A Colossal Weekend is a boutique festival located in the center of Copenhagen, catering for genre pushing, experimental music within the realm of ‘heavy’.

Every year the festival presents an extensive lineup consisting of well-established acts as well as never-before-heard constellations and newcomers on the scene.

The festival takes place from May 16-18 2024 at VEGA and surrounding venues at Vesterbro, Copenhagen. The partout ticket is sold-out. One-day tickets are still available.

The line-up for Saturday is:

ATTAN (NO)
Everything touched by this music takes the shape, color, and taste of tar. The Norwegian doom day’s orchestra does not leave you much space to breathe when they let their … industrial hardcore mutate into an unspeakable beast from the undergrounds. The bands speaks about their music in terms of the sound of a folk sucking the marrow out of its own legs. In the song “Black Liquid Marrow”, they sing self-critically: “it is our wealth that defines us, black liquid marrow in our bones”.

Afsky (DK) - Artist in Redicence
Entrenched in melancholy, hit by a storm, drowned in sorrow, driven by wildness. In his musical work, Ole Luk investigates the dark layers of being and destiny. Afsky is black metal carrying the weight of doom metal and where darkness feels as dense as ever – perhaps because of the glimpses of light that the occasional folkish melody deals in. Afsky is the sound of the black, dung dirty dog paying a visit.

Alpha Du Centaure (FR) is a post-rock/blackgaze quartet from Lyon, France. What began as a completely instrumental project has now become a stormy, atmospheric powerhouse, with the virtues of post-rock still intact, and the rush and energy of melodic black metal as an underlying strength. France has always delivered when it comes to acts within these genres and Alpha Du Centaure will not disappoint.

BIG│BRAVE (CAN) The Canadian indie metal trio brandish aching sparseness and density like weapons, cast tense atmospheres in languid tempos, mutating into eruptions of tempests. Their distortion is like a monster collapsing beneath its own weight. Their latest album, nature morte (2023), a reference to the art world’s stilleben, celebrates the beauty of decay. Robin Wattie’s voice is commanding and vulnerable, her gasps cut their way through the tidal sonic textures. The songs deal with hope and the consequences of trauma, often centering on the subjugation of femininity in all its pluralities. It is crushing and alarming. It is common and basic”.

Cloakroom (US) Their music is slowcore space rock made on a bumpy road with a Midwestern charm. This produces catchy song writing and makes some listeners partake in the music’s cathartic powers. On their latest album, Dissolution Wave (2022), they play with the concept from theoretical physics of a wave that dissolves all humanity’s existing art and abstract thought. New songs, then, will help the world keep spinning and redefine human imagination. Cloakroom presents their own take on the new musical cosmology.

Deerhoof (US) Since 1994, Deerhoof from San Francisco has been challenging their DIY comfort zone with discomfortingly new things, resulting in a sound that is both beautiful and insane. Their latest album, Miracle - Level (2023), comes with lyrics entirely in Japanese, and is conceptualized as a mystical manifesto on creativity and trust to answer the industries of deceptions, coercion and boredom. It is an avant - garde, anti - fascist carnival lit by candlelight for the miracles of the future.

Extra Life (US) presents an eclectic blend of math- and avant-rock with influences from chamber and medieval music. Led by singer, guitarist and composer Charlie Looker – an institution in the New York art-rock scene with a background in bands suxh as Zs and Dirty Projectors, Extra Life showcases a high level of musical wanderlust and virtuosity. The band released a series of important works from 2008 to 2012 and finally returned with Secular Works Vol 2 last year. Their distinct and unique approach to experimental music has always intrigued us here at ACW and we’re honored to be able to present Extra Life at A Colossal Weekend 2024.

Halvcirkel (DK) – Artist in residence + immersive concert
A string ensemble from the experimental chamber musical scene is visiting A Colossal Weekend. They have played music composed by themselves, Caroline Shaw and Philip Glass. Does it ring any bells? No worries, it may be worth checking out in detail what it means, when Halvcirkel states that their music expresses the emotional universe of our time. For example, they have released an acoustic version of the world’s most beautiful song, Carl Nielsen’s “Tit er jeg glad” (I am often happy), which will make you hold your breath and reflect on your encounters with people around you.

Kairon; IRSE! (FI)
A band of four inner-space travelers from Seinäjoki, Western Finland. Allegedly, their self-released debut album Ujubasajuba (2014) knocked the planet off its orbit, which established their place in the canon of Finnish genre-bending freakout fusion. The neo-psychedelic rock band has a unique blend of noisy pop, shoegaze and psych rock, and are likely to bend your mind as well with their bold and energetic live performance.

Lite (JP) Lite sings of places of wonder, where we dance with ghosts in the night, leave the past behind like soaring birds, where we find ourselves, and are reminded that we are small, yet part of something infinitely tall. Their compositions are progressive and exp losive, finely shaped and emotional, the riffs and rhythms so complex that they become post - math - rock - poetry themselves.

Offermose (DK) – Immersive concert
A lone shadow walks to the end of the world looking for ancient hymns and finds nothing but swirling dust, hears nothing but spectral voices whisper fragments of mysteries long forgotten. The electronic-musical darkness of Offermose invites immersion and can be heard as a meditation on how our broken hearts may carry what we have lost.

SCIMITAR is a brand new project consisting of members from SLÆGT and Shaam A of Shaam Larein. The band played a mind blowing debut concert last month and are confident that this project has a bright future of glorious gloom. 70’s, progressive and psychedelic heavy equilibrism. Keep an eye out for this band and don’t miss them when they hit the stage Saturday evening.

Spurv (NO) from Norway recently released Brefjære on Pelagic Records and the album has instantly become post-rock classic and a serious contender to ‘record of the. Cinematic post-rock, delivered with energy and passion and the exact amount of fresh attitude which makes them stand of from the rest. You easily hear the inspiration from the pioneers, but their take on the genre is both refreshing and modern. Spurv currently resides comfortably at Nordic post-rock throne.

Sugar Horse (UK) are riding high following the release of their storied collaborative EP Waterloo Teeth, which features members of Heriot, Conjurer, IDLES, Biffy Clyro, and many more. A lot of people take the name Sugar Horse to be a drug reference - perhaps fitting for a band that sound like the last moments of a three-day binge. Darting wildly between dark/light, pain/bliss, sacred/profane, Sugar Horse are unpredictable and unrestrained.

Find more information at https://www.acolossalweekend.dk/

Supported by:

The concert is supported by Liveurope: the first pan-European initiative supporting concert venues in their efforts to promote emerging European artists.  Liveurope is co-funded by the Creative Europe programme of the European Union and supported by the Nordic Culture Fund.