God, us metalheads can be a conservative with a small c lot. "Oh that's not Metal, they have short hair and I don't like them and how dare Bloodstock book someone different". Yes, the outcry that meet Parkway Drive's addition as Saturday headliner was deafening and also quite perplexing. They are heavy as fuck; they create catchy, crunching tracks you can tall along with and they have fire.

A world wide mega hit can be as much a curse as it is a blessing (just ask Europe). This is especially so when it occurs twenty five years into a rich and diverse carrier. ‘Winds of Change’ may have made a household name out of Scorpions, but it unfairly casts a looming shadow over fifty five years of tireless rocking. It's also (Winds of Change) dull and, to be brutally honest, a bit shit.

Sabaton are probably the most deserving headliner Bloodstock have ever had. They have earned their spot by hard work alone, as over a decade they have slowly but surely made their way up the bill. Ten years ago, in 2009, they were second band on, in 2013 they were a highly entertaining third from top and in 2015 as special guests they literally blew headliner Trivium away. I say literally as they brought a ruddy tank with them.

The truth of the matter is that Alexi Lahio is a genius that simply doesn’t get the plaudits he deserves and, along with the awesome talents of fellow band members Daniel, Janne, Jaska and Henkka, extreme melodic death metallers, Children of Bodom are clearly one of my must see bands of this year’s Bloodstock. They deliver a precise, engaging and entertaining Metal show that feels as much like a party as a gig. Now, that’s the sort of endorsement that you’d normally see aligned to a pop-punk or party-metal band not a melodic Death Metal band, but that’s what makes Children of Bodom so unique and must-see.

Soilwork have been plying their trade since 1996, and much of what we see in modern bands can be attributed to these Swedish metallers. They themselves deliver almost perfect melodic death metal; originally utilising clean vocals and piano parts at a time when it wasn’t commonplace within the genre.

Bloodstock used to be a bit of a cult concern. Its niche was European Metal bands that never usually never came to the UK. However around seven pm on August 10th 2012 that all changed and Bloodstock announced itself as a mainstream event. This was the moment that they announced Anthrax as a special guest for the next year’s festival. Not headliner, but special guest.

Ever since they dropped initial singles ‘Thumper’ and ‘The Gush’ in the early noughties, I’ve been a massive Raging Speedhorn fan. On record they pound and drive their way through riff-laden groove metal like a juggernaut.

This year’s “When a Shadow Is Forced into the Light” is an astonishingly raw and personnel record. It deals directly with lost and heartbreak and describes in intricate detail the different emotions that guitarist Juha Raivio's went through on losing his partner, the singer Aleah Stanbridge, to cancer.

You never forget your first love. In the spring of 1988 I got my first Saturday job and suddenly I had something new and exciting in my life. Disposable income. Each Wednesday, I could carefully scan the review pages of Kerrang! and decide what piece of vinyl I would spend my £5.99. If it got 5K’s I would go and buy it after school the following Monday (the day albums should come out, none of this Friday bollocks). I bought some good (Voivoid, Faith No More and King's X all spring to mind) and I bought some utter drivel (Judas Priest’s “Ram it Down” (which is singularly the worst album they have made) and Frehley’s Comet’s Second Coming both get the award for being utter pieces of drivel).

So, I’ll come clean now and admit that I’ve never seen Evil Scarecrow live, but with that in mind I’m definitely going to watch them at Bloodstock. Why is that, I hear you ask? Well, they seem to be very much a marmite band and I truly believe that with these kinds of things you should take the bold step and try the experience for yourself before making a judgement.

One of the first bands on the Sophie Lancaster stage for Sunday are Londoners Harbinger. If you like your Metal heavy (and I mean HEAVY), fast and technical then this band are for you. They’ve toured with some of my favourite UK tech-metal bands including Heart of a Coward, Ingested, Loathe and Monuments, and have secured themselves as Tech-Fest favourites.

Death Metal is a bit like whiskey. Yes it's interesting if you mix it with other things but it's at its best neat, unfiltered and unrefined. Thy Art is Murder are as brutal as you are going to get without resorting to hitting yourself over the head with a sledgehammer. Their take on Death Metal is all about speed, power and vulgarity.

Picture the scene!

Tolmin, Slovenia. Metaldays. 2018.

Its been 28/29 degrees Celsius allllllll day.

I'm a bit fat and I'm dying in the heat. I've also been on my own with my 9 year old daughter, who has lost interest in the Metal festival because her favourite band played on the first day (the kids top picks are Alestorm, Ghost and Rammstein).

We're waiting for Soulfly when the child starts dry wretching. 

Almost 12 years ago, I first saw Cancer Bats start their journey when I was doing gig reviews in Leeds. I remember the fresh-faced lads striding onto stage and bludgeoning my ears with what I then described ‘the future of punk metal’. Fast forward to now and they’ve carved a very successful career and fanatically loyal fanbase.

The palmarés for Def Con One is an impressive one with Download, Hammerfest, HRH Metal, Beermageddon and previous Bloodstock performances under their belt – and that’s not even the full list! You wouldn’t expect anything less from a band formed back in 1997 by former Venom drummer Antton Lant.

The Thursday night headliner used to be some tin pot no name act that the organisers paid in beer. However, over the last few years, they have become more ambitious and the Thursday line up has become an integral part of the whole weekend. This year, they have surpassed themselves with Greek Black Metal overlords Rotting Christ. This is no filler outfit designed to keep us busy while they hide the campsite bins, Rotting Christ are bona fide legends who would easily score a high placed main stage slot.

Fifteen years together as a band might drive some mad, but what it’s instead done for Incite is ensure that their relevance has transcended sub-genres, fads and time-dependent appeal. They’ve somehow remained as close to the term ‘Modern Metal’ as most get, and continue to delight both new and old metallers alike, irrelevant of what line-up they find themselves on.

They are techy. They are proggy. They are djenty. And they are on the main stage!!! The UK’s very own TesseracT are getting ready to storm Bloodstock on the Friday!!!

One of my festival top picks goes to this band simply because they are amazing at what they do.

Today’s pick goes to SHVPES, a band we (by we, I mean “I") have absolutely raved about many times over.

I was delighted when they were announced for Bloodstocks Sophie stage on the Saturday of the festival, as SHVPES have delivered one of my favourite gig surprises ever when I saw them completely upstage both acts that followed them at a show last year.

Ten Ton Slug are a sludge juggernaut that I'm still yet to catch live. Bloodstock will hopefully bring on successful slug hunting for me! The four-piece from Galway, Ireland, specialise in massively chunky riffs and hollering stoner vocals.

Technically on-point and theatrically dramatic on stage, these guys personify what makes Bloodstock tick. I've seen the tech nu-metallers perform a couple of times now, and they really do put on a show.

Witch Tripper are a band that have spent the last few years solidly making a name for themselves, and gathering a huge following of fans as they've done so. And once you've witnessed these guys, it's easy to see why they are revered right through the UK metal scene.

In preparation for writing this, I put “Frolic Through The Park” on my Spotify and at once I was reminded what a forward thinking album it is. At the time (1988), I was transfixed by it as it moved thrash forward in leaps and bounds. There was funk (‘Bored’), massive self referential anthems (‘Devil’s Metal’) and Hardcore (‘Open Up’). There just seemed to be so much more in this record than everything else that was going under the banner of thrash.

Imagine coming so tantalizingly close to victory in M2TMs and being pipped at the post by an equally awesome band...

This is what happened to Blackpool’s Daybreaker in 2018, after they lost in the final to Sheffield’s Autocracy.

As a teenage thrashead in the late eighties, Xentrix were very much my band. They were only a couple of years older than I was and they had a youthful exuberance that was infectious. Back in 1990, I lapped up their second album “For Whose Advantage?” and could be regularly found in rock clubs under aged and over drunk eulogising over its greatest. Along with the rest of the budding UK thrash scene, they got swept aside by the tsunami that was grunge, but there is a happy ending here.

One of my top picks for Bloodstock has to be Manchester party/comedy metal band Footprints in the Custard. For fans of bands such as Psychostick and Lawn Mower Deth, the 5 piece are renown for their epic silliness and catchy songs (and questionable costumes from time to time...). Footprints in the Custard are no strangers to Bloodstock, having played the festival before, they have become firm favourites of the Bloodstock attendees over the years.