Having hosted the Organic Doom show for Kirklees Year of Music in 2023, the 2025 Organic Metal: Two Worlds Collide project was not the first time the Huddersfield Town Hall’s pipe organ has been used for a metal concert.
And with Plague of Angels returning in May 2026, it will not be the last.
Three University of Huddersfield music academics – Dr Mark Mynett, Senior Lecturer in Music Technology and Production, Dr Andrew Bourbon, Subject Area Leader in Performing Arts, and David Pipe, Music Tutor and Organist at the Huddersfield Town Hall – are behind the concerts, blending heavy metal and pipe organs to satisfy a growing thirst from audiences to connect with music in the face of AI and streaming. The concerts feature Mynett’s band Plague of Angels (with Oz Wright, Jeff Singer, Emilie Nox and Caroline Campbell) accompanied by Pipe on the venue’s Father Willis organ, which dates to 1860 and with 5,400 pipes, is one of the largest in the UK.
Plague of Angels played at St Paul’s, the former church on the University of Huddersfield’s campus, in 2024, followed by a groundbreaking show in front of 1,400 people inside York Minster just under a year later. But as well as giving audiences an extraordinary auditory and physical experience, given the combined power of the band and the large pipe organs in the venues, the band’s performances are flying in the face of how experiencing music has become a more solitary pursuit.
‘This is the age of algorithms and curated music, but we are finding that audiences want a fully immersive, anti-AI experience,’ Mynett says. ‘I think there’s a real thirst, in this AI era, for something that cannot be replicated digitally. People are seeking out an embodied physical experience. There’s a real gap in the market now in that people are seeking a different experience, and the ultimate is this instrument that’s the size of a house.
‘You feel it in your chest – it’s called tactile transduction, where you don’t just hear the frequencies, you can feel them,’ he continues. ‘And then you combine that with a metal band in civic and sacred spaces, you end up with something that’s immersive in 360°. That is something that algorithms just cannot provide.’
As well as adding a powerful element to the band’s sound, playing along with pipe organs is helping to highlight a need to preserve the instrument as a whole. It is believed that four pipe organs per week are scrapped or sent to landfill, and Mynett hopes that the band’s unusual approach can shine a light on those that remain in churches or civic spaces.
‘The one in Huddersfield Town Hall is an exceptional instrument, and we are lucky that we have David Pipe with us. These pipe organs are part of British culture and part of our heritage, and they are often in places that can be used increasingly as community hubs as well as places of worship. If these spaces with these amazing instruments could be used in new and different ways, then future generations will still be able to experience the unique qualities of pipe organs.’
More: www.hulltheatres.co.uk