Radar Festival (Day One): Caskets and The Midnight Head up an Epic Day in Manchester [Photos]

Sitting in the shadow of Manchester United’s gargantuan Old Trafford stadium is the O2 Victoria Warehouse, which, for three days last week, played host to a slew of bands as Radar Festival returned for its second event. Still a relative newcomer to the UK festival circuit, the 2024 iteration of the event saw Caskets, The Midnight, Conjurer, Tesseract, Humanity’s Last Breath, and Leprous head the line-up across the two stages.

Kicking off on day one of the festival on the Neural DSP: Archetype Stage, fans were treated to the cream of the underground rock scene. Opening up the second stage were The Intersphere who brought some epic Biffy Clyro/Muse-inspired rock to the fest, while a slight delay did nothing to derail Earthside and their dramatic, cinematic experience.

Elsewhere during the day, Japanese guitarist Ichika Nito raised his profile with a UK festival debut that wowed the audience, while Vola and Plina both delivered storming sets to packed crowds, setting things up nicely for headliner The Midnight to wrap up the first day with their poppy, jazzy, proggy cocktail a contrast to the more metallic sounds of main stage headliners Caskets.

Over on the Sneak Energy Stage, the festival kicked off with the delightful epic progressive rock of Giant Walker before the dark sounds of Cestra and the hooked-filled tunes of unpeople draw more fans to the main stage as Radar Festival 2024 is well and truly into its groove. Between the proggy, epic sounds on the second stage and some of the hookier, groovier sounds on the main stage, metallic hardcore crew thrown delivers a brutal set, warming the mosh pit up nicely for the Sneak Energy headliners Caskets, who smash through a collection of their melodic metalcore bangers to wrap up day one.

We sent our photographer Katie Probert Photography down to cover Radar Festival 2024, and you can check out her awesome gallery below.

For more information on Radar and to get details of their 2025 event as soon as it is announced, head over to Radar’s official website.

Radar Festival (Day One) @ Victoria Warehouse (Manchester, UK) on July 26th, 2024

60 photos