OH, AND THIS HAPPENED
The bands that smashed Saturday to bits
It might be their debut show, but BORSTAL are anything but greenhorns with members coming together from Knuckledust, King Of Pigs, Dripback and Brujeria. A chunky hardcore punk workout soon gets things going, kicking Saturday off with an ‘Oi!’. Having had a go at a big stage at Download Pilot, CONJURER already appear at home in front of a few thousand people. That they’re ballsy enough to start with a new song again is impressive. That said new song sounds like Neurosis being fed face-first through a meat grinder is doubly so.
Well and truly waking the Sophie tent up are VIDEO NASTIES, Liverpool’s finest purveyors of snarling, horror-inspired black’n’roll. Peeling off razor-sharp riffs as frontman Damian von Talbot barks out bloody hymns, they make for a gruesome start to the day.
On paper, WARGASM are exactly the kind of band that would cause online outrage as part of a Bloodstock announcement. Those voices of dissent are oddly silent during the band’s set, though, particularly when the crowd starts chanting the electro-rockers’ name back at them.
While it doesn’t quite match the emotional jubilance of their careerdefining Download Pilot set in June,
WHILE SHE SLEEPS still put on a typically brilliant show on the main stage, Loz Taylor even beating off POST-COVID fatigue to clamber up the production tower. Lad.
Despite noise from Sleeps’ set spilling through the New Blood tent, HAWXX remain determined. The crowd even defend – however fruitlessly – the quartet’s grand wall of hard rock grooves and beguiling, three-part vocals with humorous shushes aimed at Loz and co.
It’s a sign of PARADISE LOST’S creative and critical health that
Nick Holmes is clearly having more fun onstage than in years gone past. Playing their best-selling and pivotal album, Draconian Times, in full, their granite-edged gothicism is treated like a celebration by fans and band alike.
When MOUNTAIN CALLER bassist El Reeve poses the question: “We come to you with our offering of riffs, do you accept?”, the crowd speedily nod their heads, before the band pummel out a series of underwear-darkening, Tool-inspired riffs. They may only be playing the Jagermeister Stage, but they already feel like Bloodstock veterans.