Outbreak Festival 2022: Day Three

The third and final day of Outbreak Fest was the attendee-proclaimed “Cali Day” of the festival. Seven of the bands — roughly a third of the artists to take the stage that day — originated from California. Of the seven California-based bands, three of them — Ceremony, Deafheaven and Touché Amoré — played the final sets of the festival on the main stage.

The rest of the bands came mostly from other parts of the U.S., with a couple UK-based bands thrown in.

Kat Moss (vocalist of Scowl) highlighted the Bay Area scene in a live taping of an episode of the 100 Words Or Less Podcast. She spoke of her feelings of pride and comfort coming from an open and close-knit scene and how exciting it was for her to get to stand side stage to watch some of her closest friends in other bands in the scene play sets alongside her in a foreign country that day.

Although main stage band Ceremony was also from California, they didn’t have quite the same swell of pride for their home. Similar to Mannequin Pussy on Day Two of the festival, Ceremony projected a photo of the United States with a red slash mark through it behind them in lieu of a band logo. 

Not only was this a big day for California hardcore, it was a day where the bands on the second stage really stole the show.

Dare kicked things off at the second stage. The set was highly anticipated for several reasons: Dare is a relatively new straight-edge band and this was their first time leaving America to play shows — let alone playing one in Manchester — with their drummer being Trey Garris, the younger brother to Bryan Garris of Knocked Loose. This is a band with a fair amount of pressure to perform well, due to their deep connection to the hardcore scene and they did not disappoint.

One Step Closer closed out the second stage, easily drawing the biggest crowd of the entire weekend to that stage. This band was basically Anxious 2.0 in terms of technicality (just a bit more shouty), as several of the members were in both bands. This was a set that rivaled some of the main stage performances in terms of crowd participation. While most of the weekend security guards didn’t have to do much at the second stage, this set was a different story; guards had to help up crowd-surfers and check on members of the crowd left and right.

Overall, this was an insane festival, with so many unforgettable moments and historic sets. There is no other hardcore festival in the world of this size and caliber, and fans eagerly await its 11th edition return. 

Photography by Jayme Bigger

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