singer Sanket “Bhotey Gore” Lama began the show in the audience and stayed there the whole time. He was the eye of the hurricane, jumping around like a madman while in the center of a swirling circle of moshing madness. Chepang’s set was an absolutely frenetic, over-the-top, ferocious set.

Coming from Boston, Morne is a doom metal/crust/atmospheric metal beast. With heavy, thick, crunching guitars, Morne brought to mind Metallica’s epic first three albums, although with rough, shouted vocals. The songs were carefully crafted with long instrumental passages that had a hypnotizing effect, setting the mind free to wander and explore its darkest recesses.

SUMAC is an American-Canadian post-metal supergroup rooted in sludge, doom, and experimental metal. The trio boasts prestigious pedigrees: vocalist and guitarist Aaron Turner (Isis, Old Man Gloom), drummer Nick Yacyshyn (Baptists), and bassist Brian Cook (Russian Circles, Botch, These Arms Are Snakes). SUMAC was the band that many came to see and waited patiently for. Their music is big, broad-shouldered metal, but it’s not all flat-out pedal to the metal. There were economically used growling vocals that boarded on shouting. The crowd was starry eyed and reverent. Even as the final act of a seven-band lineup, no one left early. The ballroom remained packed.

Somergloom created a touching tribute to the late Ozzy Osbourne with a small shrine featuring photos, candles, flowers and other mementos. Sticky notes were available for attendees to write their thoughts and add to the display. The shrine drew a lot of attention and was deeply appreciated, offering a way for people to express their grief.

Somergloom is as much a cultural institution as it is a music festival. Fans talked about its importance not just as a place to hear music that is overlooked by more mainstream audiences, but as a place to gather with like minded souls. Each year, Somergloom grows in popularity, drawing fans from farther away as word spreads throughout the extreme music scene. Somergloom has become a beloved annual touchstone for an affinity group that, unfortunately, has few other places to gather.