Saturday

Ah, Bloodstock mornings. The smell of coffee and bacon, the stale taste of last night’s beer. The sound of epic snoring and muffled farts. There really is nothing quite like it.  

 

A little later than intended, I arrive at the main stage just in time to find Warbringer walking out and whipping the crowd into an uncontrollable frenzy. The pace is relentless as the Californian thrashers blast their way through the likes of “Woe to the Vanquished,” “The Sword and the Cross,” “Living Weapon” and a beautifully bloodthirsty “Remain Violent”, leaving nothing but chaos and damaged crowd surfers in their wake. In the Sophie tent, London duo Pengshui treat the crowd to some punk metal Grime and Bass while back on the main stage, Heriot suffer an early technical hitch but sort things out before the circle pitters get too impatient. Over in the VIP tent, artist, author, journalist, TV presenter, DJ, and general piss-artist Steve “Krusher” Joule is back with Krushanory, an hour of funny and occasionally poignant stories about his drunken times with Ozzy and Lemmy plus many others.

Every year, I discover at least one act that has managed to slip under my radar, and this year is Creeper. Like someone threw Sisters of Mercy and Type O Negative into a Goth metal party, the band perform a set of crowd-pleasing cuts including “Blood Magick (It’s A Ritual)” and “Teenage Sacrifice” before finishing with “Headstones” and the brilliantly Billy Idol-esque “Cry To Heaven.” 

Nottinghamshire’s Phoenix Lake show their potential in the Sophie tent, Bad Smell make good pub band noise on the EMP stage, and impressive Alice in Chains enthusiasts Nothing Speaks bring back nineties Grunge and sleeveless plaid shirts to the New Blood tent. 

Another day, another Deathcore act, another massive crowd. For a genre so many seem to actively dislike, it’s no surprise that bands like Kublai Khan TX keep getting booked when audiences go nuts in the blink of a breakdown and circle pits instantly triple in size. You may not like them, but you can’t deny their pulling power. Meanwhile, back on the New Blood Stage, Fortune Teller are busy being attacked by an army of unruly sound gremlins, but the five-piece battle through, the quality of their symphonic power metal winning the day.

 

Fear Factory might be more like Dino Cazares and Friends at this point, but every track is performed with the same surgical precision as always. It might not feel quite the same to older ears, but new vocalist Milo Silvestro is undeniably better than Burton was for the last few years of his FF career. This point well and truly proven as the Industrial groove merchants tear through the entire Demanufacture album before climaxing with a massive “Linchpin” aided by former member Tony Campos (now with Static-X). 

Cancelled tours, postponed shows, calendar clashes, illness. All these things and more have conspired against me at some point in my quest to see Ministry during the last thirty-plus years. But no more. Today is the day and Al Jourgensen and co. make it nothing short of glorious. Kicking off with “Thieves,” the Industrial Metal pioneers smash through the likes of “Rio Grande Blood,” “Burning Inside,” “Stigmata,” “N.W.O.,” and an incendiary “Goddamn White Trash” before “Just One Fix,” “Jesus Built My Hotrod” and “So What” end the show. Uncle Al and his furry hat might steal the limelight, but programmer John Bechdel pulls the strings while guitarists Monte Pittman (ex-Prong, Madonna), and Cesar Soto put in a hell of a shift, as does bassist Paul D’Amour (ex-Tool), and new drummer Pepe Clarke Magaña (Kyng), who makes the act of physically playing programmed drums seem ridiculously easy.

 

From the opening strains of “Imperium” to the final notes of “Halo,” Machine Head owns Catton Hall. An everyday MH show is still an experience, but one fully focused and bristling with this much confidence and emotion? Yeah, good luck getting through this unscathed. Simply one of the finest festival shows the band have ever produced, “Ten Ton Hammer,” “CHØKE ØN THE ASHES ØF YØUR HATE,” and “Now We Die” are followed by an almighty “Is There Anybody Out There?” and an astonishingly powerful “ØUTSIDER.” After “Locust” and “BØNESCRAPER,” we get a moment of human vulnerability from frontman Robb Flynn as he dedicates a passionate rendition of “Darkness Within” to close friend and former publicist, Michelle Kerr, who passed away last September. It’s not all sadness though as Flynn grins, laughs and throws beers into the crowd, making an instant Bloodstock legend of someone forever to be known as “Bananaman”. More beer follows before the band plough through “Bulldozer,” ‘From This Day” and a typically vicious “Davidian.” Those left drained and exhausted head back to camp, but Static-X are on the Sophie stage now, and the huge crowd, both inside and outside, prove this party could go on all night.

Sunday

 

Any sluggishness caused by three days of beer, metal, and partying is immediately blown away by psychedelic noisy bastards Apathy UK laying waste to the Sophie tent and Ghosts of Atlantis on the main stage. Another UK band on the rise, GOA tear through cuts like “Sacramental,” “Halls of Lemuria,” “March of the Titans” and “The Lands of Snow”, giving Sunday its best possible start.

Led by balaclava-covered Joel Heywood, Deathcore mob Spitting Teeth use violent Deathcore to kick the New Blood tent into life while One Machine get the main stage crowd moving with their thrashy style of power metal. 

 

It’s widely agreed that Pennsylvanian Death/Prog crew Rivers of Nihil could have been higher up the bill. Songs like “The Sub‐Orbital Blues,” “Water & Time” and “Where Owls Know My Name” sound sensational, saxophonist Patrick Corona causing more crowdsurfing than a Municipal Waste show every time he steps forward to play his smoothest licks.

 

Brothers Ryan and Elliot Cole deliver instrumental mayhem on the Sophie stage with WALL before the arrival of the five sexy nuns known as Dogma. Still somewhat of an enigma, the corpse-painted quintet originate from South America and operate much like Ghost, with a revolving door of performers hidden under masks and make-up. With deliciously lascivious lyrics, and music videos that leave nothing to the imagination, “Forbidden Zone”, “My First Peak”, “Made Her Mine” and Madonna‘s “Like a Prayer” all go down brilliantly. Especially with many, let’s say… inquisitive teenage boys and middle-aged men looking on. Yes, “Pleasure From Pain” sounds like Mötley Crüe’s “Dancing on Glass,” and Tobias Forge‘s lawyers will probably be in contact with them over “Bare to the Bones” at some point, but the band has easily enough quality to survive. “Father I Have Sinned,” in particular, slaps like an offended Mother Superior.

Bouncy Germanic folk metallers Feuerschwanz are just ludicrously enjoyable. Their energy and enthusiasm so infectious that even TikTok Jesus gets involved, both on the stage and off it, creating even more of a good time vibe in the hot afternoon sun. Back in the Sophie tent, the house is being brought down by Lowen, a London-based Progressive Doom act fronted by the hugely talented Nina Saedi, the daughter of Iranian refugees.

The Black Dahlia Murder do what they do with maximum effect, circle pits going into overdrive for the likes of “Miasma”, “Contagion,” “Kings of the Nightworld,” and the brilliantly titled “Statutory Ape.” Lord of the Lost frontman Chris Harms is as flamboyant as they come, strutting around the stage and conducting his audience with consummate ease. A few of the elder generation don’t look entirely convinced, but by the time Bronski Beat‘s “Smalltown Boy” and Eurovision hit “Blood & Glitter” come around, most of them finally get it and start dancing along with everyone else.

 

Made up of vocalist Janneke de Rooy, bassist Amie Chatterley, guitarist Georgia Bell, and drummer Natalie Gaines, UK/Dutch Death Metal combo Maatkare take the EMP tent completely apart, slashing their way through Egyptian-themed cuts like “Rise to Power” and “May the Gods Bear Witness,” bizarrely assisted by an enthusiastic crowd member with a bubble machine.

One-time headliners Mastodon deliver a showstopping main support slot filled with classics like “Crystal Skull,” “Black Tongue,” “Megalodon,” “Blood and Thunder,” and “Mother Puncher,” plus a marvellous tribute to Ozzy with Black Sabbath cover, “Supernaut.” Even the previously unconvinced are soon happily banging their heads in absolute approval.

Recently reactivated Canadian Traditional/Power metallers 3 Inches of Blood are not here to fuck around. Playing at a breakneck speed, the band put in one of the tightest performances of the weekend as they lay into tracks like “Wykydtron,” “Destroy the Orcs,” “Battles and Brotherhood,” “The Goatriders Horde,” and of course an improbably overexcited “Deadly Sinners.”

 

If you’ve somehow managed to convince yourself that if you’ve seen one Gojira show, you’ve seen them all then I’m afraid you only have yourself to blame. Backed by a light show brighter than a thousand suns and so much pyro that Rammstein are wondering if they’ve been robbed, the French act leave quite possibly the biggest crowd Bloodstock has ever witnessed slack-jawed in orgasmic amazement. As the sun dies, the fireworks begin. “Only Pain,” “The Axe,” and “Backbone” are smashed into the heavens by “Stranded” and a thunderous “Flying Whales”. “The Cell,” “From the Sky” and “Another World” tee up the magnificent “Silvera” and the Olympics song “Mea culpa (Ah! Ça ira!)” while “The Chant”’ and “Amazonia” calm things down a little. “L’enfant Sauvage” and Sabbath’s “Under the Sun/Every Day Comes and Goes” leaves “The Gift of Guilt” to create the most explosive climax possible. All of this while frontman Joe Duplantier gets upstaged by his brother, Mario, and his handwritten question boards asking the crowd if they want five solid minutes of double kick. Spoiler: They do.

God only knows how Floridian death metal legends Obituary were expected to follow that, but they do, albeit on a much smaller scale, ripping through most of their celebrated Cause of Death album plus “Redneck Stomp” and a deliciously syrupy “Slowly We Rot.”

 

So that’s it for another year once again. Another brilliantly organised festival and another resounding success. There are more of the annual “too much this and not enough that” grumbles, of course, but those are only to be expected. Yes, the camping chair situation still exists (although significantly reduced), the queues have lengthened notably, and the inclusion of one certain band among next year’s announcements is still ruffling more than a few feathers. But despite those minor sticking points, Bloodstock still remains as friendly, inclusive, and as clean as you can possibly get. For a field of over 20,000 party animals who like dressing up as dinosaurs, Jesus, bananas, wizards, and gnomes anyway.

Read part 1 here:
https://ghostcultmag.com/festival-review-bloodstock-open-air-2025-pt-1-ft-trivium-emperor-kataklysm-orange-goblin-lacuna-coil-paleface-swiss-nailbomb-and-more/

 

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https://www.bloodstock.uk.com/

 

 

WORDS BY GARY ALCOCK
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PHOTOS BY WILLIAM MAWDSLEY
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