The sun is shining as we stumble from our tents and vans into the arena for an 11am start. Bleary-eyed from the VIP welcome party the night before, we wonder who on earth thought it was a good idea to start a festival this early? To be fair they kind of had to, as we have a packed schedule today with many bands to see and many friends to greet. 

The site itself is wonderful, large and level with nothing too far from anything else. There are proper loos and showers, and although at present things are fairly compact there is plenty of room for this friendly little festival to expand in future. The arena is set up nicely too, with two adjacent main stages at one end and a marquee providing a third stage at the other end. There are traders, merch, a signing tent and food stalls around the edges, and also a ring of traders in the middle. This year sees two new additions – bar facilities are provided by those wonderful people at the Waterloo Music Bar in Blackpool, and their mobile “Lemmys Bar” proves to be a great success. There’s also a tattooist on site just in case you want to take home a permanent reminder of the weekend. This was also a popular option, and was busy all weekend from what I could see.

To the bands then! The festival was opened this year by Mercia, who gave us traditional metal with black face paint. In fact there was body paint on the singer, he looks like he's been down t’pit and I can’t help wondering how long it takes him to wash it all off. There were decent vocals, some nice guitar work and a lovely power ballad with a piano backing track and then big riffy guitars. The twin guitar sound is proper old school, and every song tells a story. I liked them a lot, they were very NWOBHM and reminded me in places of Diamond Head or early Iron Maiden. Standout track was the final song ‘Forever’ and I’m looking forward to catching them again at some point. 

The Reinforcements are from Edinburgh and feature Christian Kimmet on bass and a guest appearance from Stevie Pearce on rhythm guitar. They play energetic punk tinged alt rock, a bit like the Almighty. It's a bit dirty and greasy but I enjoyed it. 

Leader Of Down start like Motorhead; they seem to be a fairly generic 70 style blues rock outfit and the vocals remind me of Glenn Hughes. Apparently the band was started by Wurzel from Motorhead and continues pretty much as a tribute to him. The music is competent but not really my cup of tea although the rest of the crowd seem to be enjoying it.

Mikey Ball & The Company have a bizarre name but are actually a pretty good band. They’re upbeat, bouncy and melodic. They appear to have been to the Ginger Wildheart school of songwriting I think, it's catchy and cheerful summertime music and it works well at 2pm in a sunny field. There’s a hint of country and Petty in there and I muse that the band doesn't really seem to know where it's going sometimes. Still a good band with a good vibe though, but that name needs some attention!

Ashen Reach sadly lost their bass player with very short notice and are using a backing track for this appearance. Now this would be fine except unfortunately certainly at the beginning of the set some of the vocals were also obviously tracked and this gave us a couple of comedy moments where there were either vocals when no-one was singing or people singing but no vocals in the PA, oops! Luckily it only seemed to be a problem for the first couple of songs, so they didn’t lose ALL their credibility. Musically they are loud, brash and in your face which gets them a good crowd response. They have all the energy, all the thrashing and all the jumping. They are a very immersive band and I think they have huge potential - they play powerful commercial thrash and I particularly like the new song that gets debuted at the end of the set.

Wars turn out to be loud shouty thrash. They're very good at it but it's not really for me so I dash off for a quick sandwich break. On my way back I stick my head into the 3rd stage tent in time to see Indya, who are female-fronted classic rock. They appear to be having some sound issues which made it hard to review them properly. The vocals were a little bit Siouxsie and it was a bit of strange mix with fairly straightforward rock songs. 

Back out on the main stage Anti-Clone are ripping it up. They want to be Slipknot, complete with masks, and they're very loud, they spit the vocals rather than singing and they jump a lot. The music is actually ok but I’m not keen on the vocals personally. However this is a powerful performance that draws a great crowd reaction and I hear lots of positive comments about them later at the bar. One to watch I think even if they're not really my thing. 

Next up we have Mark Valentine with his energetic power pop and dad dancing. It's sunshine music again, upbeat cheerfulness and singalong choruses. Most of the set is from his solo album (released last year) but there’s also a track from his old band Last Great Dreamers. This set contains all the whoa-oh choruses you could possibly fit into a 30-minute show, and I dance until my feet hurt. 

Alunah are next and they do gothy doom with female vocals and wear an awful lot of leopard print. She has a great voice with power and range but I don't quite see the special. 

I nip back into the tent to see MOSKITO which turns out to be Dean Foxx from Knockout Kaine doing covers. He's a good frontman who sings really well and the crowd are responding brilliantly. It's a little bit of mindless entertainment and I love it! 

There’s always one new band at any decent-sized festival who you have never heard of that totally blow you away, and for me this year that was Carry The Crown. My friend described them as “bouncy boys” and that's exactly what they are. They do upbeat pop punk in the style of bands like Fall Out Boy, The All-American Rejects and the Canadian icons Sum 41. They have irrepressible energy, loads of melody and all the fun. They are only young but they put on a mature and practised show, bouncing all over the stage and keeping the tempo lively and the mood happy. A noughties party band that bring a breath of fresh air to this tired old classic rocker, I will definitely be checking these boys out again.

Troy Redfern next who does noisy blues on a cigar box guitar. There's lots of slide and wahwah and a lot of the set is instrumental. He plays the guitar on his lap, over his head, all over the stage in fact. It's a little bit of fretboard wankery in places but on the other hand he’s a really talented player! His band are a three-piece so the sound is stripped back and raw, and even though a three-piece band playing blues is usually one of my musical nightmares I actually quite enjoy it just because of the sheer virtuosity of Troy’s playing. 

I managed to get back to stage 3 to catch the end of Lords Of Ruin, which turned out to be a cover of Pantera's ‘Walk’ done really well. They had some confetti cannons, the tent was rammed and I'm rather sorry I didn't see more of them. 

Another change of pace for tonight’s penultimate band, The ever-changing Ginger Wildheart, this time with The Sinners, are bringing a little bit of country harmony to the proceedings. This is one of Ginger's many side projects and it really does bring out the good old country boy side of him. The vocal harmonies are absolutely perfect and the highlight of the set for me is still their cover of Status Quo’s ‘Dirty Water’. We're having more of a barn dance than a mosh pit at the moment, and I am totally OK with that. Even though it's far from the Wildhearts the songs still have that certain gingerness about them, but to be fair the main man in this particular project is Neil Ivison, and it’s actually quite nice to see Ginger take a back seat and let someone else get on with the bad jokes about tuning guitars! it’s a grand performance done really well. I am enjoying them, the band look like they are enjoying themselves and even though I can see some of the crowd looking puzzled and seeking the rock they go down well. 

It's finally headliner time and tonight the show is closed by Kris Barras Band. It's not that long since I reviewed him in a theatre and yet again I find myself surprised at his versatility. I am expecting to be a little bored but actually Kris and his band keep my interest and keep me engaged throughout the set. He's turned from a hipster blues troubadour into a Bon Jovi clone and now plays catchy him melodic hard rock. His bass player has all the strings, and seems to actually play most of them too which impresses me. Kris himself prowls the stage like a caged tiger, spitting out his lyrics and engaging the crowd. Sometimes he plays guitar, sometimes he slings it over his back to belt out his songs and bask in the adulation of the crowd. There are several songs of his in the set that I am beginning to recognise, and he ends with his anthem ‘My Parade’ which has arms waving and crowd sing-along and it's all entertaining.

So that’s day one. There is an afterparty in the tent stage but to be honest I am rocked out, so I head for my bed with a huge smile on my face despite my very tired feet! 

Check the “In The Flesh” page for more photos!