Devo (above)
All photos by Kevin Estrada Photography
Golden Voice’s premiere go-to for goth and new wave nostalgia, Cruel World festival, returned to Brookside at the Rose Bowl for its fourth year on May 17th, this time bringing with it a gloomy rainy atmosphere that finally fit the music. In true summer festival fashion, a yearly staple for Cruel World attendees has been the inner struggle between an appropriately gothic outfit that inflicts suffering in the heat and a more minimal choice of look in exchange for comfort. As clouds and rain washed over Pasadena, there was an evident shift in ambiance compared to the previous years. In many ways, there was a new level of connection felt to all of those baritone vocals and sultry synths, but on the other hand, there was a noticeable emptiness of the grounds in comparison to past years.
Regardless of corporate details like ticket sales and attendance numbers, Cruel World offers fans of alternative music a festival catered solely towards them, unlike many of the competing festivals right now that pepper in eighties nostalgia acts in between mainstream pop artists. Walking up to the festival at any time immediately bombards you with a mixture of sounds from the three stages. One second, your ears can be picking up Blancmange’s signature synth from “Living On The Ceiling,” and another second, Mareux can be entrancing you with his iconic cover of The Cure’s “The Perfect Girl.” Cruel World is not only a masterclass in fulfilling a niche need but also in integrating old and new artists into the same project, despite its audience being known to be stubborn about change in the subculture.
This year, headlining acts like New Order, Devo, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, OMD, and The Go-Gos were selected to delight elder goths who miss their youth and younger goths with a “born in the wrong generation complex.” Earlier acts like The Buzzcocks and Stereo MC’s set the scene to show you don’t need to be making goth music to be part of the culture. Both displaying their reggae-influenced British styles of punk and rap with infectious fun and fire. Following the flame, the stages transitioned into more sultry sounds as She Wants Revenge and Alison Moyet hypnotized audiences into feeling like the golf course grass was tiles in a club. For those who prefer black and white checkers to black and white stripes, Madness offered a jazzy, cheery alternative to all the gloom. With hits like “Our House” and “It Must Be Love” allowing for a moment or two to skank around before resuming brooding.
As the night went on and the rain stopped, Shirley Manson of Garbage emerged like a punk rock peacock to blow the roof off the place. The band was tight and their energy even tighter, with grunge beats taking on an almost industrial nature when performed live. Devo went on at the same time as Garbage, highlighting one of the major pitfalls of festivals: you're always going to miss someone you want to see. Shirley herself even humorously echoed this statement, saying, “We are sorry, Devo, we love you!”
Later on, in a moment of sonically contrasting irony, The Go-Gos' set overlapped with that of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Both acts are trailblazers of their respective times and genres, both with killer performances, and if you're like us, you ran frantically between the stages to catch a bit of both. Nick Cave has always been and will always be a haunting, satanic preacher of a performer; the minimalist nature of his look, compounded with his draconian piano playing, is never not mesmerizing. Despite the lack of energy brought on by his music, fans still thoroughly enjoyed tracks like “Joy” and “Wild God.” Across the field, over at the “Sad Girls” stage, The Go-Gos were serving up 80’s Southern California summer fun. We screamed along to classics like “Our Lips Are Sealed,” “Lust to Love,” and “How Much More," with the band even referring to their early punk days at the iconic venue The Masque.
The day was also not over without addressing the rain jokes as The Buzzcocks smirked before singing “Manchester Rain”, fans chanted along to Garbage’s “I’m Only Happy When It Rains”, and The Go-Go's made sure to have us sing along to “Automatic Rainy Day”. At the end of the night, always comes the pilgrimage to the main stage along with the entire crowd, all clawing away at each other to get as close as possible. New Order, in their reign as the King of overplayed club songs, was sure to entice the crowd to be as impatient as possible. At the end of the day, the band aren’t what they used to be, but that's okay. Tracks like “Bizarre Love Triangle” and “Age of Consent” will always evoke a feeling of melancholic, fleeting youth, no matter how well they are sung. The band also displayed an impressive rave-like lighting setup reminiscent of the “Hacienda” era clubbing scene in Manchester.
All in all, as the state of the music industry becomes increasingly unstable, festivals will always be important to foster community. Cruel World 2025 found itself in the middle of several hits and misses, but we all still hope we get to attend Cruel World 2026 next year anyway.
