Ritual Union Festival 2025 (Bristol) Review

Ritual Union Festival
Bristol
29th March 2025

Four venues, over thirty names to choose from and one day to fit in as many emerging acts as possible appearing at Bristol’s Ritual Union Festival. Keith Goldhanger reports.

Drawing circles around a dozen band names that are performing around a tiny area of Bristol between just after midday and 10 o’clock at night is the easy bit. Realising half way through that there’ll be little time to sit back and reflect on what we’ve been watching (or even eat something) means we’re relying on adrenaline again to keep us on our feet. Ritual Union Festival in 2024 was enjoyable enough to indicate that this shouldn’t be a problem, so as the clock strikes twelve (OK then, one – we do manage breakfast) we find ourselves in dark rooms again anticipating watching and listening to a selection of acts we may or may not have seen before but have had a listen to in advance, just so we don’t come home having missed something we may regret later.

ZALIZO and DBLA inside the two venues at SWX ease us slowly into the day. It’s noticeable how busy these venues are already; not uncomfortably busy but busy enough for the bands to go home happy that they’ve had decent audiences to play in front of. This is another reason why these multi-venue events are important occasions.

Bristol band LANGKAMER are an interesting bunch, boasting a singing drummer and a selection of catchy country-tinged songs that maintain our attention, and UNLUCKY upstairs at SWX are cleansing our ears with some loud, harsh and loveable guitar thrashing noise that’s more My Bloody Valentine than Sonic Youth, and certainly to our liking. Throbbing bottom end electronics, the odd slice of guitar feedback and dual vocals are convincing enough to investigate why this trio don’t appear to have anything available to listen to yet, unless a live show is attended. We’re pretty sure this will eventually be put right.

London four-piece HANK are more Sonic Youth than My Bloody Valentine and equally as wonderful as what we’ve been witnessing over the road a few minutes earlier. KEG, back at SWX, boast a seven-piece line up and a front man who behaves just as front men should. His silly dancing isn’t quite in the same league as Future Islands Samuel T Herring, but he’s owning the stage and driving these songs in front of us regardless of the other half a dozen people behind him, including a trombone player, who blend in perfectly as the band provide music that’s compelling enough for us to investigate more another time.

We come away from PUNCHBAG‘s show at Rough Trade convinced things wouldn’t get any better for the rest of the day. This young band, with not one bad song in their repertoire, serve up playful, sweet, banging pop music some of us have not witnessed since Daphne & Celeste turned up to infiltrate our lives a decade or three ago. We’ve not seen such an energetic performance for quite some time, and come away feeling as elated as we did when we first saw Confidence Man or the last time we saw Klaxons. This band won’t be going away we imagine. One to experience again sometime for sure, not just for the wonderful thrill of witnessing people that have mastered the art of making such magnificent music that will appeal to a large age bracket, but we want to hear that crashing cymbal again as well as those backing vocals that are so euphoric they put Arcade Fire to shame. Certainly a refreshing experience once we recall some of the weird and wonderful noisy stuff some of us have been ranting about recently. We’re told that at least one of them is also in one of the noisiest bands we’ve seen recently, Butch Kassidy. We’re unsure if we can think of two bands that sound any more different to each other

The day is no means over by the time we return to Strange Brew to see SPACESTATION who have realised that having three or four people singing mid-paced songs all at the same time sounds amazing and can turn (on first listen) ordinary tunes into a fabulous compelling half-hour experience. Trying to decipher what they are singing about is put to one side once it’s established the band are Icelandic. The bands’ debut album that came out recently goes onto the list of music we need to delve further into.

We simply cannot go through the day without seeing GURRIERS again (top pic). Having just performed their largest London headline show the night before (at The Scala) there’s a buzz inside a packed SWX. These Irish boys serve up the blistering performance we’ve been expecting yet again, and once viewed from the rear of the venue it’s soon clear that the huge crowd in front of them certainly aren’t in attendance to simply just stand still and applaud politely. Band members are appearing at the side, middle and back of the room as bodies clash in front of them; tunes come at us at a blistering pace. comparing them to Fontaines DC cannot be avoided, however it’s more due to the euphoric nature of this loud harsh performance than anything else. You get to feel a Gurriers performance as well as hear the infectious heavy, memorable, crashing tunes they have at their disposal at the current time.

Do we leave the building exhausted and ready to drop ? Well nearly, but MY FIRST TIME up a small flight of stairs start their own onslaught as fast as Gurriers have ended theirs and give us another injection of energy we needed. My First Time are serving up the lyrical genius of Yard Act to a sound track as exciting as those Blur provided when they were performing inside small venues themselves and when everyone was much younger (or in some cases not even born). This wis equally as thrilling as what had been seen and heard earlier today, and yet again we have another decent size crowd not shy of singing and dancing along,  making this another of the many highlights Ritual Union have provided us with. 

WINGS OF DESIRE have in their current set a healthy selection of huge uplifting songs with not one dull moment during the band’s performance. Yet again, these are a joy to experience, and hearing the band’s most recent tune, A Few More Years, whilst declaring it one of the best tunes we’ve heard all day, we’re close to collapsing on the floor. We crawl back to where we came from and declare Ritual Union a resounding successful experience again, whilst wondering what the other 75% of bands playing around this small area of Bristol that we missed were like.

Decent bands, decent people, decent venues and great time keeping means our loosely planned adventure across all four venues allows us to see more than we’ve anticipated, and yet again we’re regretful we haven’t managed to see everything. Getting back home to trawl through our favourites is always a rewarding experience, and catching another handful of the many excellent new acts available for us all in 2025 leaves us wondering how many of them we’ll get to see again, whether in similar circumstances or in front of hundreds of other music loving attendees, either in large fields or arenas that many people seem to enjoy watching bands in.

This has been another fabulous day to add to many other multi-venue events some of us are fortunate to attend during the year. Early bird tickets are already available for 2026 and, having been to this more than once now, we expect the next Ritual Union event to be another recommendation that should not be ignored.

Keep an eye on the festival’s web site for early bird tickets here.

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Words by Keith Goldhanger. More writing by Keith on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s archive. You can also find Keith on Facebook  Instagram and Bluesky