And 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 MoreIt's raining. Not much rain, but it's still raining. Cauldron kick things off in the Sophie stage. Those who hope the name conjures up sword and sorcery inspired power metal will be bitterly disappointed. This is classic early-era metal core with an emphasis firmly on the core. Hailing from Birmingham they have gone for the nostalgia vote hard.
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 MoreDamnation 2023 is immaculately curated. This is not random bands thrown into some form of inconsistent order. Real thought and consideration has actually gone into who follows who. The entire day works as some sort of cathartic emotional journey, taking you from spiritual highs to desolate lows.
Directly following the astonishing Julie Christmas with Downfall of Gaia is a genius move. Whilst there are real differences between the acts, they share a common DNA strand of emotional resonance. It seems weird to pin this on black metal, but Downfall of Gaia is music to make you cry.
Read MoreWe all love to moan. We are British. Finding fault in everything is our national sport. However the truth is, no matter how hard you look, there is very little, if anything, to criticise about this year’s Damnation Festival (The puddle at the end of the drive may well have been a pain but it was clearly outside of Gav and Paul’s jurisdiction). The snag list from last year's inaugural edition at the BEC arena has been conclusively dealt with. There is not a food queue to be seen, chairs are plentiful, and I am still supping the specially commissioned stout well into Saturday night.
Read MoreAnd just like that it’s Sunday and that great stretch of metal that was laid out before us, has now just shrunk to a single day. But what a single day and how many blooming people have turned up to join us! From the get-go, the place is heaving and it feels very obvious that the site has reached its 25,000 cap.
Read MoreThere is a wonderful sweet spot about the Saturday morning of a festival. You have been there enough time to bed in and become familiar with the surroundings, but it is all yet to become a slog. Also, there is the delicious realization that you still have two days to go. Ambrius have the honour of kicking off proceedings on the Sophie stage and prove to be an interesting and enticing mix of power and progressive metals.
Read MoreAnd before we know it, we are straight into the first full day of festivities. The sun is up and blazing away though the plentiful cloud cover, this means it never becomes as inhospitable as last year. Bloodstock has always been about early starts and Lancastrian death metallers’ Bloodyard have pulled the short straw and are first out of the traps at the ungodly hour of 10:30 am.
Read MoreThis year we got ourselves out of ROCKFLESH Towers and down to a number of the Metal 2 The Masses events across the North West. To say we have been blown away by the level of talent on show would be an understatement.
Read MoreThere will be some tremendous vocals on display over the weekend but believe me, for power, reach and just general elegance none will match the set of pipes possessed by Gemma Lawler. Her day job is vocal coach but when she is not screaming " diaphragm, diaphragm” she is chief wailer with Birmingham prog metalers Dakesis.
Read MoreYou know that memo that says all metal bands wear black and gotta create music that fits that blackness, well Square Wild didn't get it (they will probably shopping in Affleck's Palace for psychedelic shirts). Winners of the Mancunian Metal 2 the Masses, theirs is a technicolour and transcendental take on prog rock.
Read MoreFolk metal divides into two very distinct camps. Those who take it very seriously and those who don't. Norwegian buffoons Trollfest fall very much into the latter category. The fact that their latest album is entitled “Dance like a Pink Flamingo” should give the game away. For a band that didn't play shows for the first four years of their tenure, they have become a remarkably entertaining and chaotically wonderful like proposition.
Read MoreThis year's Bloodstock Festival is serving up a wide variety of death metal. By wandering around the plane of Catton Hall you will be able to see it in its many different guises. There is melodic, technical, core and symphonic a plenty. However, if all these bells and whistles iterations are a little too much for you and you hanker after some communal garden old school death metal then Frozen Soul is the one for you.
Read MoreAll things must end and we reach the fourth and final day. Whilst it is still hot enough to boil a monkey’s bum, there are thunderstorm warnings a plenty with not one but four potential typhons heading towards Castle Donington. With all the shenanigans with sackings and members not travelling, there is a real question mark about how many members Slipknot will have when they grace us with their presence at the culmination of the festivities. But we have a whole heap of bands to sample before we get there.
Read MoreWhen they say “Sold Out” they really do mean “Sold Out”. This is the busiest we’ve ever ever seen Download and all four stages start crowded and just accelerate from there. Our journey today begins with a four-band salvo on the second stage. Static Dress are quite simply a different band to the one that opened the third day of Download pilot two years ago. At the time they brimmed with potential but came across as incoherent and rather scattergun. Twenty-four months of tireless touring has resulted in an immaculately focused and really rather slick post-hardcore outfit.
Read MoreSo, this is it. Damnation Festivals’ grand step up into the big league. And if you are going to move home then do it in style. Whilst we were in the end sixty-six sales shy of the blazing “sold out as fuck” sign, shifting 5,934 tickets (double the capacity for even the busiest previous Damnation) is phenomenal. And then there is the bill. A smorgasbord of special sets, UK exclusives, and representatives from every corner of the extreme metal world. The fact that the absence of billed headliner Ministry was a complete non-event, is kudos to the strength of the bill as a whole. In many ways (in terms of performance, crowd size and participation, and general buzz in the room) it felt distinctly like Pig Destroyer were headlining and everything else was building up to and away from them. But more about that later.
Read MoreNight of Salvation provides Damnation festival with an intimate opportunity to road-test its new home at the Bec Arena in deepest and darkest Trafford. Tonight, manages to be simultaneously low-key and auspicious. Low-key in the fact that there are only around 300 of us on site, but auspicious in terms of the quality and the prestige of the bill that they have managed to pull together. The closing two sets (Celeste’s performance of “Assassin(s)” and We Lost the Sea doing “Departure Songs” as their UK debut) are both world exclusives and according to both sets of artists unlikely to be repeated anytime soon.
Read MoreSo this new stair-free incarnation of Damnation festival means that with a good wind, a willing bladder and a packed lunch you can actually plan on seeing 17 bands back to back. But for those of you more discerning folk who are still trying to work in merchandise shopping and beer perusing, we at ROCKFLESH are proud to present our five must see sets of the weekend. Based entirely on the subjective views of our black/death metal correspondent Stewart, these are the acts that he will personally get very grumpy if you dare not grace them with your presence (yes we know that he has not included Converge doing “Jane Doe”, yes we know that is not on and yes we will supply you with this email address).
Read MoreMy first Damnation was nine years ago, back in 2013. I went for one reason and one reason only, the (supposed) only UK show by my beloved Carcass (I say supposed as they were then added to an Amon Amarth UK package tour a couple of months after they were confirmed for Damnation). I went for the grind but ended up seduced by the variety of metal goodness on offer. It was a smorgasbord of diverse aspects of metal’s duplicit personalities.
Read MoreThe 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.
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