It was odd, walking around Camden Town during Desertfest – the annual weekend-long celebration of doom, stoner and sludge metal (we’ll come to what they all are later). Odd in particular to see so many men wearing tall, brightly coloured pointy hats: the kind your mum rolled and stapled for you out of a piece of card.

While surveying the floor of the Electric Ballroom from the balcony, I eventually asked the chaps next to me what was with all the wizard hats. One looked at me as though I was an idiot. ‘They’re not wizard hats. They’re gnome hats.’ Oh, right. Why are they wearing gnome hats, then? Again surprise at my ignorance. ‘Because of the Belgian band. Gnome.’ Of course. Silly me.

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The sound of Desertfest would be cosily familiar to the parents of attendees. Almost every band at every edition – whatever genre they adhered too – owed much to Black Sabbath. The stoner bands all sounded like the Sabbath........

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