Maniacs! Adelaide’s festival dedicated to old-school metal, melodic metal and rock n’ roll – Churches Of Steel VI – returns for its seventh installment on Saturday, February 17, 2024 in the sunny cloisters of Unibar Adelaide.
Join the hordes. Dust off your leather, battle jacket, and high tops, crack open a beer and bang your head to some killer bands from around Oz and overseas.
For their second time down under, Spain’s most highly successful thrash metal act ANGELUS APATRIDA will grace our shores once again, their first Australian show announcement headlining Churches of Steel VII – a huge honour for the fest. Signed to Century Media Records with no need to regain momentum, ANGELUS APATRIDA are more ready than most to let rip again in 2023. Their new record Aftermath marks a pinnacle in this band’s determined and always fruitful career. It’s a defiant, uplifting and resolutely metal-as-fuck response to an era defined by chaos and fear. It’s the sound of ANGELUS APATRIDA, doing what they do, but bigger, better, louder and with more passion than ever.
After a successful set at Adelaide’s premier alternative music festival, Froth and Fury hailing from Canberra, WITCHSKULL make a return to Adelaide to once again showcase their unique traditional doom sound with the aggression that you would expect a 3-piece Australian band to deliver. This energy, coupled with an authentic insight into the occult to create mesmerising lyrics, has won the band plenty of interest worldwide.
It wouldn’t be a party without Adelaide’s hard-working Pub Thrash act HIDDEN INTENT, who’ve just returned from gracing the stage at the heavy metal holy land Wacken Open Air and UK’s Bloodstock. Along for the ride, launching their new album via Massacre Records, The Great Tribulation, Melbourne heavy metal legends ELM STREET making a return to the fest to knock Adelaide out with a metal fist.
If that doesn’t make you want to bang your head and raise your horns then we have Melbourne’s hard rock exports WICKED SMILE who were initially locked in to support Skid Row on their Australian run, the band have toured relentlessly overseas and have just dropped their new single Night Time Riders, Sydney thrash/death maniacs KILLRAZER who have shared with stage with some huge acts such as Destruction, Metal Church, Soilwork and more. Speaking of Soilwork who were also supported in Adelaide by SA heavyweights HEADBORE, a killer addition to the fest on the local front. Making their overdue first appearance we have Melbourne’s FLITCRAFT, hard rock with quirk, traditional heavy metal with a twist. Coining themselves ‘riff n roll’, DIRTY PAGANS are a thumping cavalcade of sweeping riffs and soaring vocals, all sealed together with an impervious rhythm section that undeniably sways a mass of attention their way with each and every show they play. Also for their first appearance, Melbourne’s RIOT AFTER MIDNIGHT busting out big riffs, sing-along tunes, thundering bass and drums, and melodic solos that take you to a place that only the Riot lads can do.
All mashed together with some local legends opening up the festival, hailing from the dirty south hard rock legends TRENCH EFFECT, groove metallers STOVED, hard rockers LOADED BILLY and young guns, thrash/death newcomers DENAZEN.
Tickets at Moshtix.
