Bloodstock Festival : M2TM Wolverhampton – The Bands : Heat 3

We’re from around Dudley and have been together since April 2017.

Our style is essentially Sludge metal with stoner metal underpinnings and a touch of grunge here and there. Our influences include EyeHateGod, Alice in Chains, Corrosion of Conformity, Electric Wizard, Sleep plus much more.

To bring filthy sludge to everyone at Metal 2 the Masses and hopefully Bloodstock too!

Filthy riffs and filthier bass tones, the kind that makes you slam your head against concrete and feel good about it.

We think there’s a lack of Sludge in the metal in the scene and so we hope to carve out a niche for it and to expand on it.

The competition is real fierce and talented as hell, we wouldn’t like to choose really!

We are White Crow from Wolverhampton and we started our journey in September 2018 by pretty much getting into a room and jamming to see what great music we could come up with.

We make music that we are excited by really. We kind of threw all of our individual influences into a pot and what resulted is sometimes hard to label as a genre. Some of our songs like 'Grindstone' have a more metal vibe, whilst 'Window' is more alternative, and yet 'Innocent eyes' brings more of a blues/rock feel to the table. That said, our songs don't seem to stand out from each other in a negative way when played as a gigging set. Maybe that's what happens when a band stays true to themselves in the songwriting session, not trying to emulate any particular band they admire or feeling like they need to stay in any particular lane of genre. In all honesty though, having the genre being defined isn't that important to us, because we're just making music that we wanna make and really it all comes down to the fans. If they like your music, they will show you by turning up to gigs to support you and buy it.

Here's each band member of White Crow talking about their individual influences:

Andy Wylde - Well, probably Chris Wolstenholme, from Muse and Flea of Red Hot Chilli Peppers, as i learned bass mostly by playing their songs.

Geoff Hall - I was inspired heavily by bands like Rage Against the Machine, Audioslave, Ugly Kid Joe, and 311 which have all been my favourites that I’ll never grow tired of but I am influenced by the way music in general speaks and moves people whatever the genre or when it was made. Playing the guitar allows me express myself in my own way and it’s an a honour to have to opportunity to reach people with our music in White Crow. Guitarists like Tom Morello, Shaun Morgan of Seether, Mark Tremonti and Wes Borland inspired me directly from the sound of their playing, to watching them live. I wanted to be like that!

Callum Walker - Chad Smith & Bernard Purdie definitely were big influences on me as I learnt the drums.

Andy Owen - I have a very eclectic taste in music, you should see my music streaming and YouTube history, haha, it's all over the shop! I grew up listening to bands such as Creed, Puddle of Mudd, Alter Bridge, Stereophonics, ACDC, Saliva, Kings of Leon, Pearl Jam, Free etc.  As a songwriter myself I appreciate artists such as David Gray, Damien Rice, James Morrison and Sia, and as a vocalist I will proudly say that I've been heavily influenced over the years by the talented voices of Myles Kennedy, Paul Rodgers, Freddie Mercury, Meatloaf, to name only a few. But whether or not any of that can be heard in my vocals is down to those of you listening to decide, because I just get up there, pour my heart and soul into my vocals and try and give the best performance I can.

Our goal is to play the best we’ve ever played. We’re stoked at the opportunity to play Bloodstock and we’re coming in hard. We aim to make people remember our name from here on out.

Our kilt wearing singer's powerful vocals, bass lines that will have you hanging on every note, riffs and solos that will get you fired up in a chorus or taken on a journey during a atmospheric solo, all held together by solid drum beats and an occasional drum fill that will hopefully get you as hard as the music we are putting out there.

We've wondered that ourselves in the past and we've realised that we shouldn't worry about trying to stand out. We just do what we do, we make music for ourselves that we hope people like. The fact that we haven't tried to stand out by doing anything we didn't feel natural doing is probably why people connect with us.

It's no surprise to us that Big Black Eye just got through to the semi finals in heat 2 as we shared the stage with them recently and they rocked the venue hard. Rustlung and Mysteik both really rock, and our friends in Chaosaroma will be ones to watch too as they will certainly bring their A game in heat 5. However there's actually no rivalry in our minds as many of the bands in the Wolverhampton M2TM competition are friends of ours so we truly want them to do well. Also, our vocalist Andy Owen's other band Lynus just got voted through in heat 1, meaning there is a very real chance we could come up against them at some point down the line. If that happens it would be quite the achievement for Andy, a cause for celebration for us in White Crow and would no doubt would probably be an unprecedented event in which a vocalist has to pull double duty in the same night in M2TM.