By Rich Hobson
Wednesday night still rings in our ears as we arrive back on-site for Thursday and the first multi-stage day of music for Bloodstock 2021. Given the sheer bluster of the previous evening, we wander around in something of a haze for most of the morning, catching the tail-end of Thunderous Jones (massive riffs, bit sad to have missed them in honesty) and punchy thrashers Tortured Demon while we try to figure out where we dropped our brains the previous evening.
A sheer bludgeoning from tech-death newcomers Odysseus starts to knock us back into shape however, their forceful blasts of heaviness striking a happy balance between mindful brutality and technical prowess. There’s even a shade of hardcore in the mix, though we can’t be sure that isn’t just the crowd-baiting energy of vocalist Racheal Downey dusting off the cobwebs and getting us fit and active for another day’s nastiness.
While death metal certainly makes up part of Luna’s Call’s repertoire, the band’s approach owes decidedly more to the progressive stylings of Opeth than that of the tech-death world. Even a member down, the band sound technically flawless and evoke the majestic craft of post-millennial Opeth, the occasional blast of ‘Watershed’ or ‘Blackwater Park ‘style ambition a welcome offering. While it may sound reductive to compare them to one of modern extreme metal’s most innovative groups, the fact remains Opeth’s sonic fingerprints are subtle enough in the sound of Luna’s Call that the band are still given plenty of freedom to express their own unique identity. So far as festival surprises go, Luna’s Call are a prime example of how turning up to watch a band you know little about can sometimes yield exceptional results.
There’s no chance on earth we’ll depart the tent for Urne. Considering the sheer excitement the band’s debut record has prompted, we half expect the tent to be completely rammed before the band take to the stage but instead bear witness to a slow trickle as word gets out about the band’s exceptional heavy metal offering. Sitting in that golden space between thrash, stoner and classic heavy metal, Urne don’t fuck around with easing the crowd in as they kick right off with ‘The Palace of Devils & Wolves’, its seismic Power Trip-style riff an invitation to get right into the thick of things. Going purely from their sound, Urne could easily own larger stages, their bag of insta-classic guitar lines and roared vocals evoking something primordial in the heavy metal makeup. By the time they finish the tent has filled in nicely, lucky souls having bore witness to the major festival debut of a band that all heavy metal lovers should be keenly aware of.
Much as we’d like a breather after Urne, there’s no respite to be had as Casket Feeder go off like a grenade of unyielding underground nastiness. The packed New Blood stage crowd are delighted however, a seething mass that lap up every blast, drop and guttural snarl. Such brutality is the order of the afternoon, however; Forlorn World skew more towards the epic melodeath stylings of Scandinavia, while Godeater unleash a breakdown-inflected storm that feels a little too deathcore for our tastes. The omnipresence of blast-beats clatters and clangs through our ears however, brief glimpses of sunlight in melodic choruses often a cruel trick played right before we’re hit with the next wave of nastiness. Good god, we need a lie down.
Thank the gods for Axiom then, the Birmingham instrumental prog-metal trio providing tastes of something from an entirely different dimension in their set on the Jägermeister Stage. Lay down listening to the universe twist, turn and unfold in the summer sun, we won’t lie – we have the time of our lives. Suitably buoyed, we decide to next weigh ourselves down with the crushing death/doom of The Crawling. While there’s no denying the sheer grimness of the Northern Irish group’s sonic offering, there also appears to be a smattering of black metal dropped into the mix, albeit the rock ’n’ roll inflected BM of Satyricon, as the band motor through a snarling set. So far as grim low-end goes, The Crawling set a high (low?) bar for the weekend, their set satisfyingly punishing in nature.
For all the furore kicked up by the true metal massive, you just watch what happens when a suitably silly band comes along to Bloodstock. Last minute replacements for Hacktivist, Punk Rock Factory have a crowd that must be eight or nine deep outside the tent. Once we squeeze in, we can see why; they might sound like every NoFx set we’ve ever seen, but the band’s enormous sing-alongs to covers of everything from ‘Moana’ and ‘Frozen’ to ‘Pokémon’ and ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ is almost exactly the kind of daftness festivals are built around. The crowd go absolutely bananas throughout, and if you think Bloodstock is just a festival for dour heaviness, you’ve never seen a few hundred metalheads howling along to ‘Let It Go’.
Lawnmower Deth have been mainstays of the festival circuit for a good few years now, so to see them capping of the Thursday night feels like a suitable acknowledgement of the fact Bloodstock is practically in their backyard. If you’ve never seen a Lawnmower Deth set, you’ve clearly missed festivals for the past decade or so. Sat somewhere between the sloppy comedy punk of Splodgenessabounds and 80s crossover-thrash a la Corrosion of Conformity or Suicidal Tendencies, Lawnmower Deth know just how to put a proper party on. We might feel a bit cheated we don’t get the usual Muppets theme for an intro, but the speech from ‘National Lampoon’s Animal House’ stays in place so we can let it slide. From on-stage costumes to the retirement of the sheep dip, Lawnmower Deth’s set is an oddity that has to be seen to be believed and songs like ‘Watch Out Grandma, Here Comes A Lawnmower’, ‘Urban Surfer 125’ and closer one-two ‘Seventh Church of the Apocalyptic Lawnmower’/’Satan’s Trampoline’ create enough sonic bedlam that we don’t feel as though we’ve strayed too far from the heavy metal church. There’s even the threat of a new album, a prospect that should fill everyone with equal parts glee and horror. Taxi…
- PHOTO CREDIT: Photographs courtesy of Bloodstock.
- Bloodstock 2022 will take place over the weekend of 11-14 August. Headliners Lamb Of God and Mercyful Fate will be joined by Dimmu Borgir, Testament, Bury Tomorrow, Vio-lence, Philip H Anselmo & The Illegals, Sacred Reich, GWAR, Exodus, The Black Dahlia Murder, Static-X, Heathen, Bloodywood, Life Of Agony, The Night Flight Orchestra and Butcher Babies, with many more to be announced. Early bird tickets are on sale now.
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