Festivals are all about moments and Evil scarecrow in 2014 certainly was a moment. They were first up on the Saturday bill and emerged to probably the largest crowd that has ever been seen at Bloodstock at 11.00 am. They proceeded to also have the most fun that has probably ever been had at that time of day. They were on a mission to be silly as well as ensuring everyone else would join in.
Read MoreOur veteran word-soup creator and self-confused socially inept death metal fanatic, Stewart Lucas has been doing Bloodstock since the late noughties. With eleven festivals to choose from, we asked him to list the definitive ten greatest Bloodstock performances. Please note that anyone who thinks differently is wrong. End of story.
It is widely documented that Twisted Sister wanted their final bow
In this case small is very much beautiful. The whole of Bloodstock is pretty much squeezed into a couple of fields. What this means is that you can pop between stages with ease and more importantly, you can go back to your tent without it taking half a day. In fact, the beauty of Bloodstock is you can watch a band on the main stage, then pop back to your tent, have a can and be back in your spot before the next band starts.
Read MoreBloodstock knows its market and knows what we like. It prides itself in booking bands that we don’t usually see, to prove the point, the only two sightings in the last twenty years on UK soil of the mighty Emperor has been at Bloodstock. In 2011, they got Immortal, there are probably only ten thousand Immortal fans in the UK and they were all in that field.
Read MoreMetal is a varied genre and Bloodstock provides for all tastes. This year’s bill is a whirlwind trip around about dozen genres. There is Black Metal (Dimmu Bogir), Melodeath (Children of Bodom), Classic Rock (The Scorpions), Post Hardcore (Code Orange), Deathcore (Thy Art Is Murder) Thrash (Xentrix) and Power Metal (Powerwolf and Sabaton) to name just a few and this is just the mainstage. The truth is if you like metal, you will find something at Bloodstock to tickle your fancy.
Read MoreYou will never find such a concentration of under 10 in Death t-shirts clutching inflatable guitars than you will find at Bloodstock. It’s very much a family festival even if that family are an alternative tattooed mum and dad who met many years ago on the dance floor at Jilly’s Rockworld. Remember the family that moshes together stays together. By the way, the girl in the photo, that’s my daughter. She was four and she’s eating garlic bread while watching Cannibal Corpse. As you do!
Read MoreBloodstock is officially the friendliest festival about. You don’t come here if you are planning on getting drunk and being an idiot, you come here because you love the music. This isn’t a “Oh I heard a song by that band once I might check them out!” festival. This is a “I know every word to every track that death angel will play coz I’ve loved them since ‘Frolic through the Park’” festival. By Sunday, you know everyone on site and are saying hello as you walk past each other.
Read MoreBloodstock tends to not recycle its headliners and it likes to offer slots to bands that it feels are ready to take that step. See Ghost in 2017, Gojria last year and Parkway Drive this year. All of them are not established headliners, but the former two both were utterly magnificent and Parkway, well Parkway will be immense.
Read MoreLast year’s Saturday headliner Gojira and this year’s Friday night bill topper Sabaton have both risen up the ranks over ten years. With both bands, it has been incredible to see their slow but steady rise up the bill and shows the commitment that the organisers have to letting bands develop as is.
Read MoreBloodstock’s piece of utter genius, a UK (and now Europe) wide competition to expose new talent to win places on the Hobgoblin “New Blood” tent. Other festivals will sometimes offer an opening slot, Bloodstock gives a whole frickin tent to new acts. It is one of the things that keeps the UK Metal scene going and it is solely the invention of Bloodstock.
Read MoreWhere else at a festival, can you stand at the bar in a real (well tented) pub and watch the action on the main stage? Bloodstock, that is where.
Read MoreNo watery lager here. Bloodstock has its own ale, its 6.66% and it is feckin lethal. Session beer, it isn’t, but it is one of the things that makes Bloodstock so special.
Read MoreSundays at festivals are usually greeted with mixed emotions; sadness that it is almost over and adulation that within twenty four hours you can have a hot bath and use a real toilet. I had planned on starting my Sabbath with much feted Glaswegian pop-rockers Lost in Stereo, however less than two tracks in, I decide that they are far too light and frothy for 11.00 am on a Sunday. Their syrupy Weezer like melodies are a bit like nursing a hangover with camomile tea as opposed to nuclear strength coffee, so I abandon them to seek more abrasive stimulation. Sorry Guys.
Read MoreAnd we awake to blazing sunshine and blue skies. It’s like Wednesday and Thursday never happened and the only sign of the atrocious conditions earlier in the week is the liquid mud all over the campsites. Today is the day that Download brings the heavy as we get the most Metal main stage bill for many years.
Read MoreMost 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.
Read MoreAnd we reach the end of the list! ROCKFLESH's final pick of those bands to seek out this weekend. And let's end with the big one and the reason that I suspect half of us will be at Donington park, Tool. It's been twelve long years since they last appeared on UK soil. I've moved house three times and had four different jobs since then but here we are, about to witness the majestic return of a band that can only be described as the Heavy Metal Radiohead.
Read MoreHow things change! For thirteen long years, Rob Zombie seemed to forget Europe even existed. However under a decade later, as he slides effortlessly into his fourth Download appearance since 2011, Rob Zombie has inconceivably become the festival's modern day house band. And the reason he keeps getting asked back? Well, Monsieur Zombie brings the party each and every time. It's a slutty, debauched fetish party where every night is Halloween (the hallowed original, not his soulless remake), but it's a party all the same.
Read MoreI love my Metal pretentious, I love it complex and I love it challenging. However there are times, you just want total sugar overload, to wallow in commercial pleasures that are smothered in melody. Lovebites are a saccharine bomb of sing along lyrics, catchy hooks and memorable tunes. Their sound is big, bold and accessible. Each and every track welcomes you in with choruses that you could land a plane on.
Read MoreWhitechapel get a berth on our list on the virtue of having released one of the albums of the year and the excitement of hearing those tracks live (well as many as their half hour slot on Sunday in Dogtooth allows) makes them for me a must see. “The Valley” is a masterpiece of brooding, emotional and intense Metal that moves Deathcore forward like nobody before them.
Read MoreTrivium are a band in transition. 2019 marks their twentieth year as a unit but it feels that they are only now finally transcending from upcoming young bucks and the next big thing, to being viewed as an established mainstay of the Metal hierarchy. The stadium filling festival headlining status that was long predicted for them has failed to materialise and most probably now will never happen. However instead Trivium have morphed into a highly dependable and pretty decent mid-table proposition that are comfortable in their own skin.
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