Sweaty photos of fans in the pit at Outbreak 2023

As Aaron Bedard put it dur­ing Bane’s head­line set at Out­break 2023, there’s nev­er been a moment quite like this in hard­core. From Turn­stile being nom­i­nat­ed for a GRAM­MY, to The New York Times declar­ing a ​“renais­sance,” to the long list of artists from Soul Glo to Mil­i­tarie Gun giv­ing things a genre-defy­ing kick up the arse, hard­core has sky­rock­et­ed both in pop­u­lar­i­ty and cre­ativ­i­ty. The shared DNA between punk and hip-hop gen­res has also evolved in recent years to erase many of the lines between scenes and sounds, ush­er­ing in a new era of cross-pol­li­na­tion that finds the sub­cul­ture at its most diverse and, as a result, most interesting.

In the UK, noth­ing reflects this shift bet­ter than Out­break. The DIY fes­ti­val began in a youth cen­tre in Sheffield in 2011 and has since grown into one of the best alter­na­tive events in the coun­try, reli­ably pulling fans from all over Europe and the US. After cel­e­brat­ing its 10^th anniver­sary in 2022 with a stacked line-up of inter­na­tion­al heavy-hit­ters includ­ing Turn­stile and Touché Amoré, this year it made the jump from com­mu­ni­ty and mid-lev­el venues to Depot May­field – a 10,000 capac­i­ty for­mer rail­way sta­tion in the heart of Man­ches­ter. The line-up switched things up to match and cast its net as wide as hardcore’s cur­rent Venn dia­gram, with alt rap­pers like Earl Sweat­shirt, Den­zel Cur­ry and Armand Ham­mer join­ing scene sta­ples like Trapped Under Ice and new gen revival­ists like Scowl and Zulu.

Chris Bethell was there to cap­ture the ener­gy of the week­end from the bel­ly of the beast, brav­ing his equip­ment and also his teeth to pho­to­graph fans in the pit for Con­verge, High Vis, Den­zel Him­self and more.

Find more of Chris’s work on Insta­gram.

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