Live Review : Bloodstock Festival 2021 - Day 3
Friday morning finally sees the main stage splutter into life. By this point we have already had two nights under canvas and are beginning to feel like we are in some Kafkaesque nightmare where we are perpetually doomed to roam the wastes of Catton Hall. It may well be quarter to eleven, but Foetal Juice are determined to make as much nasty primal noise as humanly possible. This is metal at its most puerile and putrefied, and they do a grand job of sending all those hangovers packing. Over in Sophie, King Creature are a different beast (pun intend) altogether. This is raw bluesy rock at its best. They ooze with confidence and there is something wonderfully infectious about a band that knows they are on to a good thing. Divine Chaos play thrash like your grandma made it. Driving, frantic but packed with technical prowess. They quickly win over a curious crowd and by the end of the set they have an awful lot of new friends. Deified come across as thoroughly pissed off with everything and everyone. They channel that nihilistic rage into a cauldron of noise that resembles the how the Deftones would sound if they had had one fucker of a day. It may well be too early in the morning this much unrepentant anger but they still mange to make their mark.
Svalbard are the bastard child of Mogwai and Mayhem. A kaleidoscope of differing influences and musical touchstones that really shouldn’t work but manage to do so magnificently. It is all about the layers and contrasts, the music they are making isn’t actually that complex but by routinely changing pace and structure they manage to create pulsating waves of sound that engulf the listener. Serena Cherry stands at the heart of their aural hurricane, pouring out every drop of emotion in her body. Difficult but utterly immersive, their short but highly effective set is nothing short of a triumph. Dog Tired seem to have brought their own fan base with them from Edinburgh as every bugger in the Sophie tent seems to be bisotted in a t-shirt bearing their moniker. They play their metal with a straight bat, driving riffs, guttural vocals, and blistering drums. However, it is that added element of Pantera-era groove that allows them to poke out above the rest of the crowded market. Acid Reign don’t have an auspicious start. Their equipment decides to play silly buggers and Paul Chanters’ guitar amp gives up the ghost. Frontman “H” puts it down to a bad day at the office and has to rely on the skills learned in his other carrier as a stand-up comedian to get him through. Thankfully, he is rather good at the whole humorous stage banter malarkey and the twenty minutes of technical shenanigans is enjoyable rather than tedious. Once we finally get going, we get a treasure trove of vintage bouncy irreverent thrash. The most remarkable thing is that you cannot see the join between the stuff recorded during their first stint in the late eighties and the material written twenty-nine years later for 2020’s “Age of Entitlement”. Detractors may well point out that’s it is essentially “H” and a bunch of hired hands but that doesn’t stop it being a frantically fun set.
Back to the Sophie tent for Garganjua who are nothing short of revelational. Like the Crawling the day before, they seem intent on disassembling what we assume to be Doom and reincarnating it entirely as something else. Yes, there are monolithic riffs, but they are interspersed with real subtlety and dynamism. It just sounds grandiose and luscious and pushes very much against Doom’s usual blueprint of claustrophobic miserabilism. They are received with waves of rampant enthusiasm and by the time the final tracks rings, the band are all wearing huge grins. “Not bad for a side project” says a clearly euphoric Scott as he wanders off stage. Beyond Salvation in the new blood tent stage won the mancunian heat of the truncated virtual Metal to the Masses. They are chunky and shouty, full of righteous anger and furious riffs. Back in Sophie it is time to reach to the sky and bring the power metal. Primitai are both sumptuous and luscious. There are gigantic choruses and hooks that take route in your brain claiming squatters’ rights. I knew none of their songs yet found myself singing along like I was some teenaged devout. Power Metal maybe as cheesy as a Dairylie factory but god it can be good fun and Primitai certainly proved that point.
Back to the main stage for one of the most anticipated sets of the day, Venom Prison’s opportunity to show that they are this country great white hope for world domination. This is Death metal stripped right back. All the toxic masculinity that taints some quarters of Death Metal has been removed, as has the posturing and the egos. What we have in its places is a take on the genre that is minimal but savagely heavy. Venom Prison don’t stand on ceremony, they just tear the place apart with little airs and graces. They are all about untamed and unrepentant power. As always Larissa Stupar is at the heart of their maelstrom of noise. She screams, gyrates, and essentially seems to live out the words that she spits out. She rejects metal’s obsession with having female vocalists in impractical garments that seem to have come from a pre-teen’s wet dream and instead wears stage gear that she feels comfortable in. And that’s the point, you don’t view Larissa as a female growler, she is an emotive and singular frontperson holding her own with anyone in this genre. Overall, they may be as brutal as a nail adorned baseball bat, but tonight they showed that they belonged on big stages and at the top of bills. Not because of any gimmicks but because they are a unique and explosive live act.
Currently The Wldhearts are looking at a score draw after their tantrum curtailed damp squib of a set at Diddy Download but also their career defining firebrand of a performance at Steelhouse. Tonight, we get, thankfully, the latter as Ginger and co decide that their mission is to persuade even the most die-hard of trad metallers, that an in-form Wildhearts can be the greatest rock’ n roll band on this frickin planet. For sixty minutes they are utterly extraordinary, bouncy, playful but also laser procession focused. The setlist is a delicate balance between new and old which finds tracks from acclaimed comeback album “Renaissance Man” sung with the same level of gusto as songs from “Earth Versus The Wildhearts”. Key to a great Wildhearts show is that connection between the band and the crowd and tonight they visibly feed off the rapturous reception. “See!” says Ginger to drummer Ritch who was absent for the previous Bloodstock appearance, “…told you they were sound!”. A sure-fire sign of a good set is how quickly it goes and the finale of ‘Love You till I Don’t’ comes around in the blink of an eye. Utterly utterly superb and all memories of that Download show are now eradicated.
Back to Sophie for the grand return of Bloodstock stalwart Evile. A lot has changed since they last played here, Ol Drake is back and is now on vocals and his brother Matt has departed. They have also, in the shape of “Hell Unleashed”, released their first album in eight years. In truth it takes a couple of tracks for this new configuration of the band to click, Ol Drake’s vocals are significantly more guttural and grainy than his brothers and they initially seem a little rusty (this is their first formal show in over three years). However, once we reach fan favourite ‘Cult’, it all slides into place and suddenly they are on fire. It just accelerates from there onwards. The two tracks aired from the new album fits perfectly with driving intensity of the four songs we get from their seminal debut album “Enter The Grave”. In fact, its title tracks acts as fitting finale and demonstrates that they are very much back at their best. Directly following Evile, Conan bring the heavy and they bring it in the shape of gargantuan sized riffs. They are dark, pendulous, and monolithic and crash down upon the crowd. This is Metal slowed down to a snail’s pace but with the weight and intensity dialled up to eleven. Everything is glacial paced; each wave of driving guitar slowly builds up momentum and then hurls itself at the unsuspecting crowd. It is absolutely stunning and feels like being in the eye of a slow-moving hurricane.
With the sound of Conan’s primal doom still ringing in the ears it is off to the mainstage for “that” set. Devin Townsend has set the bar for going over and beyond the call of duty in order to make this headline show happen. He has been in a “central Manchester based mid-priced chain hotel room” for ten days so he can play, and has recruited not only a brand new British based band but also a completely new road crew. We get vintage Ziltoid' as an intro and then he wanders on stage. In true Devin style we get a comic recap of all he has had to do to make it here this evening and also a pledge to start again any tracks that they, in his words, fuck up. And then we are off, straight into the swirling hyperprog of Strapping Young Lad’s ‘Aftermath’. In fact, we get four Strapping Young Lad tracks across 14 track strong set. What is most interesting is that they don’t feel in anyway out of place with his latter more orchestrated material. This evening proves that Devin has managed to actually evolve beyond genres and pigeonholes and that he exists in his own singular music style, simply entitled Devin Townsend.
We get the transcendental and almost zen like qualities of ‘Kingdom’ and then we are into the comic galactic madness of Ziltoid with ‘By Your Command’ and ‘March of the Poozers’. The latter, described by Devin as being about “farting scrotums”, is marked by the appearance of giant inflatable Poozers that the audience willingly bounce between themselves, cheering direct hits. Like any Devin show, tonight is as much about is affable personality as it is about the music. He provides a running commentary on the tracks he plays, explaining where they came from and in ‘By your Command’’s case why he needed to create a puppet alter-ego. He also talks touchingly about the last eighteen months and how he bunkered down to take care of his kids and his aging parents.
There are a few glitches, ‘Stormbending’ is abandoned because of malfunctioning VT and he falls during the madness of ‘Deadhead’. Being Devin he continues playing and once stagehands have rightened him he complains that the slip has undone all the good that a chiropractor had done during his voluntary confinement in Manchester but still manages to continue the performance with the same level of energy and gleeful abandonment. Overall, this is the triumph that we had all prayed it would be. Big, epic, spectacular and just oodles of fun. The soul track from “Empath”, ‘Spirits Will Collide’ sees the ridiclouslessness dialled up well beyond eleven. A choir, including Primordial radio’s very own Moose, elegantly mime along and a dancing elephant and a guitar playing gorilla emerge. The Lyrics are karaoke like beamed across the screen, turning into an immersive communal sing along. The elephant turns into such a hit that the audience bay for it to stay, “are we paying for it by the minute or is that alright?” deadpans Devin, and it bops along to main set climaxer ‘Detox’ like it was always meant to be there.
Like a musical version of Penn and Teller, Devin explains the whole encore illusion before purposefully wandering off to only return for one last track. To mark the fact that it is Friday 13th and the whole horror theme, we get a finale of ‘Vampira’ complete with images of Bloodstock’s own Vicky Hungerford dressed as an alluring devil. But we are not done yet. Central to the emotive power of the set was the fact that Devin gets the festival, its importance to the fans and the significance of it happening at all. He invites the organisers out to commerate the twentieth anniversary and fireworks rain across the sky. Then in true Devin style he tells us all its over and he should “Go Home”. To call this an astonishing achievement would be to underplay its brilliance. A man that has been sitting in a hotel room for ten days and only had three days to rehearse with is band, pulled off the set of the weekend, if not Bloodstock’s entire history. Sublime, effecting and just utterly extortionary.
I just love Metal. I love it all. The bombastity of symphonic, the brutality of death, the rousing choruses of power, the nihilistic evil of black, the pounding atmospherics of doom, the whirling time changes of prog, the faithful familiarity of trad, the other worldlyness of post, the sheer unrefined power of thrash. I love it all!