Rise & Fall Festival

Extreme Music Finds Its Festival in Deux-Sèvres

Rise & Fall was born in 2017 from a simple observation: fans of metal, punk, hardcore, noise, and extreme rock in Deux-Sèvres lacked their own dedicated annual event. Le Camji, a contemporary music venue located at 3 rue de l'Ancien Musée in Niort, took up the challenge by creating a touring festival that spreads across several venues in the department, bringing the most radical and demanding music to the heart of a rural territory.

The name "Rise & Fall" evokes the brutal sonic dynamics and intensity contrasts that characterize extreme music: passages of pure fury to tense lulls, devastating crescendos to charged silences.

A Festival Spread Across the Department

Rise & Fall's uniqueness lies in its touring and time-extended format. For three to four weeks, from late October to late November, the festival programs about ten evenings in several venues across Deux-Sèvres:

• Le Camji (Niort): Contemporary music venue, the festival's historic heart
• Le Moulin du Roc (Niort): National stage, for larger-scale evenings
• Salle Diff'art (Parthenay): Venue dedicated to contemporary music in Gâtine
• Salle Émeraude (Bressuire): Cultural facility of the Bocage Bressuirais

This territorial network allows it to reach diverse audiences and promote extreme music beyond Niort, in towns where these genres are rarely programmed.

An Uncompromising Program

Rise & Fall programs around forty bands per edition, mixing recognized headliners and emerging discoveries. The stylistic range is broad within extreme music: metal, death metal, stoner, heavy rock, punk, hardcore, post-punk, noise, math-rock, garage rock, psychobilly, and heavy psych. Over the years, the festival has hosted artists such as Black Bomb A, Totorro, Coilguns, La Jungle, Headcharger, Mademoiselle K, Shaârghot, and Poésie Zéro.

The festival favors limited capacities and proximity between artists and the audience, creating an intensity and warmth that larger festivals cannot offer.

Culture and Mediation Around Metal

Rise & Fall is not just about concerts. The festival offers free conferences in partnership with the Niort Agglo media libraries, led by specialists such as Corentin Charbonnier, a doctor of anthropology and author of research on metal culture. In 2025, his conference "Metal, precursor of ecological consciousness" explored the links between metal and environmental engagement. Other events — "Metal for All Ears" — are aimed at the general public to deconstruct prejudices about these music genres and showcase their cultural and artistic richness.