Bloodstock Festival, more than any other, promotes and showcases best new and rising talent. 2024 was no different and ROCKFLESH managed to watch a number of impressive bands across both the New Blood and EMP Stages. Here's a short summary of some of the bands that stood out to us, and for many of these acts you can find interviews (HERE) and live photos (HERE) on our site as well.
Read MoreAnd just like that it is Sunday and the big yellow ball of heat in the sky is doing its best job to burn us all to buggery. It's 2022 all over again, including those joyful yelps from the crowd when any cloud cover is forthcoming. Needless to say everything is all a little more laid back today as a collective lethargy emerges from the heat.
Read MoreFriday beckons fourth with almost perfect Festival weather. Warm, but also enough breeze and cloud cover to stop the place becoming a perpetual oven. Friday may well be packed with many musical gems, but really it is all about one band, who aren’t even playing, Motörhead. Today is the day that Lemmy becomes a permanent part of Bloodstock lore, with a proportion of his ashes placed on site in a specially commissioned bust. The ceremony to invest the final resting place for some of his remains is an emotional affair.
Read MoreIn years to come, 2024 will be known as the year Bloodstock came of age. It's previously spacious set up for the first time ever feels consistently busy. The step up to a stable and constant 20,000 capacity feels very obvious in the sheer amount of people around the place at any given point, but it is still dealt with with Bloodstock’s usual level of finesse and honesty. This was the year that Bloodstock no longer felt like a small concern.
Read MoreA music journalist’s role demands absolute objectiveness and critical distance. Well bugger that for a game of soldiers as Sunday night belches forth my singular favourite band in the entire universe, Liverpudlian gods of grind, Carcass.
Read MoreBloodstock Festival 2024 is set to showcase an impressive array of rising talent on both the New Blood and EMP Stages. From the ethereal sounds of post-metal to the raw aggression of hardcore and thrash, this year’s lineup promises a diverse and electrifying experience. Here's a look at some of the bands that have stood out to us here at ROCKFLESH and we think you should checkout.
Read MoreThe UK might well have invented heavy metal and the states may well have popularised it, but it is our brethren in the frozen North of Scandinavia that have done most to keep it alive over the preceding decades.
Read MoreBuried away at the foot of Friday’s schedule is one of the finest purveyors of classic rock that you will come across. Haxan are another trio that proves that a threesome is always more fun.
Read MoreA modern criticism of Bloodstock is where is the power metal? Well in the shape of Unleash the Archers and Beast in Black it is well and truly in the house. Choruses you could house the royal airforce on? Check. Keyboard flourishes that would make Liberarchie question the level of decadence? Check. Obsessions with fantasy and a tendency to hit the dressing up box hard? Check.
Read MoreSo what is progressive power metal? It is when you dial down the emotion and dial up the emotion. Evergrey are kings of this particular sub-genre and have carved a long and illustrious career creating complex melodic music that simultaneously manages to be accessible and structurally challenging.
Read MoreWhat better way to end the weekend than with authentic Nordic death metal royalty. Formed in 1991 by mainstay duo Satyr and Frost, they have managed to avoid the controversy that has dogged their peers. They have achieved this by concentrating on the music instead of the gimmicks surrounding it.
Read MoreIn the mind’s eye, a one-man band is Bert from Mary Poppins with a Bass Drum on his back and two cymbals tied to his thighs. However Hellripper are a one man band and that man is Aberdeen wonderkid James McBain. Last year’s “Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags” was an extraordinary record.
Read MoreIf you played every record ever made simultaneously, it still wouldn’t light a candle to the eclectic bonkerness that is French innovator Gautier Serre. Igorrr circumnavigates every genre that you think of, but resolutely fit in none.
Read MoreWhen I first started attending Bloodstock Open Air in the late noughties, its USP re headliners was to give us continental big hitters that, in any other circumstance would not command a large stage in this cottage. So we had Children of Bodom, Immortal, Behemoth (who were still a relatively small concern in those days) and Emperor bewitch us with headliner extravagances when their pulling power on raiiny Tuesday in Stoke was no more than 500 people.
Read MoreThe normal trajectory for a folk metal band is to start with metal and then drift towards folk. Korpiklanni turned that on its head. In the late 90s, they were a Sami folk music collective playing the guttural sounds of the indigenous Finnish people.
Read MoreComedy metal has become a complex and multi-versed beast. There is the Python-esque absurdity of Evil Scarecrow, There is the Benny Hill revivalist movement that is Steel Panther (“look tits he he he he) and there is the children's birthday party in hell vibe of Party Cannon. Raised by owls are not taking the piss, they are far more astute than that.
Read MoreNow Celtic punk mainstays, Flogging Molly may well seem a little bit of a left of centre choice. But that's before you realise that lead vocalist and founder Dave King used to ply his trade in Fastway, what Fast Eddie did next after Lemmy kicked him out of Motorhead.
Read MoreThere are those who say the number 13 is unlucky, well it ain't here as it's giving you the eventual appearance of the much touted Clutch. They have sat at the top of the Bloodstock wish list for over a decade. It might have taken a while to get them onto the site but believe me it will be worth it.
Read MoreThere is death metal, there is technical ornate death metal and then there is Septicflesh. I talk a lot about stripped-down minimalistic death metal and the joy that is hurtling noise with all the trappings removed. Well Septicflesh are the complete opposite of that.
Read MoreWhen their special guest slot was announced at last year's festival, having Malevolence in such a prestigious position felt like an enormous gamble. 12 months on, it makes complete sense. There is so much traction about them at the present moment, that it now feels inevitable that they will be the first extreme metal band to break out of the underground and into arenas since Slipknot.
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