Live Review : Bloodstock Festival on August 9th 2024

Friday 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.

Live Review : Arctangent Festival on August 20th 2022

The level of respect and admiration within our world for cellist Jo Quail is frankly quite astonishing. Her midday appearance on main stage attracts a larger audience than any of the three headliners. The atmosphere is one of silent reverence, interspersed by an almost fanatical outburst of appreciation when she reaches the end of each of her three pieces.

Live Review : Damnation @ Leeds University Union on November 2nd 2019

John Peel used to describe The Fall as always different, always the same. I'm going to appropriate the phrase to illustrate how I feel about Damnation Festival. There is a wonderful familiarity about the place. After seven years, Leeds University Union feels like a home from home and every nock and cranny is filled with memories. As I enter, it does feel like only yesterday that I was last ...

Live Review : Download Festival on June 14th 2019

Most reviews you will read of this year’s Download Festival will be from journalists who stayed in off-site hotels and who spent a predominate amount of their time on site in the distinctly less muddy press aware. ROCKFLESH is a site of the people, by the fans for the fans, so therefore no such luxury for us. We humped our gear from the sodden swamps of West car park with the rest of you, we spent hours trying to fit three sizable tents into a piece of grass no bigger than a postage site as you all did, we cursed the fact that we seemed to be camped directly at the end of the runaway as everyone else did and we yomped through the mudapocoalaypse brown quokemire that the Village had become with the everyone else.

Download 2019 Countdown : 13. Opeth, Zippo Encore Stage on Friday, 18:15 - 19:05

It is only as I write these short vignettes that I fully comprehend the treasure trove of metallic riches that this year's Download bill is. With so many nuggets of wonderfulness that clashes, difficult choices, partially seen sets, a lot of running around are sure to be the order of the day. There are some bands though who I will watch every second of, who will trump anyone else that happens to tresspasse onto their timeslot. Opeth are one such band as they are nothing short of magnificent.