The Ariston - ‘The Festival’ Review: A future indie hit unfolding for talented young rock band

25 May

Taking noticeable cues from Catfish And The Bottlemen, The Hives and The Strokes, The Festival is fittingly a future festival anthem. If this was released by a huge indie band, it’d be everywhere by now.

★★★★★★★★☆☆

On 10th May, the alt-rock band The Ariston released their latest tune The Festival. It’s the second (official) single, previously teasing new music through live EP’s on all streaming platforms.

Taking noticeable cues from Catfish And The Bottlemen, The Hives and The Strokes, this track is fittingly what could be deemed a future festival anthem. The ambitious arena-ready songwriting follows the same relentless graft these bands underwent to reach a breakthrough status, particularly Catfish And The Bottlemen.

If you were to write an indie-banger shopping list, you’d find yourself adding ear-worm vocals, youthful spirit, glorious guitar hooks and blistering drums. When a track seems to tick all of the boxes, before you have a chance to question it, you’re already infatuated by the sound in your ears. The Festival is one of those moments.

From the very first listen to the countless replays that followed, this single oozes confidence. It’s not begging for your attention, or trying to be something it’s not. Self-assured as ever, it appears they’ve cracked the ‘indie formula’ pretty quickly.

It’s not an understatement to say that if this track dropped from a bigger artist, it’d already be on its way to thousands of streams by now. We loved the track so much, that it was even featured in our Weekly Roundup of new music.

Hailing from London, The Ariston is led by frontman Luca Slade, Clay Bennett (lead guitar), Will Parsonson (bass guitar) and Finn Bunce (drums). You may recognise them from a special appearance as The Clash in Bob Marley’s 2024 biopic. They’re actors as well as musicians. A realisation which only made our intrigue to see them live grow even further. We can only imagine the mosh pits with hooks like this.

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The Ariston could become part of the next generation of bands, carrying the torch of late 2010’s indie rock. If The Festival is anything to go by, we might have just stumbled across something huge.

Catch the band playing On The Meadow, a brand new festival, in August.

Now, it’s your turn. Give it a spin, and tell us what you think on Insta or X.