Outbreak Festival has pulled off a remarkable trifecta this summer. First, there was the flagship event proper in June, where the UK’s biggest dedicated hardcore fest celebrated fifteen years of existence by bringing names like Alexisonfire, Basement, Hatebreed and Converge to their primary Outbreak site in Manchester.

Then there was the Outbreak-promoted Bring Me the Horizon “Count Your Blessings” weekend in July, where one of the biggest metal bands of modern times took to that same no-barrier setting to reconnect with their violent debut album in appropriate style for two nights.

Now, incredibly, it’s the biggest of them all, as Outbreak teams up with London’s All Points East event for an even more wide-reaching alternative bill in the city’s Victoria Park in front of a colossal 50,000 punters.

INTERPOL by @khaliphotography

It might not strictly look like an Outbreak as you know it, with a fest of this size adopting a more traditional barriered set-up, but a fascinating line-up brings their more usual names from punk and hardcore and slots them alongside acts from dance music, hip-hop, and indie as the likes of NYC post-punk revivalists Interpol, witch house pioneers Salem, and Liverpool rap sensation EsDeeKid grace an Outbreak event for the first time next to heavy staples such as of course the headlining Deftones.

SHOW ME THE BODY by @BETHANMILLERCO

Show Me the Body certainly supply the most bludgeoning hardcore sounds first-thing, the New York City firebrands putting the absolute boot into an early crowd with thudding three-piece punk delivery that suddenly at the end of the set gives way to blaring industrial noise beatdown.

DEAFHEAVEN by @RUBYBOLAND

Deafheaven emerging out of the world of genuine extreme metal and finding the crossover here to play to a packed tent is inspiring to watch. Songs from last year’s towering Lonely People With Power including an absolutely blistering double of “Magnolia” and “Revelator” bring the screeching bluster of black metal into Victoria Park for surely one of the first times in the royal site’s history, while the ever-radiant “Sunbather” standard “Dream House” only seems to become more stirring and irrepressible the more years go by. With a promise from frontman George Clarke that they’ll be back next time with new music, their essential status seems absolutely unabated.

On the massive East Stage, JPEGMAFIA rides the connection between the hip-hop world from which he came and the rock fans here for the headlining names on this bill with no challenge at all. Donning a black suit and cream cowboy hat and fronting a live band who seem mechanically glued in the live mix into the swamping electronic side of his beats also, the response to his abrasive in and out barnburners is mighty impressive, although his autotuned acapella cover of Carly Rae Jepsen’s "Call Me Maybe" might get the most euphoric reaction.

On the West Stage, contemporary shoegaze artist Wisp (featuring members of emo revivalists and Outbreak alumni Car Underwater in her live band) blends weighty yet glimmering riffing akin to tonight’s headliners in Deftones with an even more twinkling and delicate melodic centre, against a stained glass backdrop that swims with the light and gentle motion of her gossamer music. 

AFI by Jodi Cunningham & Joesphine Best

To describe AFI’s presence here as “long-awaited” doesn’t really seem to do that wait justice, if you experienced it; they’re in the UK for the first time in nine years this week, and the headlining dates surrounding this festival are their first of those in sixteen. That is pretty much an entire generation of UK fans of the California goth-punk iconoclasts who have been gagging to see them, and while the All Points East crowd might not strictly have as much crossover into that fanbase as either a main Outbreak crowd or those own headline shows, Davey Havok and co put on the kind of performance to show the people what they’ve been missing.

An opening punk rock blast of Girl’s Not Grey and of course the ubiquitous closing Miss Murder cement their enduring hit-power, but in-between even in a short festival set they uncover almost every piece of ground they have trodden from the gang vocal emotional chest-burst of "The Days of the Phoenix" to the more recent shadowy dancefloor goth rock of "Holy Visions" proving they are still knocking out career-best tracks at an alarming rate, if only they’ll continue to come back here and play them.

DEFTONES by @Clemente_310

If there’s a band whose recent career fortunes have truly rewritten what is possible for a heavy band at their stage in the game though, it is Deftones. Their sound gradually becoming entrenched as one of the most influential touchstones by a new generation of rock bands, followed by their massive embrace by a fresh Gen Z fanbase online, makes Deftones’ position today almost unrecognisable from just ten years ago when they were already a respected and revered outfit.

Last summer, they played what was then the largest UK headliner of their career at Crystal Palace Park, only for this to immediately go and make that seem slim. With killer new album Private Music in the tank since then (the likes of "Infinite Source" and "Milk of the Madonna" sounding mega here), and with 50,000 people going absolutely berserk in front of them, Deftones-mania seems absolutely here to stay. Chino Moreno himself, over thirty years into their tenure, can hardly seem to believe his eyes.

 DEFTONES by @Clemente_310

It’s an endearingly human quality awe-struck at the point they have found themselves at that counter-balances how absolutely quintessentially pro they are in the live department. As night comes down, the beguiling liquid flow of light and colours as the entire stage from left to right becomes one big fluid screen exudes the kind of romantic haze that has characterised Deftones records for so long, like when the band are silhouetted against a giant looming red sun during “Change (In the House of Flies)” or the rolling waves during “Sextape”.

In years gone by, there would be quibbles about Deftones’ performances at outdoor festival events, but no longer if this recent run of form is anything to go by. This is a genuine high-end rock production that could not exist any lower down these bills anymore, and the songs that it is purposed for present a carefully crafted view of Deftones as one of the most kaleidoscopic metal bands who could feasibly play with it.

Songs that languished in relative obscurity such as “Entombed” and “Rosemary”, both sublime non-singles from 2012’s Koi No Yokan and especially “Cherry Waves” from 2006’s at the time divisive Saturday Night Wrist have had their fortunes reversed by this recent tidal wave of a younger audience’s reappraisal, and from the response that they get here you’d think they’d been inescapable anthems from the second they were first released.

On the other end of the spectrum, pulling out the heaviest moment off of the seminal White Pony in “Korea” is sickeningly brutal as that riff reconfigures the guts of everyone in front of it, and being part of a crowd this gargantuan scorching their throats and launching themselves skyward for “My Own Summer (Shove It)” is genuinely arresting in a way the sheer size of the occasion simply can’t have been in quite the same way before this moment. The band seem physically rejuvenated by the love that’s come their way, making this an incredible instance of the reciprocal energy of band and audience undergoing an unforeseen phenomenon together at the largest of scales.