Corrosion of Conformity, Boris, Crowbar, Unsane among 43 additions to Desertfest London 2023

Corrosion of Comformity
Corrosion of Comformity (Image credit: Scott Legato/Getty Images)

Corrosion of Conformity, Boris, Crowbar and Unsane are among 43 additions to next year's Desertfest London weekender.

Pepper Keenan's band, who were booked to play Desertfest in 2020 before the pandemic put the planet on pause, join Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats, as one of the festival's 2023 headliners.

Next year's event, which takes place across a number of Camden, north London venues, also welcomes New York noise-rock veterans Unsane and English punk heroes Discharge, while Rochester, NY's King Buffalo and Montreal’s Big | Brave will play the festival for the first time.

Other additions include Desertfest favourites, Weedeater, the Church of The Cosmic Skull, British anti-fascist black metallers Dawn Ray’d and 'London’s loudest duo' Tuskar.

Weekend Tickets for Desertfest London 2023 are on sale now from the festival website.

Day splits and day tickets will be on sale from January.

Desertfest 2023

(Image credit: Desertfest)

Corrosion Of Conformity's Pepper Keenan  recently spoke to GuitarWorld about touring with Metallica in the mid '90s, and recalled the experience to "being thrown to the lions."

“We were going from clubs to all of a sudden, we were at a soccer stadium in Warsaw. And going around Europe and the United States. Playing in Europe in Eastern Bloc countries, where nobody really heard of you – opening for Metallica at that point in their career where they were just giant. You had to put your big boy pants on real quick. [Laughs] It was quite a learning curve. 

“[James] Hetfield was great at guiding us. And it was in the round – we were no longer with amps just behind us. It was circular and it was a whole different ballgame. You just put up or shut up. 

“And the big thing is you didn’t want the crowd doing, ‘Metallica! Metallica! Metallica!’ in the middle of your set. You had to just go. And it was wonderful – it was a great learning experience that I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.”

Paul Brannigan
Contributing Editor, Louder

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.