If Friday had been centred heavily upon the good old-fashion riff, then Saturday very much favours a focus on atmosphere, finding stylish ways to portray a dystopian present and future, or personal turmoil, not heard so prominently since Y2K panic.
“Nu-grunge” band Overgrown kicked off the day, unusually do this with persistent smiles, performing a slightly gloomier and bass heavy nu-metal revival set, that might not have sounded out of place on The Matrix soundtrack. They clearly impress the crowd within a few minutes. Frontman Callum Tee Morsche thanks everybody for arriving early, and laughs when thanked back by fans for making the long trip from Berwick-upon-Tweed (the northernmost town in England) to the south coast. Introducing new song Give Up as “probably the heaviest song we’ve got”, bassist Will Taylor acknowledged that “it’s a bit early for a mosh pit, but a bit of head nodding will do us”. They get just that, and would likely have got more later in the day.
It is just 2PM, and as Artio arrive on the main stage, the audience is already bigger than it had been for most of Friday. Vocalist Rae Brazill has remorselessly decided that now is time for everybody to get far angrier. Focused upon contemporary culture looking into a dark future, damaged by past generations, Artio define their mood pretty clearly when opening a song entitled Head In The Sand, Finger Of The Trigger with a scream of “what in the post-apocalyptic fucked up shit is this?”. Still, Brazill looks ecstatic to introduce Patty Walters and Benjamin Biss of As It Is onto the stage to sing recent collaboration Full On Fight For Fun.
Making their third visit to the festival, to perform for their “Takedown family” as vocalist/bassist Cait Bowyer lovingly calls the crowd, pop-punks Slackrr’s mood is more consistently optimistic. In fact, it is bright and summery enough that vocalist/guitarist Scotty Perry is wearing sunglasses indoors. Neither singer can go a single song without switching microphones, cheerily darting across the stage and switching places. It is to be expected when performing songs like Better Days, which Perry describes as “a song about overcoming your darkest hour”. This is likely the case for most of them.
The aesthetic is all-change once again when gothic rock duo Zetra appear, who with black and white corpse paint, and a backdrop of rippling water, appear to have developed an allergy to colour. Although their bass hum doom introduction, and physical imagery was ominous to begin with, there is something much calmer about their performance itself. The electronic beats, Jordan Page’s synthesiser, and the duo’s breathy and clean vocals have an unusually cold presence, both against Adam Saunderson’s guitar, and within today’s line-up as a whole.
Within their thirty-minutes onstage, even without a stage show and masks (more on that later), Lastelle’s post-hardcore performance and presence feels like the biggest of the day, and it is of no surprise that they were invited back after just one year, moved to the main stage, allegedly due to popular demand. The packed out main hall definitely believed it, and likely wouldn’t be surprised if the same claim were made in a couple of years when they perform much higher up the bill. This is the festival that squeezed Sleep Token onto its bill just three years ago, and this year were bold enough to book a band with just one EP as a headliner.
Could Takedown have the audacity to claim Lastelle as their next big discovery? I think so. Every chorus of the set sounds like a booming finale, as vocalist Adam Rigozzi screams, high kicks and beats his chest. The unique appearance of trumpet by multi-instrumentalist Fred Whatmore in songs such as Pine and Bitter Roots, brings an illusion of a production far larger with more personality. Before finishing their set with Breath Me In, Adam Rigozzi signs off as though it is still their first visit – “some of you might not know who we are”. They do now, and there was a very long queue to meet them at the merch hall.
Another act aiming for big sound, and very much succeeding, are Vower. Expect no less of a progressive post-rock supergroup of sorts, featuring former members of Palm Reader (vocalist Josh McKeown) and Black Peaks (guitarist Joe Gosney, and drummer Liam Kearley). The spooky feedback and jagged math beats are still there for anyone who wants to hear their next chapter, and there are many here. Even Gosney is taken aback by the scale of the response when he asks who saw him with his last band, and he felt sure that more people cheered than had even been at the festival before – “it doesn’t make sense!”.
Noisy post-punk trio MOULD, on the surface, sound like substantially less organised chaos. The dual shouting vocals of Joe Sherrin and Kane Eagle clash with one another, over the top of very unpredictable skilled rhythm changes by drummer James Buxton, shows just how much they revel in their shambolic but deceptively deliberate sound.
So, onto the masked electronic-tinged metalcore headliners PRESIDENT. Let’s get it out of the way. There is no way that it is not Charlie Simpson of Busted and Fightstar fame. There is even a singalong of Year 3000 in the crowd before the encore.
As of yet, the character has not offered much. Regardless of who is behind the mask, there does not seem like much reasoning behind the waxwork-like character. As of yet, it is as empty as a political reference can be. Without context, it looks as though they are riding on the coattails of the coolness of complaining about politics, but have not got any further than calling their band PRESIDENT.
They have a blank canvas waiting to be a much more intriguing and complex project. The true mystery today is what the band could bring to the table for their first festival headlining set, kicking off their new tour. It could be so much more. What about their forty-seventh performance could make an ecstatic audience brag forevermore that “I was there when on the day that PRESIDENT…”?
Now that it is here, very little has changed about the show since the act’s debut performance at Download Festival 2025. There are more lights, there is a big glowing logo, and branded balaclavas at the merch stand. The performance is just forty-minutes long, with ten-minutes of it taken up by pre-recorded monologues (an atmospheric reading of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, used to introduce the debut performance of their new song Mercy, is longer that the song itself), and time spent offstage while waiting for their encore. There is also still a reliance on a cover song to pad it out, though it is a good one – Deftones’ Change (in the House of Flies).
Nobody seems remotely disappointed though, and the atmosphere is electric, although the audience is more still than they had been for the last couple of main stage acts. As opposed to throwing themselves around, nobody wants to miss a second. They are absorbed as he alternates between slowly moving and groaning like a creaky old man during shuffling electronic verses, and bursting into motion, skipping across the stage during each roaring chorus.
As the final address to the “Citizens of Portsmouth” concludes with “stay alert, and above all, stay loud” there is a roar of applause. It has been a deafening couple of days. However, an excited audience seems motivated rather than worn out. If today really has been about hinting at what heavy music means and what it could become PRESIDENT, and Takedown as a whole have done a decent job of continuing to tease us all.
Live review of Takedown Festival 2026 at Portsmouth Guildhall on 4th April 2026 by Nick Pollard. Photography by Rebecca Cairns. Photography of President @ Download Festival XXII by Sarah Louise Bennett.
Takedown Festival 2026 – Friday: Honouring Legacy, Fuelled By Riffs
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