FESTIVAL PREVIEW: Stonedead Festival 2024
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch
With each iteration, Stonedead Festival just seems to up the ante and produce an even more mouth-watering bill of some of the finest Rock bands out there. The 2023 edition was always going to take some topping for me, after seeing Therapy? and Black Star Riders back-to-back, I thought Stonedead had reached the pinnacle of what could be achieved.
But no, they’ve only gone and proved me wrong- making me look quite the ‘nana while so doing, by putting out one of the strongest musical bills at any festival this summer.
You’ll perhaps have to forgive me for my overuse of the word “Legend” or any of its synonyms during this preview, but Stonedead have recruited a plethora of artists who easily fit that description with room to spare.
Headlining this sixth show is Barnsley’s finest – and seemingly immortal – heavy metal machine, Saxon; the band who simply refuse to die. Next year sees the fiftieth anniversary of their formation, with frontman and general rock legend, Biff Byford having been the focal point of Saxon since the word go.
Never a band to follow trends, the Yorkshire lads have been consistent in their adherence to the Metal Mantra since the release of their self-titled debut, back in 1979; following that with the trio of stone-cold classics of Wheels of Steel, Strong Arm of the Law and Denim and Leather, all released within eighteen months of each other, from February 1980 onwards.
When you’re packing the likes of Motorcycle Man, Heavy Metal Thunder and Princess of the Night in your musical cannon, before you’ve considered 747 – Strangers in the Night, Wheels of Steel, Never Surrender and a whole list of Metal Milestones, you know the climax to Stonedead is going to be epic.
To mention only those pre-1982 records is to do a great disservice to the score of other albums Saxon have issued up until this year’s Hell, Fire and Damnation; Andy Sneap-produced, Brian Blessed-featuring, and with Diamond Head’s Brian Tatler on guitar, the album made dents in the album charts across the continent.
Back in 1990, Saxon were considered an anachronism when they played the first Cumbria Rock Festival with up-and-comers The Almighty, Wolfsbane and the Dogs D’Amour; but here they still stand, bigger and, dare I say – better than ever.
KK Downing is a straight-up metal legend and as a significant member of Judas Priest from its inception to 2011 he, partnered with Glen Tipton, damn-near inspired every metal guitarist worth their salts to pick up their instrument. But tensions boiled over and KK departed, forming KK’s Priest with former Priest screamer, Tim Owens, in 2019.
The first album, Sermons of the Sinner, came out in 2021, including such anthemic tunes as Hellfire Thunderbolt, Raise Your Fists and Brothers of the Road; all crafted in the same creative furnace that drove KK to construct a stream of classics throughout his previous career. The band’s sophomore release, The Sinner rides Again, is barely twelve months old, but has seen the band take Special Guest slots at last year’s Bloodstock Open Air (with Ugly Kid Joe), before being Stonedead’s biggest second on the bill band to date.
On the tour last Autumn, we had a host of highlights and a swath of Judas Priest numbers, so expect the likes of The Ripper, Beyond the Realms of Death, Victim of Changes and (touch wood) a few Owen’s-era tunes, Burn in Hell being the sole representative so far.
Bombastic heavy metal played at high volume through that PA? Heavenly.
There was a time, back in the early Nineties when Californian alternative/ funk metallers, Ugly Kid Joe were the hottest of properties. Propelled by the success of their Harry Chapin cover, Cat’s in the Cradle, and the 1992 top three smash Everything About You, which was also featured in Wayne’s World. Back thirty-years ago, the debut album, America’s Least Wanted was all over the place, leading the band to appear at, among others, Def Leppard’s Don Valley shindig in June 1993.
A couple more albums, 1995’s Menace to Sobriety and Motel California didn’t quite capture the zeitgeist in the way the debut had and, with frontman, Whitfield Crane off to fill in the vacant vocalist slot in Life of Agony, the gig seemed to be up for the band.
Then something remarkable happened and, slowly but surely, Ugly Kid Joe rumbled back into life, leading to 2015’s Uglier Than they Used to Be and latest album, Rad Wings of Destiny, in 2022. Appearances at the likes of Sweden Rocks, Gods of Metal and at last year’s Bloodstock Open Air have gone down a storm, with the band back in the killer form of their hey-day, perhaps a little wiser too. Roll back the years with Kid Joe and enjoy life being taken not so seriously.
The undisputed Queen of Metal, Miss Doro Pesch, probably adorned the walls of more bedrooms that she would care to admit, back in the day, and I’d lay a shiny shilling that more than half of the male contingent at the Showgrounds fall into that category. But let’s not forget the glass-ceiling shattering Ms Pesch did when she broke onto the scene with Warlock and fronted the German band through four albums and six years; becoming the first woman to appear on stage at Donington’s Monsters of Rock in 1986, and generally becoming an all-round legend in the Heavy Metal scene.
Striding out as a solo artist in 1988 and having her debut disc, Force Majeure, released just a year later, started Doro on a path that is still going strong and has seen fourteen studio albums issued under her name.
You don’t reach the status of a Metal Legend by cow-towing to trends, and Doro has been as staunch a Defender of the Faith as the bands at the top of this bill, refusing to compromise a singular vision of how she believes her music should sound and should be presented. One should never discuss a lady’s age, save to say Doro is a survivor of the times a pretty face would only get you so far, and to compete against the boys, you had to work twice as hard.
She most certainly did - and continues to do so to this day. Expect a full-on Metal show, one that both KK and Saxon will be taking extremely seriously.
This year marks Eclipse’s twenty-fifth anniversary of rockin’ hard and, in that time, the Stockholm quartet have managed to issue eleven studio albums and play shows across the globe with the likes of Def Leppard, Mötley Crüe and Extreme, as well as the Hollywood Vampires and the punk rock royalty that is Generation Sex. Based around the ever-present singer, Erik Mårtensson and his guitarist partner in crime, Magnus Henriksson, Eclipse will be tickling the nostalgia buttons of most of the sold-out crowd, with their timeless take on the genre.
Sweden’s Bonefide’s last UK festival appearance was topping the 2018 Uprising shindig in Leicester, so it’s a return to the scene of the crime (almost). Seven albums deep into their career and the Malmö -natives have already trod the boards with such Classic Rock heavyweights as Deep Purple, Europe and the Quo, as well as trading licks with Y&T and The Quireboys. They make an exclusive visit to the Showgrounds for this year’s event, promising to bring their particular brand of Rhythm & Blues infused Hard Rock to the stage for our delight.
Heading to Newark from the sun-drenched streets of Los Angeles, California, come hot property, The Bites, holding before them their 2023 debut record, Squeeze. Channelling that time when Rock Stars knew how to behave as such, this quintet is the real deal, taking a little from those who have gone in the past and transforming it into some fresh and new, without losing that which makes it classic in the first place.
Unfeasibly young and talented, Tailgunner will have already made a splash on the UK’s festival scene this summer with their appearance at Bloodstock Open Air a couple of weeks before Stonedead. Their inclusion also shows something of a shift in tone for the Newark show, looking in a more metallic direction this year, yet not relying on the older established acts to confirm the spirit of metal is still alive, and still has teeth. When a certain Mr Downing is in your corner, you know you’re in safe-hands and you’re clearly doing something right.
Cambridge’s The Hot One Two have been plying their Hard Rock trade since back in 2017 and are a riff-driven machine that will open the show with the sort of swagger and bombast you’d expect from a band having worked closely with Kris Barras. Veterans of the New Wave of Classic Rock scene, that pesky pandemic might have applied the brakes, it didn’t stop the momentum entirely, and the band bounced back with the Unrestrained EP in 2022 and a host of festival slots from Call of the Wild to Hard Rock Hell. They even managed to get their debut album in the can and issued Superbia (Pride) in November last year. The Hot One Two look to be the prime band to get things going in 2024.
While Stonedead might not have the biggest attendance, or the most prestigious bill, of all the summer festivals, it can stand with Waken and Hellfest as a guaranteed sell-out and, like those mega-shows, attracts a loyal and devoted audience every year. What a way to spend a late August Bank Holiday, with nine awesome rock bands and four-thousand friends, new and old?
Photo credits: Tim Finch Photography & Damian John Photography
