Fortress Festival 2026 – Day II
Updated: 5 days ago
Merch, Magic Passes and Mild Personal Growth
Sunday mornings are weird. Especially when you are old enough to be physically incapable of sleeping in.
Our hotel was only a five-minute walk from the Scarborough Spa this year, which meant that after Day One, I was showered and in bed by midnight.
Very sensible.
Very grown-up.
Naturally, this also meant I was wide awake at seven on Sunday morning, staring at the ceiling with the deeply irritating energy of someone who had apparently recovered. By nine, I was already sitting in a café eating hipster avocado toast as though I had my life under control.
I had not. Somewhere between coffee, editing photographs from the day before and the fatal assumption that "it’s just around the corner" counts as a functioning time-management strategy, the morning disappeared. So despite being awake since dawn, I still arrived at the venue just before noon, slightly out of breath.
A Forest of Stars: Mostly Whelmed
I went straight into the pit for the first band of the day: A Forest of Stars.
On paper, this should have been very much my sort of nonsense. Victorian occultism. Psychedelia. Violin. Black metal with theatrical ambitions.
The playback intro started promisingly enough. It also went on for ages.
While we waited for the actual music to begin, I watched Mr. Curse slowly fret himself into another dimension.
He stroked his beard. His hair. Rubbed his face. Rolled his shoulders. Took several deep breaths. Had three frantic drags from his vape. Drained a bottle of water. Rearranged the bottles beside the amp.
Nervous? Stressed? Hungover?
Some ambitious combination of the three?
Hard to say.
Once the set finally started, I realised fairly quickly that this was not going to be for me.
The vocals were the main problem. I knew they were meant to be theatrical, dramatic, slightly hysterical. For me, they simply did not land.
The rest never quite pulled me in either. The violin was there, but it did not transform the music. The atmosphere was dense, but somehow still left me at a distance. I was mostly just whelmed. Plenty of other people clearly were not. The Grand Hall was already full at noon, and afterwards the queue at the merch stand was considerable.
So the set found its people. I was simply not one of them.
Happy Little Chipmunk, Backstage Edition
I made my way towards the Ocean Room, with a quick stop at the Fluisteraars merch stall.
Nico was there again, and I am proud to announce that my awkwardness levels had dropped by roughly twenty per cent. Last year, I managed a breathless hello and a handshake before vanishing back into the shadows. This year, I got a hug.
And then I took over the merch stall for a bit so he could have a break.
Have I ever told you about my secret new passion?
I do not think I have.
Ever since Hell over Hammaburg earlier this year, where I sold Forteresse merch with Nico and spent twelve hours in a room the size of a shoebox handing out shirts and vinyl as though my life depended on it, I think I may have found my calling.
Seriously. No idea why.
I hate people. I hate talking to people. I cannot count.
Basic maths and me…well. If you know, you know.
But slinging merch? Count me in.
It makes me a happy little chipmunk.
Before I left, Nico casually handed me his backstage lanyard so I could photograph Fluisteraars from the side of the stage for the label.
He just did that.
Completely in passing.
As though this was a normal thing to hand me.
Internally, I was going:
Whaaaaaaaaaat.
Externally, I was probably also going:
Whaaaaaat.
Just slightly less squeaky.
I did, however, manage to hold it together until I was out of sight. Then I did a little happy dance.
Jesus wept. How is this my life now?
Eventually, I remembered that there was still a festival happening and continued towards the Ocean Room for This Gift Is a Curse.
On the way, one of the security guards looked at Chris, looked at me and asked:
“Does he work for you?”
I hesitated just long enough to make the situation awkward.
I was allowed through the staff entrance while my husband was sent around the long way.
I chuckled the whole way.
The Rope Was My Cue to Leave
Inside the Ocean Room, This Gift Is a Curse were already in full assault mode. The word I am looking for here is probably noise. There may have been issues with the microphones. Some vocals seemed to disappear. Others may have been pre-recorded. Or perhaps everything was working exactly as intended and I simply lacked the necessary spiritual preparation.
Either way, it was brutal.
Gurgles. Screams. Raw guitars. Strange sounds colliding with other strange sounds at considerable volume.
It was not even one in the afternoon.
I was not ready.
At some point, vocalist Jonas Holmberg pulled a large rope out of a black bin bag and dropped it onto the stage.
I did not stay long enough to find out what he planned to do with it.
Probably nothing reassuring.
I wished everyone involved the very best and retreated to the Theatre.
Portcullis had taken over the Dungeon Synth slot after Atlantean Sword were forced to cancel, and by the time I arrived, the room was packed. Completely packed.
On stage stood a man in a black shirt and a golden laurel wreath.
He had a keyboard.
And a keytar.
Better safe than sorry.
Red light. Fog. A video playing in the background. Minimal movement. Stoic expressions. Heroic medieval atmosphere. I did not catch enough of the set to form a particularly intelligent opinion. What I heard sounded pleasant, if perhaps a little generic.
The audience, however, was fully immersed. A few people were wearing chainmail. Everyone looked completely content to sit there as though we had gathered in a medieval tavern and were waiting for someone to hand us the next side quest.
Honestly? Lovely.
Abigail Williams: Good Light, Better Hair
Back to the Main Stage it was for Abigail Williams.
Full disclosure: this was one of those sets where I expected more atmosphere than I actually got. From everything I had heard and read beforehand, Abigail Williams were praised for the emotional weight in their music. For creating huge atmosphere and balancing melody with ferocity.
There were spacious passages. Some lovely, slightly playful guitar work. And the drumming was seriously strong—precise, forceful and constantly pushing the whole thing forward. But the set never quite opened up for me.
I had expected something more expansive. More symphonic. More emotionally overwhelming.
Instead, a lot of it began to blur together.
I think the vocals were part of the problem. The delivery felt so constant that it flattened some of the movement underneath, and whatever atmosphere was trying to build never quite got enough room to breathe.
There were a few technical issues along the way, but nothing catastrophic. A short pause, a bit of adjustment, and they carried on without turning it into a drama. Professionals.
The light, however, was glorious.
And naturally, I immediately became distracted by the bassist’s hair.
Again.
I took far too many photographs of him.
I am aware of the bassist problem.
I am doing nothing about it.
Wandering, Worrying and Waving the Magic Pass
After Abigail Williams, I entered the wandering phase of the festival. You know the one. Too restless to stay anywhere. Too tired to commit. Constantly checking the schedule as though it might suddenly make the decision for you. I poked my head into the Ocean Room for Darkenhöld.
The first thing that hit me was the smell.
The second was that the stage looked far too small for five men in full cloaks.
Musically, it sounded decent. Galloping. Heroic. Keys doing useful things. But the Ocean Room had already established that unless I was near the front, it did not particularly want me there.
So I left.
I found Nico instead, spoke to Daniel from Atmospheric Arts for a bit, and eventually wandered into the Theatre for Fief.
The room had been packed long before the set even started.
On stage: sunglasses. Chainmail. Keyboard.
Excellent ingredients.
And yet, live, it did very little for me.
Plenty of other people were clearly enchanted. I watched for a while, accepted that the medieval tavern had once again found its chosen adventurers, and moved on.
Because by then it was almost time for Fluisteraars. And my nerves were beginning to rot.
I still had Nico’s backstage pass.
I still had no idea what I was going to do with it.
I knew I wanted to photograph the beginning from the pit, because the view would be better. But afterwards?
Was I really going to walk up to the side of the stage and act as though I belonged there?
Photographers were not allowed backstage.
But I had been given the chance.
God damn it, Izzy.
Take it.
Be brave.
So I did the most German thing possible. I went to the backstage entrance and asked.
The guy at the door said he would check and disappeared.
While I waited, one of the house photographers mocked my German accent, which did wonders for my mood.
My hackles rose.
Probably useful, in retrospect.
By the time the other guy came back and said, "No photographers," I was no longer quite as inclined to fold myself neatly into a corner. Part of me still wanted to. Of course. Instead, I held up the artist pass like a magical object in a role-playing game.
"But I have this. I’m supposed to photograph the band for the label."
He looked at it.
"I’ll ask Gary again."
Gary.
As in Gary Stephenson.
Festival organiser Gary.
Excellent.
The man vanished, and I stood there reconsidering every decision that had led me to this door.
A moment later, Gary appeared.
He looked at me with what I can only describe as very limited enthusiasm.
I wanted the floor to open.
It did not.
So I explained again.
Artist pass. Label. Fluisteraars. Side of the stage.
And somehow, I stayed upright while doing it.
Gary told me to come and stand beside him once I was finished in the pit. He would make sure there was room.
Holy hell.
That felt like a victory.
Not a grand one.
Nobody applauded.
But for me? Enormous.
A little later, I stood at the side of the stage next to Gary.
Also next to Jack Armstrong from Abduction, against whom I still hold a perfectly reasonable and not remotely petty grudge for using one of my photographs without proper credit.
But this is not about that.
The view was terrible.
Fog everywhere. Cables in the way. Backs. Turned heads. The occasional promising angle immediately ruined by somebody moving at exactly the wrong moment.
To get anything truly good, I would have needed to wait.
I did not.
Nico wanted to watch the set as well, and I had already done what I came there to do.
So I took what I could, went back to the merch stall, returned the pass and took over while he watched Fluisteraars from the side of the stage.
And honestly?
I felt far more at home there.
Fluisteraars performing at Fortress Festival 2026 Fluisteraars performing at Fortress Festival 2026 Fluisteraars performing at Fortress Festival 2026 Fluisteraars performing at Fortress Festival 2026 Fluisteraars performing at Fortress Festival 2026 Fluisteraars performing at Fortress Festival 2026 Fluisteraars performing at Fortress Festival 2026 Fluisteraars performing at Fortress Festival 2026 Fluisteraars performing at Fortress Festival 2026 Fluisteraars performing at Fortress Festival 2026
From Instagram to Scarborough
I missed the next two bands for yet another side quest: beer with Marta.
Somehow, we had managed not to run into each other once during the whole of Saturday.
Fortress is not that big. This should not have required arranging an actual meeting time via Instagram DM.
And yet.
Marta had found me through my Fortress reports from 2025. We started talking on Instagram, discovered we had enough shared mum-life chaos to keep the conversation going, and somehow stayed in touch.
We talked. Checked in. Became friends.
And because I had been so relentlessly enthusiastic about Fortress, she had gone and bought a ticket for 2026.
I guess I can call myself an influencer now, huh?
So now she was here.
I was here.
We hugged.
And the whole thing felt slightly unreal. There is something deeply strange about meeting a person who first existed as a name on your phone and suddenly finding them standing in front of you in Scarborough with a beer in their hand.
But also lovely.
Very, very lovely.
Spoiler: we will meet again next year at Fortress 2027.
Tickets are secured.
Bloody hotel rooms are booked.
This gives us both something to look forward to.
We stayed together until it was time for Vinterland. And I had been waiting for Vinterland.
Their Forum Talk the day before had been cancelled because their flight was delayed, which had already left me mildly bereft. I had also missed them at Atmospheric Arts V earlier in the year because they were the final band, I was exhausted and I knew I would see them at Fortress.
I genuinely love Welcome My Last Chapter. In my head, this anniversary set was one of the major events of Day Two.
The anticipation was high. The stage was dressed in purple and black, a Swedish winter forest waiting in the dark. The room felt ready. So did I.
And then the set started. Fog. Pink light.
Three men with instruments.
A foot occasionally placed on an amp.
Some hair movement.
And somehow, nothing happened inside me.
The songs were there. The melodies were there. The sound was good. Everything was played well.
But it did not click.
At all.
Maybe I had built it up too much. Maybe I had already spent too much of the day wandering between rooms, people and side quests. Maybe some albums simply live better in your head than they do on a stage.
Whatever the reason, the feeling never arrived.
Which was deeply inconvenient, because I had scheduled one.
Hunger, Capes and Very Little Patience
After the Vinterland deflation my mood took a small and entirely predictable turn.
I was hungry. Which meant I was also grumpy.
Chris went to find me food. He knows.
While he was gone, I poked my head into the Ocean Room for Vésperal.
The vocalist was wearing a cape over a bare torso.
Why not.
Had not seen that one yet.
He also looked about twelve.
Why was he so young?
Why was there a cape?
What was happening?
The vocals were good, to be fair. The clean parts worked. The whole thing was melodic, stomping and sounded perfectly decent. I still did not feel it. So I left the youth and the cape to it.
Next stop was the Theatre for Old Sorcery.
I walked in.
Saw the wizard hat.
Took a photograph.
Left.
You should not put a hangry woman in a room full of enthusiastic role-play people.
Nobody benefits.
Misþyrming: Finally, Violence I Could Work With
And then it was time for Misþyrming. And it seems they were exactly what I needed.
After all the wandering, waiting and mild spiritual collapse, here was a band that arrived with intent.
Visually, the set was feral.
Blood. Mud. Twisted faces. White eyes. Tense jaws. Nobody standing still for longer than a second.
Everything felt physical.
Raw.
Driven.
And underneath all of it was still total control. The riffs cut straight through the room. The drums pushed without mercy. The vocals left very little space to breathe.
But there was melody in there too. Just enough of it cutting through the violence to make the whole thing hit harder.
This was one of those sets where the aggression never became shapeless. It stayed tight. Precise. Focused.
And live, it worked.
Completely.
I would not be surprised if, for quite a few people, Misþyrming were the real headliners of the day.
Misþyrming performing at Fortress Festival 2026. Misþyrming performing at Fortress Festival 2026. Misþyrming performing at Fortress Festival 2026. Misþyrming performing at Fortress Festival 2026. Misþyrming performing at Fortress Festival 2026.
Mortiis: Everybody Sit Down
The final Theatre set of the day was Mortiis.
It was the obvious choice, really. You do not build an entire Dungeon Synth programme and then casually leave out one of the genre’s most important names.
The room was packed long before he started. And this time, packed really meant packed.
Nobody was allowed to stay in the aisles. The ushers kept directing people towards the last empty seats, which were naturally somewhere in the middle of the middle row.
So there was a lot of apologetic shuffling past knees. People were pressed shoulder to shoulder with strangers and we were all made very aware that those theatre seats had not been designed with actual adult bodies in mind.
Still. Mortiis in the Theatre.
That was something I wanted to see.
Red light. Long synth passages. Everyone completely quiet and focused.
I did not stay for the whole set, but I am glad I saw it.
A proper Dungeon Synth bucket-list moment.
Gallowbraid: Puppy Energy, Cult Status
And then it was time for the final headliner of Fortress 2026.
Gallowbraid.
My levels of anticipation for this show were just as high as it had been last year when Agalloch had closed the festival. I do love Ashen Eidolon. We all do. There is nothing not to love about this EP.
But—technically, Gallowbraid had never played a live show before. It was just ever this one EP. Four songs. Cult status. Sixteen years of people quietly carrying it around with them.
Nico was the one pointedly asking me before the show "What's he gonna play? The EP twice?".
Well. We were about to find out.
Because Fortress made it happen. Now there was a band on stage.
Rogers mentioned more than once that this was not only Gallowbraid’s first-ever performance, but also the first time he had played guitar live. Cute. No pressure, then.
He also kept talking about how grateful he was to be there, surrounded by bands he genuinely looked up to.
And he was so painfully likeable.He had the energy of an overexcited puppy who had somehow been handed a guitar and put in charge of closing a festival.
He strutted across the stage. Bounced around. Played flute. Sang the clean parts. Mouthed almost every harsh vocal line even when he was nowhere near the microphone. It was his music. He looked as though he could not quite contain the fact that this was finally happening.
There were small hiccups.
A few rough edges. Moments that did not land perfectly.
Nobody cared.
This was not a room waiting to dissect the performance.
People had come to hear Ashen Eidolon played live for the first time.
And that was enough.
More than enough, really.
And no, they did not play Ashen Eidolon twice. They had actually prepared two new songs. Crowd was here for it.
At Stone of Remembrance, the whole thing came dangerously close to a singalong. Later, London Bertoch came down from the stage, climbed onto the barrier and started headbanging with the front row. The solemn cult EP had briefly left its altar and joined the crowd.
This year, Fortress did not go for the darkest ending they could have chosen.
They went for the warmest one.
Full of nerves, gratitude, small imperfections and the unmistakable joy of people finally getting to do something they had probably stopped believing would ever happen.
Personally? This felt like exactly the right way to end the weekend.
Gallowbraid performing at Fortress Festival 2026. Gallowbraid performing at Fortress Festival 2026. Gallowbraid performing at Fortress Festival 2026. Gallowbraid performing at Fortress Festival 2026. Gallowbraid performing at Fortress Festival 2026.
Blue Moon Over Scarborough
A year earlier, I had sat in almost exactly the same place, shaking my head in disbelief after John Haughm and Don Anderson had rolled around in the dust on stage at the end of one of the greatest live sets I had ever seen.
And somehow, this year, I was no less enchanted.
Fortress Festival 2026 was over. Again far too quickly.
And again, when I walked out of the Spa that night, my heart could not have been fuller.
I was not tired.
None of us seemed tired.
Hundreds of people poured out into the English night with me, running on adrenaline, joy and the complete refusal to admit that the weekend had ended.
A blue moon hung above the cliffs.
We all stopped to photograph it as though none of us had ever seen a full moon before.
And I am fairly certain I was not the only person walking away already knowing I would come back.
And Now?
It has been two months since Fortress. Give or take.
The first headliner for 2027 has been known since the festival weekend: Emperor, for Fortress’s fifth anniversary.
Which is one hell of a way to make it clear there will be no half measures next year.
Since then, the first wave of bands has been announced, along with the Dungeon Synth programme for the Theatre.
After Dark Folk in 2025 and Dungeon Synth in 2026, I had wondered whether Fortress might give the Theatre another theme next year. Apparently not. We are staying in the dungeon.
And much to my personal delight, Atlantean Sword are back on the bill after having to cancel this year.
Wraith Knight too.
My inner gremlin is already going:
Whaaaaaaaat.
I have also already started the Fortress 2027 preparation series with Slagmaur.
There will be more over the coming months.
Truth is though, I knew I would come back regardless of the line-up.
Fortress could announce twelve bands I have never heard of and I would still trust that at least three of them would completely blow my mind. There always are.
And besides.
Scarborough.
England.
The coastline.
The North Sea.
You know me by now.
There is no version of reality in which I say no to this.