We can hardly believe it. Twenty-thousand people, more than 150 bands and one elephant converged on Catton Park for one of the biggest weekends in metal’s history – and we were there.When Bloodstock was cancelled last year, they rallied with Europe’s top fests to bring us The European Festival Alliance – an online weekend event to bring us all together in the darkest of times. This year, there’s a renewed joy to be back at Catton Park and, thanks to its 20th anniversary, we get five whole days of fun. Take our hand, as if we were Festival Jesus, and step this way to read about all the action…
FRIDAY
Napalm Death destroying the Sophie Lancaster Stage. Gotta love ’em!
BLOODSTOCK EXPANDS TO FIVE DAYS! YEP, FIVE DAYS!
Expanded to five days of music as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations, there is a surprisingly sizable turnout for Wednesday and Thursday. New ONSLAUGHT vocalist Dave Garnett makes an incendiary (official) live debut in the band’s first-day headline slot, while newcomers URNE steal the Thursday with their utterly colossal riffs. Fan favourites RAISED BY OWLS and LAWNMOWER DETH might pack the tent for their brilliantly daft sets, but it’s last-minute replacements PUNK ROCK FACTORY that provide the biggest surprise, as they lead a metalhead contingent through singalongs of pop-punk covers of everything from Moana to Pokemon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Frozen. Utterly ridiculous, but exactly what’s needed for a fun start to the festival.
NAPALM DEATH DESTROY A TENT
If there’s any fatigue setting in by Friday evening, it certainly doesn’t show while NAPALM DEATH are onstage.Birmingham’s grindcore legends set the Sophie Lancaster Stage off like an angry beehive, as bodies clatter and crash to just shy of 35 years’ boundarypushing extremity. It speaks volumes to Napalm’s status as pioneers that they can splice their diverse discography together into a single furious mass, covering everything from the bread’n’butter grind of On The Brink Of Extinction or Smash A Single Digit to straight-up death metal in Suffer The Children, all the way to the proggish extreme metal of Contagion or alt-flavoured Breed To Breathe.
“TODAY FEELS LIKE VENOM PRISON’S CORONATION. NO GOING BACK NOW”
Venom Prison’s Larissa Stupar lets rip.Superstardom awaits
VENOM PRISON OFFICIALLY STEP UP
A few years ago, the idea that a young, relatively unassuming, British death metal band could play fourth from top on the main stage of the biggest metal festival in the country would have seemed, quite frankly, absurd.Although, back then, we didn’t know about VENOM PRISON. Today feels like their coronation, with fire bombs going off, their savage, gut-punching riffs slicing through the air and an awe-struck crowd getting to witness the completion of Larissa Stupar’s metamorphosis from the reserved bundle of hair she used to be into a heavy metal superstar. On today’s showing, there’s no going back for Venom Prison now.
DEVIN TOWNSEND
Hevy Devy: if you don’t love him, you’re dead inside
Elephants, aliens and dancing devils – Hevy Devy’s fan-picked set brings the party and then some
WORDS: TOM O’BOYLE. DEVIN INSET: GETTY/KATJA OGRIN.