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Shortish review this, as there isn't much to report.
I went along, paid the expensive £40 to get in. Wandering around a bit showed that there seemed to be fewer people and indeed fewer merchandise stalls than last year. Anyway, I eventually walked into the 2nd room, and was confronted by a bunch of woad-covered warrior-types onstage. At the end of their first song, the frontman announced that, "We are Mael Mórḋa, from Irrrrrrrreland. We play... Gaelic... Doom... Metal." That alone would have had me scurrying off to buy their cd, except that (a) they still had the rest of their set to play, and (b) they didn't have any cds with them! Doh. Apparently this is because their first album isn't out yet, though I don't know why they didn't have a demo or their EP. Shame. They sounded much like a cross between My Dying Bride and Primordial... alternating fast/slow dark metal with folk touches like the singer doing little solos on a whistle. Well worth a listen: maelmorda @ myspace. Apparently they're playing in Cambridge in November, which I may try and get to.
Most of the other bands that day were merely average... I saw enough of Brainstorm, Agankast, Machine Men, Tourettes Syndrome, and Died Smiling to convince me that none of them were that special. Deathstars were as bad as expected, but there was no need for 'Evil' Jenny (insert your less flattering adjective here) to shout 'you're gay! you're fucking gay!' from the balcony between songs. We don't really need that sort of antagonism. Anyway, I'm not sure why that band has 2 guitarists when they both play the same thing throughout, or why they bother with a drummer at all when the drum patterns are so simple and all human feeling was taken out by the triggers anyway.
Last up were My Dying Bride; probably the best band to have headlined Bloodstock, and probably the worst choice for it. Great band, great songs, about as energetic a performance as you can expect from a doom metal band from the dour hills of Yorkshire, but the half-empty hall demonstrated that they shouldn't really have been headlining the main stage of a traditionally power and European metal festival. I hope the organisers manage to get some better bands next year, as they're ending up with 2 festivals a year that aren't really worth going to, instead of 1 really good one.
Along the way I managed to catch up with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
synphony and rlucas666, and manage to repeatedly bother their friend Matt by reminding him how old he is by being able to blurt out a mid-90s date that corresponded to his various memories. I also pulled the old "I know your name but you don't know mine" trick on Jill, who reciprocated later by telling me she's from Dewsbury, 3 or 4 miles from where I used to live. Small world. erishkigal found me at Bloodstock too, and she and her boyfriend put my musical taste to shame by knowing all the semi-obscure folky-doomy-metally bands I'm into.
Picking upsebby6 along the way, we ended up at First Floor at the end of the night for some reason, which is a club with a music policy not too unlike Obsessions of old - a load of generic MTV2 rock interspersed with the odd Slayer or Sepultura track. Karina from Ragebreed was wandering around celebrating her birthday and various members of Omnium Gatherum were also wandering around, looking somewhat lost. We managed to escape some time around 2am and had a nice ride on the Red Arrow coach home, before being subjected to extreme rain once we got back to Nottingham. The end.
(PS. If you see a little square in the name of the band in the first paragraph, get a better browser. Thank you. ;) )
I went along, paid the expensive £40 to get in. Wandering around a bit showed that there seemed to be fewer people and indeed fewer merchandise stalls than last year. Anyway, I eventually walked into the 2nd room, and was confronted by a bunch of woad-covered warrior-types onstage. At the end of their first song, the frontman announced that, "We are Mael Mórḋa, from Irrrrrrrreland. We play... Gaelic... Doom... Metal." That alone would have had me scurrying off to buy their cd, except that (a) they still had the rest of their set to play, and (b) they didn't have any cds with them! Doh. Apparently this is because their first album isn't out yet, though I don't know why they didn't have a demo or their EP. Shame. They sounded much like a cross between My Dying Bride and Primordial... alternating fast/slow dark metal with folk touches like the singer doing little solos on a whistle. Well worth a listen: maelmorda @ myspace. Apparently they're playing in Cambridge in November, which I may try and get to.
Most of the other bands that day were merely average... I saw enough of Brainstorm, Agankast, Machine Men, Tourettes Syndrome, and Died Smiling to convince me that none of them were that special. Deathstars were as bad as expected, but there was no need for 'Evil' Jenny (insert your less flattering adjective here) to shout 'you're gay! you're fucking gay!' from the balcony between songs. We don't really need that sort of antagonism. Anyway, I'm not sure why that band has 2 guitarists when they both play the same thing throughout, or why they bother with a drummer at all when the drum patterns are so simple and all human feeling was taken out by the triggers anyway.
Last up were My Dying Bride; probably the best band to have headlined Bloodstock, and probably the worst choice for it. Great band, great songs, about as energetic a performance as you can expect from a doom metal band from the dour hills of Yorkshire, but the half-empty hall demonstrated that they shouldn't really have been headlining the main stage of a traditionally power and European metal festival. I hope the organisers manage to get some better bands next year, as they're ending up with 2 festivals a year that aren't really worth going to, instead of 1 really good one.
Along the way I managed to catch up with
synphony and rlucas666, and manage to repeatedly bother their friend Matt by reminding him how old he is by being able to blurt out a mid-90s date that corresponded to his various memories. I also pulled the old "I know your name but you don't know mine" trick on Jill, who reciprocated later by telling me she's from Dewsbury, 3 or 4 miles from where I used to live. Small world. erishkigal found me at Bloodstock too, and she and her boyfriend put my musical taste to shame by knowing all the semi-obscure folky-doomy-metally bands I'm into.Picking up
sebby6 along the way, we ended up at First Floor at the end of the night for some reason, which is a club with a music policy not too unlike Obsessions of old - a load of generic MTV2 rock interspersed with the odd Slayer or Sepultura track. Karina from Ragebreed was wandering around celebrating her birthday and various members of Omnium Gatherum were also wandering around, looking somewhat lost. We managed to escape some time around 2am and had a nice ride on the Red Arrow coach home, before being subjected to extreme rain once we got back to Nottingham. The end.(PS. If you see a little square in the name of the band in the first paragraph, get a better browser. Thank you. ;) )
