LIVE REVIEW: Motocultor Festival 2026 @ The Underworld, London
Metal’s most outrageous band of Italians, NANOWAR OF STEEL, and some of Mongolia’s finest rockers, UUHAI, lead Motocultor Festival to The Underworld on a trek through the awe-inspiring Mongolian Steppes, all the way to an alternative universe that celebrates the art of not taking yourself seriously while head banging to reggaeton and doing the Macarena to death metal growls.
Singaporean melodic death metal band, DEUS EX MACHINA, kick off the London leg of the Motocultor Festival Across Europe Tour with a fervent hunger for chaos. Undeterred by the sparsity of The Underworld’s crowd, stand-in vocalist Syarm Javer growls out every lyric with a beastly gleam in her eye. That gleam turns into a command as she encourages the crowd to get their fists in the air with every spare breath she can muster. Meanwhile, the Underworld struggles to contain bassist Mikael Loh’s enthusiasm, as he goes from one-handed bass playing to straddling the stage edge to fist bump the crowd’s frontline. It feels wrong to experience DEUS EX MACHINA’s brutal pacing and riffs that might rip your face off without a mosh pit in sight, but alas, it is the cursed risk of an opening act and an eclectic crowd.
Rating: 7/10
Spanish metal quintet MORPHIUM bring an air of occultist horror and industrial rage, with each band member covered in ashy black paint. Vocalist Alex Bace and guitarist Frederic Torres are like hunters on the prowl, their piercing eyes cutting into the crowd as MORPHIUM’s melodic heaviness sucks them all in. They go from barbed-wire wrapped riffs and growls to haunting, tear-stained melodies; it is an intoxicating, dark journey that MORPHIUM take you on with their musical elixir. Seductively strangling himself with the mic cable against a blood-red light attack one minute, and forewarning everyone they should see their physiotherapist tomorrow because “it’s time to headbang motherfuckers”, Alex Bace has taken the role of frontman and warped it into frontdemon.
Rating: 8/10
LONE SURVIVORS, a progressive metalcore act from France, don’t quite manage to hit the stage with the same force as the night’s first two bands. They are quieter, both in music and in presence, but do pull some gnarly “bad smell” faces as they rip into the faster chunks of their setlist. Playing two tracks off their latest EP, Run 1, is where LONE SURVIVORS start to slither into their own. The aggression ramps up as they deliver a drum-led battering of distorted riffs and inhuman screams – seriously, how vocalist Arthur Rohou manages to hit some of those notes and still speak with such a melodious voice is borderline terrifying.
Rating: 6/10
UUHAI, the Mongolian band of throat-singing, horsehead fiddle-wielding rockers are in London tonight to remind everyone that a band t-shirt looks so much better underneath a traditional Mongolian robe, and a riff hits so much harder when followed by a Morin Khuur solo. The stage somehow feels bigger with these seven musicians dominating it. UUHAI unleash the power of Mongolian battle commanders into every corner of The Underworld, with a larger discography now under their horn-bearing belts than they had for their last visit in 2024. The Mongolians’ debut album, Human Herds, was released last month, and every track encapsulates the beauty and fearsome history of their homeland alongside the destructive nature of modern society.
Single Khar Khulz rallies the crowd into a whooping, fist-raised frenzy, the undercurrent of a mosh pit whirling its way through the most engaged members, and ends in a Morin Khuur speciality: a whinnying neigh that is so realistic you would be forgiven for thinking a horse had barged in through the Camden doors. From vocalist Saruul Tsogt-Erdene‘s giddying frontman prowling to Zorigoo Battsooj and Khurtsgerel Damiranjav‘s hypnotic throat singing, every inch of their performance is a sight and sound to behold. The awe of UUHAI is in the details, and in the incomparable beauty of seeing a country’s roots and traditional music combine so effortlessly with metal. They promised to have the entire crowd chanting “uuhai”, and chant the crowd do. Loudly. And in almost every song. By the end of their set, the belting out of this shout for good fortune becomes an eruption of the subconscious, so immersed in UUHAI’s world is The Underworld.
Rating: 9/10
“This isn’t metal,” a gatekeeper utters from behind their keyboard in a basement somewhere that isn’t The Underworld tonight. They aren’t wrong, for NANOWAR OF STEEL aren’t just metal; they are comedy metal’s finest. This band of Italians satirise “true metal” and produce some of the greatest pun-centric heavy metal bangers, never letting anyone take them seriously. Anyone who says they hate NANOWAR OF STEEL may as well be saying they hate fun.
The stage leaps out of the Mongolian Steppes and into a rainbow junkyard of tutus, fluorescent wigs with matching guitar strings, and fluffy belts that are pretending to be guitars. The quintet have come to bedazzle the Underworld with as much bonkersness as they can before vocalist Potowotominimak’s mother comes to tell them off for making too many mum jokes. The crowd’s first invitation to singalong is to the Viking battle chants in Stormwarrior Of The Storm, a song which sees a costume change for vocalist Mister Baffo – because how could they sing a song about storms without him putting a yellow raincoat on over his tight, purple fish-scaled top.
Some of the crowd participates in the Macarena-esque dance moves for Disco Metal, a song they wrote as “proud metalhead virgins in their thirties who hated discoteque”, which, combined with the raging strobe lights, turns this metal haven into a full-blown 90s disco. With dance moves like the Macarena and their comedically jilted pirouettes, NANOWAR OF STEEL should consider a side hustle choreographing primary school dance routines. “We are Italian, so we miss our mothers,” they declare, before saying they want to turn this place into an international airport by teaching the crowd how to fly and speak Italian – “have sex in your ears basically”. Il Cacciatore Della Notte doesn’t quite transform the Underworld into an airport, but a human-sized owl charges off the stage with almost as much hectic enthusiasm as the ludicrous chants of “barbagianni” (which means barn owl, but is also the Italian version of “Old Codger”).
Norwegian Reggaeton and Feet & Greet are some of the night’s biggest crowd pleasers and get this charmingly rowdy metalhead crowd to shake their hips like they’ve found themselves in a Santa Domingo salsa bar, then to “clap with their feet” on the beer-soaked floor. The finale, Valhalleluja, then gets everyone down on their knees as NANOWAR OF STEEL become a carbonara-fuelled gospel choir praying to Lord Odin. The stompingly fun night of Italian comedy metal ends with a NANOWAR OF STEEL conga line through the crowd, oodles of laughter, and huge respect for this band with top-class musicianship who commit 110% to the bit.
Rating: 9/10
Check out our photo gallery of Motocultor Festival 2026 from Karolina Janikunaite here:
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