HØSTSABBAT 2026 – review of Day 2
- Posted on 10-11-2026
Photo galleries here
Photos by Jonathan Mazin
Text by Andrea Chirulescu
Saturday starts at 3PM with a quiz in the big tent outside, for those who manage to get out of the house in time for it. I think it’s quite an entertaining part of the festival, but I never seem to be ready in time to get to attend the quiz. However, I made it in time for the first act on The Crypt, German doom trio Earthbong who were a good wake up soundtruck after the battle with rain and delayed trains to get there. I was fascinated to watch the drummer’s use of cymbals and how they combine their intentional Sleep homage tunes with their own unconventional approach to the genre in their lengthy compositions. If I remember correctly, their most recent album, “Salutations To The Cultivators”, came out the day before, so check it out if you haven’t already. Once again, the annoying strobe effects on the lights made me decide to leave after a while, but it was just in time to get a seat upstairs and watch the beginning of Cult Member scoring the silent movie Häxan in the Church of Riffs. It was presented as very special set, which showed the movie in its entirety, while Cult Member meticulously would interweave their crushing soundscape to the silent horrors. And that’ exactly what happened, with both the band and the audience facing the projected images on the big screen and everyone being incredibly silent. I had no idea what the movie would be about, but it was a rather uninviting combination of too much text and both animations and moving pictures. It failed to fully capture my interest as it all felt a bit too interrupted. Kudos to the artists for working to create this piece of music and presenting it live though.
Old Horn Tooth was next in the Crypt and it was a band that I recently witnessed live at Krokbäcken festival in Sweden and whose energy I found very inspiring. They were another trio on the small stage and I hope the frenzy headbanging of the bass player didn’t leave him with all his hair stuck to the low ceiling’s wooden beams. The London based act played their slow and heavy riffs with full passion and it was easy to get hypnotized by the performance. But, as their show overlapped with one in the other small venue of Kafé Hærverk, I couldn’t stay for too long as I had to queue to get inside the other place. And the queuing time was rather lengthy so I missed about half of the performance of Norwegian-Sámi quartet Sex Magick Wizards. Which I already knew while waiting outside the door and hearing the tunes live that I’d totally adore and want to watch them live again. I know their music from the promos by IS IT JAZZ? records and I knew how magic it sounded on the recordings, but the live delivery of their tunes was absolutely stunning. They had a fill-in drummer, Olaf Olsen (older brother of producer Todd Terje, performing together as Todd Terje and the Olsens; also drummer in Bigbang, Needlepoint, etc) who was mesmerizing to watch. All those groovy rhythms performed effortlessly on such a basic drumkit and skillfully sustained by the bass. The musicality and psychedelicness was brought to fantastic levels by the magic guitar of Viktor Bomstad who has found such an interesting way to reinterpret old traditional joik melodies and make them proggy. Sigrid Aftret glued all this together with her flute/saxophone layers and it was physically impossible to stay still. The music was just taking you places, the best kind of places. This and Ruff Majik were my top acts this year.
Doomkraft had already begun playing when I returned to the church and the Swedes were delivering a full force assault of doom and sludge riffs, making it sound like they’re an army of musicians on stage, and not just a trio. They were actually mesmerizing and I was worried some heads would fall off from such heavy headbanging. My brain was out of capacity to fully ingest this though, so I relocated to the Crypt and got a good spot to watch the French sludge doom act Cult of Occult. Even during the soundcheck you knew they’d gonna be loud, but during the show it felt like my brain would bleed out. They had some technical bass problems with the bass, but they have elegantly pulled off a nice impro moment until it got fixed. This was probably the most visceral experience of the festival and I’m surprised the wall didn’t crumble down bit by bit throughout the show. I’m not sure I figured out the music, I just remember the rawness of it and how slow it felt.
After this series of concerts, Kjemmis stood no chance to top them, but I must admit the high level of entertainment offered by their energetic heavy metal and the amount of good mood the band has while performing on the main stage of the festival. But I just needed a break at this point and found myself socializing with various people for a while, before heading down to the Crypt for one last concert. The Danes in Embla totally leveled the place down and it wasn’t much until everyone present would be part of their ferocious show. The vocalist was all over the place, including somewhere among the crowd – who even managed an intense moshpit and I remember someone ended up falling on stage – yet people were nice enough to lift them. It was super hot in there and the show only lasted half an hour, but some probably burned calories as for two serious gym sessions. I didn’t know that post-hardcore exists before watching these guys live and I have no regrets I used most of my remaining energy to watch them.
Gothenburg’s doom masters Monolord had the honor to headline the main stage on Saturday and they seem to manage to provide the gathered crowd with one last good dose of heaviness end emotive grooves. I headbang for a bit but everything else was too overwhelming at this stage so, as I coul dbarely grasp what was happening on stage, I found my way towards a bus and a train and some upcoming days filled with a good mix tiredness and well charged batteries (mainly the good mood ones). Eternal thankful to Høstsabbat for continuing, year after year, to enchant our autumns in Oslo and may the fuzz gods give them the means to do so for many years to come \m/