Alex Deller

Despite still being in its infancy, Bristol’s Temples Festival is already proving itself a force to be reckoned with on the UK festival circuit and this year promises perhaps the most exciting line-up yet, with three days of challengingly heavy music that’ll see heads banging and chins scratched in roughly equal measure. Taking place from June 2 – 5 at Bristol’s Motion, the event runs the gamut of heavy metal’s various microgenres, covering doom, drone, grindcore and death metal while dolloping in a healthy dose of caustic punk and hardcore for good measure. The connecting thread? It’s all horrible. Really, really horrible. Whether you’re there to witness short, sharp bursts of paint-peeling punk (FUK, The Flex), gruesome death metal murk (Carcass, Dead Congregation), elongated drone-psych workouts (Big Naturals) or soul-flattening sludge (Primitive Man, Esoteric) it promises to be a skull-shattering, mind-expanding weekend offering the very best in envelope-pushing heaviness. Here’s our top five pick from this year’s line-up...   Melvins Existing in some form or other for over 30 years, (the) Melvins inspired Nirvana, helped write the book when it comes to modern sludge/doom metal and have ploughed a wayward path that’s won the hearts of everyone from dyed-in-the-wool metallers to punk purists and indie geeks the world over. In many ways they’re a safe choice as headliner, but considering their most recent album eschews any sort of trad band set-up for a six-bass onslaught