Bloodstock 2024: Thursday Review
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch
The twenty-fifth festival under the Bloodstock moniker begins under somewhat pregnant skies, with the threat of rain literally hanging over our heads. The promise of a fine weekend is made – in view of both the weather and the entertainment, but Bloodstock Open Air 2024 still has something of a transitional feel about it as I collect my wrist band and head up to the S.O.P.H.I.E. tent to catch opener, Acid Age.
Despite the early hour, the Northern Irish three-piece are playing in front of their biggest ever crowd, but if there are nerves they’re kept well hidden. Referring to their music being as ‘War-Jazz’, the band fuse black metal, death metal and sludgy doom in a progressive thrash melting pot to launch Bloodstock 2024 in a most appropriate manner. Dirty riffs and an uncompromising guitar assault sit comfortably with more technical tunes. Drummer Iran is lauded as being BOA ‘24’s first shirtless sticksman and the fledgling circle pit forming at the front of the stage might be small but, in forty-eight hours, it will have grown into a colossal, unstoppable beast - from little acorns…
A song about the Roman Empire both entertains and educates, and Acid Age even manage to slot of new one into the set. It’s loud, it’s fast, it’s wild, and it’s the prefect way to the festivities off. Bloodstock Open Air is up and running.
Making their first of two festival appearances this month is Tailgunner, a group of unfeasibly young lads who wear their Heavy Metal hearts proudly on their sleeves. Pounding rhythms and rampaging guitars are what Bloodstock is all about and to see a new band going back to the roots of the genre, rather than chasing trends, is refreshing and almost brings a tear to the eye. Think Helloween, in fact, think classic Euro Metal in general, and you’re in the right area; but it’s their adherence to the Metal of this great nation that makes them quintessentially British.
From the Disckinson-esque “whoos” to the rock-solid gallops, the dualling leads and darky ominous low end, we get a potted history of the genesis of the genre. All of which cumulates in a cover of Priest’s Painkiller. With a large crowd all fired-up for a weekend of music and beer, the cover is like shooting fish in a barrel. Every word is sung back to the stage and the chorus damn-near takes the roof off. Wonder whether they’ll do that one at Stonedead? Wonder if members of KK’s Priest might join in? One can but hope…
John Carpenter’s Halloween theme plays as the intro tape for South of Salem and the five-four time signature gives an uneasy feeling, even when you don’t really know why. The Bournemouth marauders have become ubiquitous over the past twelve months, with this being my third show over that period. Looking like characters from a post-apocalyptic wasteland with a fascination for Rob Zombie, the band’s stage is a wash of day-glo light and horror affectations. They’ve even brought their own cheerleaders-cum-back-up singers – their own Nasty Habits, if you will – though these gals do not have anything like the heavy lifting of Crüe’s duo.
The time on the road means the band have garnered enough live experience to eat up a show like this. Joey Draper involves the crowd as much as is humanly possible; but don’t believe their album title: Death of the Party they certainly are not.
Emerging from the UK’s version of the frozen north – Aberdeen – comes Hellripper, the one-man project of Mr James McBain to slake his thirst for, and show his love of, Darkthrone, Venom, Megadeth and Motörhead. Don’t want to shatter the mystique, but off-stage Mr McBain is a thoroughly affable, gently-spoken, individual, who had masterminded his project from the ground up. Playing all instruments and running every aspect of Hellripper’s commercial side to his own design, James is the epitome of doing it himself.
Onstage, however, he is a snarling berserker, tearing out black thrash blasphemies like the bastard son of Quorthon and Paul Baloff, and joined by his usual live Dementors, he entices the crowd to lose their Thursday minds with the fiercest set of the day. If ever there was a case to be made for skill and sheer hard work to pay off, then look no further than James and Hellripper.
It was twenty-years ago that Evergrey and Bloodstock first collaborated, with the Assembly Rooms’ show being one of the highlights of that year’s festival. Reunions have been scarce since then, with only a 2018 set to fill the gap. But the progressive Swedes are back, this time as a deserving headliner, to close out Thursday with a stroll down Bloodstock’s Memory Lane.
Tom Englund has been running the Evergrey show since the very beginning and it’s very much his singular vision steering the ship across the band’s fourteen studio releases. This year saw the release of the fourteenth record, Theories of Everything, and the band start their show with the one-two of bombastic Falling from the Sun and the emotive Say, before heading back in time to 2022’s A Heartless Portrait record and the power metal stylings of Midwinter Calls.
It seems fitting that the oldest song on offer tonight is the progressively-leaning A Touch of Blessing from the band’s 2004 album, The Inner Circle which was the most recent record at the time of their Bloodstock debut. Other than Distance from A Storm Within, Evergrey keep focus on their post-2020 material, but offered no lack of quality by so doing.
Video screens across the weekend show the band will be back on these shores in December for a run of club dates with Kloger and Inner Vitriol, which is a define early Christmas present.
As Evergrey’s final notes fade, we all head off – some to their beds to get rested up for the coming days, others to seek out mischief and mayhem, as the night is still young. See you in the morning.
Photo credits: Tim Finch Photography
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