• Home
• News
• Features
• Reviews
• TV
• Photos
• Win
• Blog
• Magazine
• Merch
• Festivals

Blogstock!

A review of the action from Bloodstock Festival...

Saturday
Eager for our yearly fix of true metal festival glory Rock Sound hit up the Derbyshire countryside, the annual home of Bloodstock. But, not even a mid-August salute to metal gods is safe from Britain’s best friend: rain. Though sodden mud always fucks up a Rock Sound tent-arena transition, the light-hearted German power metal of Edguy makes it better. Judging by the crowd reaction, the band’s WWII-based stage banter is apparently always a win, and finishing with the thinking man’s anthem (‘Lavatory Love Machine’), the group are an effective antidote.

The rain subsides for Obituary whose lurching death metal never fails to translate best in the live sphere, though their performance is somewhat reserved. A setting sun greets the always-fantastic, and Rock Sound favoured, Devin Townsend Project. The cerebral-metal back catalogue lulls and riles the crowd to masterful effect. Fear Factory less so. Burton’s pitch-finding trouble was apparently not Sonisphere specific, something FF’s big-name rhythm section’s prowess can’t rectify. Rock Sound, covering our ears and running for cover, opt for second-stage toppers Sylosis instead. They only attract a few hundred listeners but the Reading metal quartet are remarkably powerful – especially for lead guitarist Josh Middleton’s sixth show on vocals.

Converging with the seemingly the entire festival’s population, Rock Sound takes in death-thrash headliners Children Of Bodom to close the evening. The Finns look comfortable and thrive off the receptive and eager Bloodstockers until curfew.



Sunday
Dodging odd, continental fairground rides (which constantly announce grammar- troubling lines like, ‘Smile for the camera! Don’t forget to.’) Rock Sound rediscovers
that Suffocation are the best kind of brutal. The New Yorkers build a physical death rapport with the crowd, even with Sunday’s scorching mid-morning sun. Oderous and his Gwar cohorts look weary, though their mock body fluid-based shenanigans are ample entertainment every time. Those (un)fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of said liquids inevitably look ridiculously multi-coloured for the rest of the day.

The follow-up, Gojira, slay frankly. They throw themselves across the stage with surprising abandon while tracks like ‘Backbone’ remind the crowd en masse of the head-banging inevitability of the Frenchmen’s atmospheric death. A guitar-less Mikael Akerfeldt is a bizarre and almost iconoclastic sight for Rock Sound, and
with Bloodbath’s performance being filmed none of the group ever seem to relax enough to enjoy the moment or the music. The aggressive death of Cannibal Corpse is flawless however and pounds relentlessly before a glorious ‘Stripped, Raped and Strangled’ finish.

Cannibal’s PMRC brothers, Twisted Sister show why they’re not a heritage act. Employing two decades of stagecraft, vocalist Dee Snider has Bloodstock in the palm of his hand and never lets go. A fine anniversary present for Bloodstock’s tenth year.



Pics by Falk Hagen Bernshausen