HEAVY MUSIC HISTORY: Outbreak Fest
Outbreak Fest is measured in its moments. As a festival sharpened by the very edges of the music scene, over the last fifteen years, it has provided a pivotal platform for hardcore in the UK – a no-barrier push point for artists like TURNSTILE, TITLE FIGHT, and TRAPPED UNDER ICE to break European soil on their own terms.
Recently, the festival has taken on a new meaning. Still grasping tightly to its heavy roots, it is now a multifaceted campaign of counterculture. Multiple yearly dates across the UK, a tantalising roster of damaging side shows. Unpredictability that moves mountains, attracting acts like BRING ME THE HORIZON and DEFTONES. An Outbreak show these days is promoted on its promise of devastating impact. Not what is served to its audience, but how it’s served. In some cases, with a waiver to wade into the pit, but in most, a house-lights no-submission free-for-all. Gaining legendary status through its eclectic proving ground of homegrown and international talent.
For fourteen-year-old Jordan Coupland and Lee Fellows, the online presence of particularly American hardcore – inspired by their transatlantic cousins in Furnace Festival and Sound And Fury – presented the parameters for their promotion. Unable to get into the 18+ shows, they decided to put on a warehouse-style, pit-floor day festival. Housed in a community centre turned hardcore pilgrimage site – The Broomhall in Sheffield – this would be the first of many revolving venues hosting Outbreak Fest over the years to come. The inaugural 2011 edition was headlined by Welsh heavyweights BRUTALITY WILL PREVAIL, who in its early years played the festival three times, including fronting the first and only international outing of the festival in Julich, Germany in 2012.
The second edition, topping the bill with Chicago powerviolence crew HARM’S WAY, began to open the door for international hardcore. The festival would garner relationships with legends of the scene, including COLD WORLD, TRAPPED UNDER ICE and INCENDIARY, many of whom would play the festival as their first outing in the UK. In 2013, then-emerging hardcore upstarts TURNSTILE played Outbreak Fest, the furthest away the band had performed from their Baltimore home. Now, globally dominating lineup names, including KNOCKED LOOSE, MALEVOLENCE and TERROR would share the stage in years to come.
Whilst it’s easy to dissect lineups and venue changes over the years, Outbreak has evolved with time to something that fifteen years ago was unimaginable. As NME put it in 2018, Outbreak “bucks the trend” of watching subcultures fall into decline. Stating the immeasurable fall off of ‘trend’ music genres like drum ‘n’bass and emo in the late 2000s, Tom Connick goes as far as to say in its headline that the festival’s 10th year was a “thrilling celebration of the last true subculture”, thrown into discourse right before the algorithmic uprising of short-form social media.
What is true is that at its core, the hardcore community exists in its own autonomy, with a strong belief in DIY, acknowledging how much the external and political world is affecting their scene. Acceptance and tolerance are the founding pillars of their community, built on the longstanding foundations of hardcore punk’s suburban origins in the late seventies and brash bulldozing of no-nonsense bands like BLACK FLAG and BAD BRAINS. It’s the same untapped fury, pushed to the pinnacle of the extreme, that has continued this mentality into the twenty-first century. Along the way, Outbreak Fest or a time adopted this mentality where they could, skateparks, DIY organisation stalls, and even provided exclusively vegan street food.
With this came an embrace of more artists who championed Outbreak, casting a wider net outside of the aggressive hardcore-centric frenzy to artists who continuously pushed the boundaries of what modern alternative music could be. The festival’s success lies in its self-awareness and organic desire to remove genre constraints. Whilst risky and polarising to long-term fans, this creative decision mirrored some of the artists the festival championed for years. As Emma Garland writes for The Guardian, for artists like TURNSTILE and KNOCKED LOOSE who looked for modern music to find a way forward, the festival “evolved” with them.
Wildcard headliners DEATH GRIPS and DENZEL CURRY headlined the festival in 2023, sharing the bill with SHOW ME THE BODY and PAIN OF TRUTH. This hip-hop-centric lineup, championing acts like EARL SWEATSHIRT, LIL UGLY MANE and MEECHY DARKO, changed the game for Outbreak, shifting in tone to curate extremity. Outbreak promised a reality that, with their London All Points East edition in 2025, TURNSTILE could headline the same festival as CHARLI XCX. There was a space for those who shared the same values of creating dangerously, looking to emo, post-punk and electronic, amongst others, to produce a hardcore-adjacent blend of absurdity.
The world is waking up to hardcore, spitballed by Outbreak’s vision. In a world of computer-generated garble and an algorithmic need for attention, the festival is an antidote to the online world. Its legacy passed around the internet in handheld set videos. This festival’s 15th year, 2026’s edition will become Heavy Music History on its own merit with headliners THE FRONT BOTTOMS, ALEXISONFIRE and BASEMENT.
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