The drive from Montreal to Toronto is not a short one. When I pulled into the Annex on the Friday evening as Prepare the Ground was getting underway, it was only my second time in the city. I had made that trip for one reason: the lineup. Now that I’ve spent two days inside this festival, I can say without hesitation that it was worth every kilometre.
Now in its third year, Prepare the Ground is a heavy music and arts festival that takes over two full blocks of Toronto’s Annex neighbourhood across four venues: Trinity St. Paul’s Church, Lee’s Palace, The Cave, and Tranzac. The venues are close enough that moving between them is a five-minute walk at most, which matters more than it sounds when you’re trying to catch sets across three days. There’s also an outdoor arts market and a dedicated theatre for film programming. This is not a festival that treats music as the only thing worth your attention.
The concept, as the organizers have described it, is heavy music as a vehicle for collective catharsis rather than a commitment to any single metal subgenre. That framing is accurate and useful. The lineup for 2026 ranged from sludge and doom to experimental black metal, post-metal, drone, and ambient. The curation is meticulous, and the results speak for themselves.
I had first seen Amenra in the UK in 2025 and had been obsessed with them ever since. When I found out they were playing two sets at Prepare the Ground, one heavy and one acoustic, I needed no further convincing. The heavy set at Trinity St. Paul’s, spanning “Boden,” “Razoreater,” “Salve Mater,” “Plus près de toi,” “De evenmens,” “Am Kreuz,” “A Solitary Reign,” and “Diaken,” was sublime. The church setting amplified everything: the architecture held the weight of that music in a way that a standard venue simply cannot replicate. For shows, I think Trinity St. Paul’s only truly works once you’ve experienced it in that context.
The acoustic set the following day at Lee’s Palace was a different kind of devastating, built around songs including “Les lieux solitaires,” “The Dying of Light,” “Wear My Crown,” and two covers: “Kathleen” by Townes Van Zandt and “Song to the Siren” by Tim Buckley. Both sets were among the best live music experiences I’ve had in recent memory.
The other peak of the weekend was Oathbreaker. The Belgian band reunited to play Rheia in full, and the timing was pointed: the 2026 remaster, Rheia (Redux), was released on May 29, the opening day of the festival. The set at Lee’s Palace ran all ten tracks in sequence, from “10:56” through to “Begeerte,” and was one of those performances where the room goes somewhere else entirely. The sound was excellent, which made the contrast with the Mizmor set earlier in the weekend more noticeable. That one suffered from audio issues that undercut what should have been a crushing experience. It happens at multi-venue festivals, but it was the one clear low point across the weekend.
Oranssi Pazuzu in the church was a genuinely fun set, and whoever decided to play clipping. before them deserves recognition. That was borderline elite trolling and it worked perfectly. Pallbearer performed Foundations of Burden in full across six tracks, “Worlds Apart,” “Foundations,” “Watcher in the Dark,” “The Ghost I Used to Be,” “Ashes,” and “Vanished,” and the church setting suited that album’s weight well. Conjurer, old friends from the UK who I had actually missed in Montreal a few days earlier because their show clashed with Amenra at Beanfield Theatre, were everything I hoped they’d be.
Svalbard made both their first and last North American appearance at this festival. The Bristol band announced their split in 2025 after fifteen years and four albums, and the weight of that decision was present in the room. Serena Cherry and the band played with everything they had, and the audience gave it straight back. At one point Cherry, visibly taken aback by the reaction, joked that the crowd was making her have second thoughts about ending the band. It was one of those moments that only happens at festivals with this kind of community behind them.
Witch Club Satan were another highlight, and one I had been looking forward to since catching them at Supersonic Festival in Birmingham in 2025. Their set is not easy to categorize or prepare for. The music is raw, confrontational black metal, but the performance extends well beyond the songs. There is a ritual quality to what they do: occult imagery, striking visuals, and a deliberate theatrical intensity that pulls the audience in whether they’re ready or not. It is black metal as exorcism, part concert and part performance art. At Supersonic it felt like one of the most distinct things I had seen all year. In the context of a weekend already built around heavy music as collective experience, it landed with even more force.
Yellow Eyes deserve a mention too. …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead were originally announced as one of the weekend’s headline bookings but cancelled, and Yellow Eyes stepped in as their replacement. The New York black metal band more than held their own and were one of the standouts of the festival.
One thing Prepare the Ground does well that deserves specific mention: the secret sets. The organizers leave clues through posters in the venues and social media posts, and part of the experience is piecing together who is playing unannounced. Torche turned up as one of those secret sets on the Saturday, which was fortunate for me personally since their scheduled Sunday slot was one I was going to have to miss. I had to leave before the final day to make the drive back to Montreal, which meant missing William Basinski, Wrekmeister Harmonies with their film Flowers in the Spring, Wiegedood, and HELL, among others. That is genuinely a rough list of things to miss, and it says something about the density of the programming that you can lose an entire day of headliners and still feel like you got a complete experience.
The crowds were eclectic and engaged. The people who put this festival together clearly care about it in a way that comes through in every detail, from the venue selection to the scheduling to the way bands are framed as special events rather than just names on a bill. Canada has a gap in its heavy music calendar since Heavy Montreal folded, and Prepare the Ground is the kind of festival that could grow to fill some of that space. It is the best-curated festival for atmospheric and heavy music in North America right now. I intend to be back in 2027.
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Review & Photos – Steve Gerrard
