BLOODSTOCK 07
Something Wicked This Way Comes...
My feet are wet, my back and neck
are aching and the blood in my alcohol system is gagging for air beneath a
heady mix of cheap rum, Jack Daniels and a whole lot o' jaegermeister... I
couldn't be sure, but it definitely smells like Bloodstock. As I rouse myself
for another cold British Monday morning I can't quite shake the feeling that
just days before, something horrible happened and it was all my fault. Well,
needs must as the devil drives, and I can't say it was ALL my fault, I’d hate
to take the credit away from the three days of bands that rocked the tiny
Derbyshire field; rain or shine it seemed like everyone of them was hell bent
on inciting riot amongst the black clad sea of beer fueled metal heads.
We arrived on site around midday,
with enough time to set up camp and meet the neighbors before heading off to
the main arena for a little introduction to madness; the first days toil was
about the pimpage anyway, so we spent some hours getting to know the lie of the
land, getting loud with jaeger-merch clad D.J.s and advocating some strange
uses for condoms... it was still early days in the festival yet so those in
attendance were the real true believers; some had even made t-shirts pledging
their alliance to the bloodstock cause (a massive big-up to Paul, Dave and the
rest of the Bloodstock 2007 green shirted crew who were very nice about being
mobbed by our ilk at the Century Media stall). We stalked around the slowly
filling festival basically snapping the best and least dressed people we could.
The diversity of the metal community warmed my black and shriveled heart, the
close knit festival packed with the truest was really a sight to reignite the
flames of what used to be a raging inferno of hard rock mayhem; after ambling
around the site in a daze of pride shooting group after mad-haired group we
took it to the beer tent and generally killed some time and brain cells before
the main stage opened up with it's first scheduled act.
Special guest Chris Slade, drummer
of AC/DC was opening the stage (straight after some bloke and his dad...)
accompanied by Birmingham’s own Exploder; a couple of well played covers later
and good old Slade senior blesses the crowd with a stunted and retro but
otherwise well received drum-solo. Up next were this year’s unsigned winner
Sight of Emptiness; don't, whatever you do, be put off by the unsigned status
of the band, for the second act at the whole festival they rocked the stage
appropriately hard bringing their own brand of melodic death metal all the way
from San Jose, Costa Rica. On chatting to the band,
 we discovered that they'd
shelled out at least 15 grand in dead presidents just to get here, but not too
much that they couldn't hit us up with a complimentary copy of their debut
album 'Trust is a Disease'. After the explosive set we decided it was time to
make another of our frequent visits to the marquee housing the lava stage, and
more importantly the bar, where the crew stopped off for a few more beers, and
I went hardcore on the jaegermeister, making it back three hours later just in
time for a seriously ear-bleeding set from Firewind followed by the headliners
that night who need no appraisal from me, Testament. As they drew their set to
a close, and I neared the dregs of my beer, the cramp setting in my spine told
me loud and clear that it was time to make a merry way back to the campsite for
some post mosh inebriation. Like an exclamation mark at the crux of a dirty
metal head infested sentence, Alice in Chains' Man in the Box floated from the
stacks at the beer tent all the way to my plastered ears as I passed out
halfway into my tent, ready for day two and the massive hangover that was
inevitably to come.
The pirates will remain unforgiven;
it must have been 10 o'clock in the morning when I first stuck my pounding head
out of my tent, which in a hilarious (not) juxtaposition to the night before
had decided to convert itself into a pressure cooker intent on bleeding me dry
of every gram of toxic sweat in my body. The cries of "Yar, wench"
and other such swashbuckling catchphrases were growing ever closer, but in my
half conscious stupor I was congratulating myself on the newfound ability to
block them out... imagine my surprise when a loaded pirate's cap gun went off
right in my ear, starting me right out of bed and ten foot into the air.
disgruntled and deafened I made a slow way to the porta-loos for a nice old bit
of festival hospitality, though after opening doors to mountain after mountain
of reconstituted festival grub I made my way to the surrounding woods and said
hello to nature. Disheveled but in no way disheartened I dragged my splitting
temples off to the small cafe stand where me and Kelly met up with the rest of
the crew for some early morning preparation; Ben and Kate arrived on the scene
with the savior of the morning, a five pack of jam doughnuts and a bag full of
pastry and we made our way back to the main arena for Kates Clothing vs.
Bloodstock round two.
After a heavy dose of the hair of
the dog I pushed my way to the front of the crowd just in time for Wolf to
blast the wax from my ears and the crust from my eyes. These hard rocking
Swedes absolutely blew the stage apart and remained completely un-phased when
the power cut out mid-song; spurred by the spontaneity of the moment the singer
makes his way to the front of the stage, Carlsberg in hand and incites the
crowd into some heavy unified roaring, followed closely by the second drum solo
of the weekend. Acoustic or not, those skins were heard right to the back of
the crowd and as the life came surging back into the
speakers Wolf proceeded to
tear it up louder and heavier then ever. Pumped once more with pure adrenaline
me and the crew made our way over to the unsigned tent to hang with the crowd
from Scruffy Murphy’s. If you’re not familiar with the Birmingham scene then
I’ll just let you know, Scruffy's is the only place to head bang on a nightly
basis; the bloodstock stages were littered with regulars. On the way back from
the operatic metal of Epica we bumped into a London mate, Ted Mauls' Luca,
buzzing his nut off and brandishing a good sized bottled of Jack Daniels. A top
heavy pint each of J.D. and a quick photo of our collective arses later and I
was ready to make my way down to the Lava stage to catch the hardcore metal
stylings of Blind sight. I promised Bob the bassist that I’d go down and take a
few snaps for the website, didn't expect to be drawn into the moshpit quite so
hard. Those Ilkeston rockers know exactly how to keep the crowd swinging,
contending excellently with the end of Nevermore's electric set. A good
rock-out and a quick mosh with Wes from Speed Theory saw me thrown back into
the main throng with just enough time to take some in crowd photos before Lacuna
Coil strode onto the stage. The second Cristina Scabbia's gorgeously dark form
hallowed over the crowd below the skies seemed to darken with the promise of
something epic. They opened the set with a convulsive rendition of To The Edge
and pre-empted the three song encore with their own outstanding re-working of
Depeche Mode's Enjoy The Silence. Two songs into the encore and the entire
crowd joins in a heavy chorus of recent hit Our Truth - if you know the song
you'll have an idea of how huge that moment was, and if you don’t it's about
time you crawled out from under that rock. Having been blessed with a crew pass
from Luca, Kelly and I snuck backstage to see if we couldn't grab five with the
lovely Ms. Scabbia. After a quick chat, body aching once more, the crew parted
ways and me and Kelly made our bedraggled and thoroughly rocked way back to
camp where the neighboring campers kindly invited us to enjoy a burger from
their BBQ and some random with a Jesus cut followed me across a field,
apparently for no better reason then to stroke my flailing hair... I could've
sworn he was after my woman, but after Kate threatened to smack him one he soon
wandered off into the crowd once more. All in good fun.
The next day it seemed as though the
skies had stopped bothering to keep the weather pleasant. As if they knew none
of us would let the rain stop the rocking they opened up and unleashed a grey
and soaking hell on us all, a test of our commitment to the Bloodstock cause. I
dragged my hangover down to the main stage to show some support for Scruffy’s
regulars Benediction, where defiance was the name of the game; halfway through
their set they announced that they had six songs left and only five minutes to
play them in; so for the next fifteen minutes the entire crowd was filled with
a serious sense of anarchic pride as the Birmingham death metal group proceeded
to 'stick it to the man' in true metal style... the circle pit for 'Suffering
Feeds Me' was  a sight to be revered, and as they closed their lawless set I felt
charged with the kind of energy only a moshpit at the crack of noon can invoke. On then to the unsigned tent to consume the wake up shift of alcohol and rock
out hard for friends and personal favorites of the Kates Clothing crew, dark
and dirty rock and roll merchants Nemhain, fronted by the famed Morrigan Hel.
If you know your stuff then you'll know that these guys rocked the Intrepid Fox
for us at the Necessary Evil brand launch, a performance rivaled only by the
raw energy perceived this day at Bloodstock. With Adrian Erlandson literally
pouring sweat over his skins the unsigned marquee nearly blew its pegs as their
excellent rendition of Die Die Die My Darling had the crowd singing right along
with them. And as if by some stroke of excellent timing, as soon as they left
the stage Pendulum's Slam hit the speakers, which was my cue to get a heavy
freak on. Soaked to the bone or not, the afternoons events had set me right up
for the rest of the day.
The festival was fast drawing to a
close; between sneaking backstage for a cheeky photo with Anders from In Flames, Nemhain
and the guys from Exit 10 I managed to pack my soaking tent back into the bite
sized bag it somehow came so neatly wrapped in. The skies were closing in with
black clouds and threats of a bone chilling night; of course, we had to see In
Flames open their set, explosively I might add, and as we ambled back to the
car to call it a weekend the entire festival was engaged in a beautiful
rendition of a personal favorite, Pinball Map. Just before smearing the car
floor with our muddy boots Kelly and I gave our necks one last work out as the
chorus trailed of into the perfect darkness. The drive home was a knackered
one, but I think the people in that car and everyone on site knew that they'd
bourn witness to a part of something big, as though Bloodstock were a great
pillar in the fight to keep the raging fire alive; no dilution, no imitation,
just pure unbridled metal.
By Oisin Hendrix
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Is it really that Evil?
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Article kindly submitted by Jessica from Luton
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