This year’s festival kicks off with what for me is one of those classic impossible choices – Bruit≤ opening The Engine Room (and the Pelagic Presents showcase) with the addition of a brass section to bolster their blissful post-rock will be a fantastic way to start a long weekend. However, opening the main stage at the 013 is the long-awaited collaboration between Vile Creature and Bismuth performing their commissioned piece A Hymn of Loss and Hope. I was lucky enough to see these bands lay waste to a tiny room on their tour together back in 2018, and the thought of a proper artistic collaboration between them, scaled-up to the glory of the Main Stage gives me goosebumps of doom. I don’t know what they have composed but prepare for intelligent and emotive overwhelming heaviness.

While many will no doubt still be deeply immersed in this morass, another Pelagic band – Year Of No Light – will be filling The Terminal with their cryptic post-metal, which borrows from both the blackened and sludge ends of the spectrum. Thursday also brings the first of three sets from artists in residence SLIFT, this one focusing on their excellent 2020 album Ummon. Expect hooky and well-crafted songs, electrifying energy, and a galaxy-full of SPACE! They return to the stage on Friday and Saturday for a set of previously unheard material, and another with synth/saxophone player Etienne Jaumet. Having seen these guys play live not so long ago I can definitely recommend dropping in on at least one of these, if not all three!

And from Ummon to Drommon – Smote bring the album of that name to the Next Stage towards the end of Thursday. In reviewing this for The Sleeping Shaman, I was drawn into the strange soundworld it inhabits, and I would expect this to be a highly immersive experience.

Friday isn’t messing about – alongside the perhaps more cerebral and exploratory performances planned at the Paradox is a selection of bands that will simply crush. This year’s theme of ‘redefining heaviness’ clearly does not mean overlooking music that would more readily be identified as heavy, although there is great range and variation within this broad descriptor. Case in point – those brave and organised enough to get themselves to The Engine Room for 1pm (broodje kaas recommended in advance) will be treated to LLNN performing their most recent album Unmaker. This record stood out to me last year for its merciless assault, bringing abrasive synth to augment the oppressive sound.

If you are not yet fully flattened there is Primitive Man to follow. I was lucky enough to interview Ethan from the band for Weirdo Canyon Dispatch last year and he wrote then of the uncompromising heaviness and harshness that are at the centre of their approach. I’ve yet to see Primitive Man live, but a friend recently described the experience as ‘like all the air was sucked out of the room’. More clearly politically engaged lyrically are Svalbard – if you like your intelligent heaviness building more from a hardcore/metalcore grounding then stop by The Engine Room to catch my fellow-Bristolians.

It takes an event like Roadburn for the day not to be about one thing only – Warhorse. If you like doom, then you probably don’t need telling to set your autopilot to get you to their set. If you somehow don’t already know them, then expect rolling tar-thick grooves, ominous rumblings and the joy of lysergic communion. It’s a long time since I saw them play live, and it seemed very much as though the chance to do so again was a vain hope. I can only assume they are still four-metre-tall wizard warlords.

It also takes an event like Roadburn to make room both for the return of veterans of Warhorse’s ilk, and also original commissioned compositions such as The Cartographer which Jo Quail was due to bring to the festival in 2020. Jo is a composer and cellist who works in a somewhat unique space between various traditions, using instruments and accompanying technology in novel ways to produce emotive and cinematic music. This will be a highlight of Saturday no doubt, and indeed of the festival as a whole.

Elsewhere on Saturday things will be decidedly psychedelic, of course in a variety of ways! Whether in the form of Kanaan fuzzing-out in the Hall of Fame, Radar Men From The Moon playing an all-electronic set in The Engine Room or Kungens Män jamming late into the night, there will be something to tickle the synapses of the most burned-out of psychonauts. Among all this is furthermore a chance to spend some time with The Holy Family in what is bound to be a mind-expanding experience. Indeed, in trying to review their self-titled album for The Sleeping Shaman, the only way I could get my head round it was to turn it all the way inside-out.

Sunday for me looks to bring a bit more space to venture out into unknown territory and perhaps discover some treasures, perhaps with City Composer of Tilburg, Mathijs Leeuwis in the Paradox – Het Concreet are set to bring percussion, voice and tape loops to their commissioned piece. Or indeed the ‘ominous ritualism’ of Ural Umbo later in the day. And of course, anyone still standing should find their way to the Main Stage for Radar Men From The Moon x Twin Sister closing the weekend in a burst of righteous power.