Bloodstock Open Air

FRIDAY

Back to Bloodstock for my 22^nd year, yes you read that right – from it’s humble beginnings in Derby Assembly rooms and my humble beginnings as a baby greebo, here we both are once again. The sun is shining in a menacing sort of way that tells me I’m going to end the weekend a delicious shade of rouge, but I am so ready to headbang my way through BOA 2024’s delectable musical offerings.

Green Lung hailing from London bring their stoner metal flavour to the RJD stage, which is set with an odd collection of Jim Henson-esque monsters for some reason. I really like the furry viking head thing but that horse-raven thing at the side is absolute nightmare fuel to be honest. “This song goes out to anyone who has ever suffered with depression” says frontman Tom Templar, before the band play recent hit ‘One For Sorrow’.

Grand Magus’ set is besieged by technical difficulties early on as the PA appears to be off on it’s own musical adventure when they’d stopped playing, but wow did they recover. Swedish heavy metal may as well be a brand in it’s own right at this point, but I have a theory that bands that unironically wear their own t-shirts – are always great. Next we catch supergroup Haliphron over on the Sophie Lancaster stage for some screamy doomy funtimes with a frontwoman who is possibly of Targaryen descent; “We are honoured to be on the Sophie stage, may she be remembered forever”.

Off for a wander we say a quick hello to local(ish) Tamworth legend SpudMan who is yelling funny things at everyone whilst scooping ungodly amounts of cheese onto potatoes, in the best way. Battle reenactment in the square is drawing a massive crowd of cheers, because who doesn’t want to relive their primary school field trips at a festival? The biggest cheer is reserved for when one from the blue team manages to smack the helmet off a very tall member of the green team (don’t quote me on that, the colours were a blur of shields and swords) as the compare shouts “Aww what lovely long flowing locks he has” just to really dial down the cool-factor.

Next we catch Rotting Christ, who despite their name are actually a band of very nice and friendly looking men doing a lot of shouting and hair windmilling. Black metal in the sunshine really hits different than it does on Spotify I tell you, they’re even *smiling*.

Norwegian metalheads Enslaved come out swinging with their Norse mythology inspired works and runes tattooed all over them, but the tone is immediately sobered as they say “We had some sad news this morning, a friend of ours passed away yesterday” referring to Dave Sweetapple of American band Witch.

Hatebreed up the tempo later on, as the heat of the day finally starts to wane a little, yelling “This is hallowed ground Bloodstock”, “It’s our job to make sure you wake up tomorrow with no voice left” and inciting some giant circle pits. Even the inflatable dinosaurs are up for a crowd-surf this evening, despite them being quite hard to navigate where you’re actually grabbing/passing them above your head…

In what seems like a day of laments, there is also the matter of the Lemmy Forever vigil which is brought to the main stage. A giant bust of Lemmy Kilmister (of Motorhead, in case you’ve been living under a rock for… well, ever) is ceremonially wheeled out onto the stage flanked by the Bloodstock organisers Adam and Vicky, and Phil Campbell. They each take turns to explain a bit about how much Lemmy loved Bloodstock, and what an impact he’d had before the portion of ashes bequeathed to Bloodstock were locked up in a tiny safe inside the bust. It’s quite a cool thing to do really, send parts of yourself to everywhere you loved – what a nice idea. Anyway, during the weekend you can go and ‘visit’ Lemmy inside the BOA art gallery, before he is relocated to Nottingham’s Rock City venue for the next year. If you do visit him, let me know if you also think his bust has very Iron Throne vibes, it’s so cool.

After a brief reprise for a bag of hot donuts, my most-anticipated band Clutch absolutely smash the metaphorical doors off the place with their signature brand of fast paced rock n roll. I will always find it absolutely hilarious that the rest of the extremely normcore coded band stay almost stock still mid-stage for the entire set while enigmatic frontman Neil Fallon wreaks body-contorting frenzied havoc about the place for a solid hour. “I didn’t think I needed sunscreen in the UK, that was a mistake” he jokes, before launching into earworm (and favourite of mine) ‘Sucker for the Witch’.

The awesome cosmic backdrop sadly isn’t on any of their tour merch, which incidentally was almost sold out completely before they ever even made it to the stage, so here’s my petition to Clutch to get it done. In another little stage sound mishap for today; “Hold on the guitar isn’t working… did you turn it off and on again? That’s good enough for rock and roll fuck it” doesn’t impede them for long and we get the excellent ‘In Walks Barbarella’. If you don’t singalong “Weaponized funk” there’s something wrong with you.

On the Sophie stage, The Vintage Caravan look exactly as you imagine they would – sporting the white Stetson, bootcut flares, double denim and jorts style of the US south. Except that they’re from Iceland. Oh. Anyway, I flippin’ love them. Guitarist Óskar Logi Ágústsson may be delightfully twee and joyful to watch, but his work is impeccable clean and complex – straight on my playlist they go.

Operatic all-lady quartet MAB burst the seams of the EMP tent with a huge crowd, but really needed to be elsewhere for the full effect I feel. There’s something slightly janky about trying to contain soaring vocals into an itsy bitsy tent, that is also a bar, that is also surrounded by shops with their own music playing.

Final band of the day for us is main stage closer, Sweden’s premier prog gods Opeth. Now, I will preface this with – last time I saw them I was unenthused. Mainly because I’m not all that into prog, but also because it was daytime and it felt all wrong listening to that kind of music in the blazing sunshine. Tonight however, the crowd is full, the sun has gone down and we are ready for some gloomy good times. ‘The Grand Conjuration’ opens the show and it really is impressive, despite it lasting for around eleventy billion hours. No I’m only joking, apparently the average Opeth song is only (ONLY) 8 minutes and 19 seconds long…

Mikael Åkerfeldt is in a much more talkative mood than last time as well, which is nice because the BOA crowd are feeling a bit heckle-y tonight it seems. “I LOVE YOU MIKAEL” an enormous man in the front row yells, drawing a laugh from the band before someone else shouts “Play Freebird!”. Taking it in his stride, Åkerfeldt shouts back “Freebird? That’s a good song… but no”.

“We have a new record… but we don’t know the songs yet… were gonna come back and play some songs sometime in the UK. Our manager is really angry with me right now for not saying the date but I can’t remember” they joke, but there’s no doubt the new stuff is met with trepidation from ‘Oldpeth’ fans. ‘Deliverance’ for the encore more than makes up for it, it’s a gorgeous, sumptuous show… for Opeth fans. For the rest of us uncultured swine, it’s a litany of lengthy poetry and I am too sleeeeepy.

1. The Grand Conjuration
2. Demon of the Fall
3. The Drapery Falls
4. In My Time of Need
5. Heir Apparent
6. Ghost of Perdition
7. Sorceress

Encore:

8. Deliverance

SATURDAY

A showery start to Saturday has us all worrying we’ve brought the wrong clothing, but it soon clears up to be another spicy day in the sunshine, and we’re headed to the Sophie stage to catch the rather beautiful goth goblin that is Ludovico Technique. As the Ringwraiths, ahem, band, make their way to the stage we catch a glimpse of vocalist Ben V swigging something viscous from a plastic cup, that looks suspiciously like he’s downing a blood bag.

The Dementor’s amp up and he creeps into centre brandishing his giant claws at the crowd. I’m really into this resurgence of industrial spooky metal, it has a very MM feel with a bit of a grungy Silverchair esque edge to it. I even like the orc-blood drool (which I guess was the contents of the curious cup).

On the RJD stage, Forbidden are bringing us some classic old school thrash metal, lots of hair and screaming, with Craig Locicero absolutely wailing on the guitar. The dinosaur meet-up on the EMP stage for today’s fancy dress theme, is somewhat of a distraction though. Especially when someone plays a metal version of the Jurassic Park theme.

Mimi Barks is ripping up the Sophie stage with her unique brand of doomy rap over electronic metal beats. Wearing a plastic yellow two-piece with a zip around the entire crotch region, and some impressively scary white-out contact lenses, she looks like some kind of otherworldly futuristic voodoo doll. I dig it, and her music is memorably feral. There’s a huge crowd in here, all going as berserk as she is, which really is the measure of any act I feel.

Unleash The Archers couldn’t be more of a whiplash change of pace, bringing Canadian power metal to the main stage. As you might imagine, they are extremely smiley and nice, but that doesn’t mean they can’t throw down. Frontwoman Brittney Hayes is capable of singing incredible highs AND windmilling her raven black hair at neck distorting speed. Joking about the weather here today, which has now become uncomfortably hot “We recently played rock en seine and it was 40 degrees… So I’ll take this any day” laughs Brittney, despite guitarist Andrew Kingsley being possibly the most sunburn prone ginger man I have ever seen.

Anyhow, I know it isn’t cooool but I enjoy some melodic/symphonic metal and I’d like to see a bigger return to it on future BOA bills.

The chaotically fun Nottingham band Red Rum bring all the pirates to the yard, well tent, for a very silly set of drinking and yelling about drinking. A very sweaty “Open up a circle here bloodstock! No, not for a pit… for a heavy metal conga!” to you all.

On the main stage, Deicide are hotly attended but I wish I could actually hear the guitars over the screaming, and I’m too hot. Whitechapel bring crowdsurfers galore over the barrier, including one lad dressed as a giant inflatable penis, but it’s Combichrist who really up the ante with a scorching electronic set of pure wild abandon. If you’re into NIN and Rob Zombie, Combichrist are gonna be one of your top bands this weekend – and I WISH they’d played the main stage because there wasn’t even an inch of space left unoccupied inside that tent.

Malevolence too go hard the minute they hit the stage, calling for the crowd to split into a giant wall of death, but they are also caught with some sound hijinks like a few other bands so far this weekend; “We are having some technical difficulties but I promise you we’re gonna have a good night together”. After the resolution, vocalist Alex Taylor yells that he wants everyone over the barrier, and the crowd surfers never stop coming.

“We are Malevolence and we’re from Sheffield, but we flew 300 miles to get here because we weren’t fucking missing this” is backed by a crowd-led chant of “Yoooorkshire, Yooorkshire” before an attempt is made at a very silly circle pit. “Show me the biggest fuckin circle pit Bloodstock has ever seen… Hold on make some space. I think I asked for it to go back around the sound desk. Push people out the way. I’m not leaving this stage until it happens”. At this point it occurs to me that they have no idea that there’s actually an ice-cream truck backed up to the sound desk, and very little real estate for any kind of interesting behaviour, but the people give it a go regardless. It looks a bit more like a goth fun-run than a circle-pit but I applaud the effort.

“This is the third time we’ve played Bloodstock, It’s a dream come true to be up here. We hold this festival very close to our hearts” they shout, and leave us with a record breaking 901 count for crowd surfers. Manic.

Sylosis are beset by horrendous technical issues one song in, downing play for over 15 minutes and some very awkward calls for solos. Frontman Josh Middleton (who is rocking a Deicide tee) is visibly beside himself with annoyance as his guitar output goes completely kaput, and refuses to reboot despite several attempts from techies. Eventually he comes back sans guitar and they give us everything they’ve got without it. It’s heavy and the pit is boisterous, but I feel really sad for them to have done it this way.

Main stage headliner Architects blow us all away with their heavy opener ‘Seeing Red’ and a heck-tonne of on stage pyro. “Malevolence earlier had a 901 final count of crowd surfers… we are going to give it shot. Do you have the energy in you? Get on your friends’ shoulders and get over this fucking barrier” shouts Dan Searle before calling Bloodstock “Hallowed ground”.

It’s a strong headline set, but there’s a bit of me that wishes it hadn’t been quite so clinical – a little nod to some of Bloodstock’s history is something we’ve come to expect from bands here, especially UK ones who know what BOA is to the scene, but this felt every bit like a stadium show to me. Regardless, they certainly play tight and the pyro/ticker tape always adds a bit of excitement to a set.

“There’s a guy there with a sign that just says I love anal… I ain’t about to kink shame you brother that fuckin rules” laughs Dan, before some heartfelt shout outs “We would not be a band if it wasn’t for my brother Tom”, Dan’s twin and Architects founder, who sadly died in 2016. “Another person who has really helped this band… Make some noise for Josh from Sylosis” their ex-guitarist who performed earlier today.

‘Doomsday’, ‘Nihilist’ and ‘Animals’ finish up a very respectable set from the Brighton boys, and if you like that Enter Shikari type of sound, they’ve definitely scratched that itch tonight – but I’m hoping next time they’ll feel more woven into the BOA lore.

1. Seeing Red
2. Giving Blood
3. deep fake
4. Impermanence
5. Black Lungs
6. These Colours Don’t Run
7. Hereafter
8. Gravedigger
9. a new moral low ground
10. Curse
11. Royal Beggars
12. Doomsday
13. Meteor
14. when we were young

Encore:

15. Nihilist
16. Animals

Like any festival worth its salt, the night-time entertainment doesn’t stop at the headliner, but BOA goes one up and has a Sophie Stage headliner too. Finnish folk-metal heroes Korpiklaani take that top spot tonight to an absolutely rammed tent, for a night of Lappish cultural tales dressed up in some downright dirty heavy metal. Frontman Jonne Järvelä is dressed like a Saami Jack Sparrow in a hide-tophat and fringed clothing combo, and he reads as extremely cheeky and prone to hijinks. Ideal.

In a bid to get us grooving, their fiddle and accordion-led music is amped up for ‘A Man With A Plan’ and we can’t help but enthusiastically join in, the constant stream of crowd-surfers over the barrier tell me that everyone in here is having a ball. If all of that didn’t satisfy your needs tonight, Jonne also gets his arse out – so there’s that. 10/10 I love Korpiklaani.

SUNDAY

Onto the final day of BOA and it’s another absolute scorcher out there, lots of extremely pink people are gathered at the main stage for the gorgeously melodic Soen. Billed as Swedish Prog metal, but definitively different to everything else I’d put in that category, Soen are captivatingly soft and sombre, as well as remaining heavy and singable. I’m not surprised they’ve had a big turn-out here, I really enjoyed their set.

In a complete 180, Beast In Black are a gut-busting dose of fast and furious power-metal with an electronic edge. A massive neon Tokyo nights backdrop, retina-burning neon green and pink guitars that would look at home in any Goosebumps episode, and incredible themed outfits are the name of the game and I am here for all of it.

Sometimes you just need a band to come out and BE FUN. Beast In Black deliver across the board – I particularly like their choreographed headbanging/guitar swishing, but there’s no doubt about their musical talent either, the riffs are tight. Frontman Anton Kabanen (who looks like he’s ready to host the cyberpunk Crystal Maze), shouts “Are you ready to travel with us to a beautiful country called Japan? We’re gonna spend one night in Tokyo my friends!”  and we are treated to a very cheesy but ultimately very catchy afternoon of metal.

Warpstormer have filled the EMP tent to bursting for their low and slow thrash, and Septicflesh are throwing down the hair-swishing gauntlet in the fiercely strong sunshine. “We are Septicflesh from Athens Greece! Are You ready to move with us?” is met with sword-wielding enthusiasm from the front (no really, one guy actually has a sword) but there are a lot of heat-suffering people trying to muster up the energy around the arena.

Ankor in the Sophie tent bring us stunningly energetic punk-edged metalcore, and I sincerely hope that this is a band we see on a BOA stage again very soon – not least because their pocket-sized drummer is an incredible thrash-Queen and their lead singer can screeeeeam.

The Night Flight Orchestra are a Swedish classic rock band, who sound exactly like the montage part of every 80’s action film ever made. Like if you’re going to drive a sports car around winding roads to get to your next Roadhouse, or spend some time learning how to do a crane-kick – The Night Flight Orchestra have your back buddy. Lead singer Björn Strid (of Soilwork fame) is resplendent in an iridescent cape, his backing singers are dressed as retro air-hostesses and the drummer is wearing a full suit and cravat. I don’t know what to say, but I like it all very much.

“Did you bring your dancing shoes Bloodstock? Did you?” yells Björn, and the crowd screams back at him – it seems there are a lot of NFO fans in the BOA crowd today. Instant earworm ‘Satellite’ sees the entire arena start bouncing, and the band call for a group of people dressed as pilots to join them on stage – “Security we need our people on stage, our crew, get them up here”. After hugging everyone, the fans on stage are instructed to begin a conga line with the air-hostesses, as a matching conga takes up in the crowd.

“This is the very last festival for us, make us proud!” he shouts as they hit ‘West Ruth Ave’ which sounds like it would be perfect for a 70’s cop show. I can’t overstate how much I have loved this entire set, and I love Bloodstock for being able to book something so ridiculously fun alongside the more doomy serious bands – what an epic choice.

I feel much the same about the main-stage placement of Irish celtic punk rockers Flogging Molly – a band I’ve been blessed to see a few times now, and every single time they have been utterly fantastic. Today is no outlier, between Dave King throwing out cans of Guinness into the crowd, and his chaotic running around the stage – it’s hard to scratch a moment to breathe amongst the revelry. ‘Drunken Lullabies’ is the perfect opener for a Bloodstock crowd and ‘Tobacco island’ with it’s piratey sound is very BOA coded. “Fuck I need a drink after that” giggles Dave, “I’m gonna look like a fuckin tomato after this I’ll tell you that. The most beautiful tomato you’ve ever seen”.

“You’re absolutely fuckin’ beautiful you really are”, “One of the great things about being in a band like Flogging Molly is, today we’re playing an amazing metal festival and in 2 weeks time we’re coming back to play Moseley folk festival in Birmingham” they joke, but they’re not wrong – some of the great appeal of Flogging Molly is their ability to genre-cross, and I’d wager most metal fans actually listen to a very wide range of music.

‘Devil’s Dance Floor’ features Bridget Regan on the tin whistle, and has the entire arena up and dancing in a way that sort of looks like Riverdance with cattle prods. In a tribute to Motorhead’s Lemmy, “…so this is a song of friendship, and it goes like this…” we get the soulfully beautiful

‘If I Ever Leave This World Alive’, one of my favourite songs of all time. Another truly epic show today, thanks for booking that one BOA.

Carcass might not be my precise jam, but I did have to giggle at the Evil Nation/Live Nation t-shirt, and in their defence – and awful lot of people were having a thrashing good time with them. For my personal preference, Moldovan metal band Infected Rain over in the Sophie tent are the kind of wild I like. Lead vocalist Elena Cataraga (Lena Scissorhands) has a stunning voice alongside being able to scream like some sort of eldritch horror, their bassist is going absolutely berserk and the tent is a swarm of undulating limbs.

Closing the main stage tonight is the long-awaited return of Sweden’s finest – Amon Amarth. As the black curtain falls from the stage, we are immediately blasted in the face by ten tonnes of viking death metal and so much pyro it makes my eyes explode. ‘Guardians of Asgaard’ is powerfully, enormously fantastic – it’s quite hard to describe the frenetic energy of being right in the midst of it all.

“I don’t know if you know the lore but I’m going to say it anyway… don’t worry about it it’s just the lead into the next song” frontman Johan Hegg (who I have affectionately termed ‘Fire Santa’) leads us into ‘As Loke Falls’ whilst standing directly over a raging smoke cannon. The effect is frankly cinematic, but I’m not sure entirely intended as he quickly disembarks the step.

The giant Viking horn drum set, the towering Hnefatafl-like statues flanking the stage sides, the unrelenting blasts of golden orange flames… what an insanely iconic show, again.“Bloodstock have you had a great festival weekend?” is met with an almighty roar from the crowd, before the much anticipated call “Right bloodstock… bring out the epic viking row!”.

Now this, is a uniquely BOA experience (even commemorated on the back of an Amon Amarth tshirt available this weekend) as it was started here, in Derbyshire. If you ever went to a 90’s school disco, you’ll remember sitting on the floor for some inexplicable reason, to do oops upside your head dance moves in weird columns. So take that image and add it to your mental representation of row-row-row-your-boat; but everyone is grown-up, in varying stages of alcohol toxicity, sweaty, tattooed and wearing black.

Almost everyone in the whole arena complies, sits down in rows and begin to… well, row to the commanding calls from Johan, as an inflatable viking ship bobs happily on the stage. It’s surreal and kitschy and I adore it.

For ‘Shield Wall’ they bring out a heap of Viking reenactment types to hit each other and provide a visual cue, and we all take the opportunity to drain our cups (or drinking horns) as they shout “You’re loud and you’re wild and we love that shit, so we thought we’d take this opportunity to raise our horns to you… bloods cheers… skol!”.

“I think we have enough energy for another one how bout you guys… do you wanna party? Well then I guess it’s time for you guys to raise your horns… sing along!” signals the beginning of the end, but the encore includes an inflatable sea serpent being vanquished by Johan wielding Thor’s hammer, under a curtain of pyro. Epic.

“Until next time, be safe, party on, but most important raise your horns”.

1. Raven’s Flight
2. Guardians of Asgaard
3. The Pursuit of Vikings
4. Deceiver of the Gods
5. As Loke Falls
6. Tattered Banners and Bloody Flags
7. Heidrun
8. War of the Gods
9. Put Your Back Into the Oar
10. Put Your Back Into the Oar
11. The Way of Vikings
12. Under the Northern Star
13. First Kill
14. Shield Wall
15. Raise Your Horns

Encore:

16. Crack the Sky
17. Twilight of the Thunder God

Oh Bloodstock, there’s no easy way to explain to an outsider how much you feel like home. This might be a small festival on the scale of iconic metalfests, but you bet your ass everyone knows about it – because the community is impeccable here. I raise a glass of Iron Maiden’s darkest red wine to you all (which was for sale by the glass or bottle here), because every single year this festival exceeds my expectations. Next year is already off to a stellar start with the band announcements, and I’m unprecedently early in my preparedness to have my face melted off by Machine Head… once my currently melted face has recovered from Amon Amarth.