Bloodstock 2025: Friday Review - Ronnie James Dio Stage
Words: Dan Barnes
Photos: Tim Finch
And so Bloodstock Open Air 2025 begins for real under bright and clear skies with the weatherman predicting high temperatures all weekend. First to step up on the Ronnie James Dio stage is Norfolk alt thrashers, Shrapnel, who’ve been plying their trade since 2009 and dropped four albums alongside EPs and singles. Latest record, In Gravity, sees its titular tune, Amber Screams and ….So Below, all getting an airing. It’s technical and progressive as well as hugely infectious; the Wall of Death is small, but folk are just warming up at this point; there’s a few early festival surfers going over, starting as soon as possible to get those numbers up. Arms in the air and heads-a-banging, Sharpnel do everything they needed to do to resurrect Bloodstock for another year.
Famyne take us on a tour of their Doomy discography with a stop at every one of their morose platters. Tower and Long Lost Winter weave dark and driving spells, full on resounding bass and Iommi-style guitar; Solid Earth takes us back to Seventies Occult Rock, as though Dennis Wheatley had inspired the creation, while the closing Dreamweaver is deceptively simple with its ever-repeating riff.
Danes, Konvent make their Bloodstock main stage debut with a terrifying set of unrelenting sorrow. From the choral intro to the similarly Occult rock feel, theirs is a combination of slow and melancholic doom death alongside raw black metal intensity. The musical elements of the band seem to have locked into the hypnotic groove, while vocalist, Rikke Emilie List, recites poems of misery and despair. They do generate a slow-moving circle pit, which is something I was not expecting to see.
It's been eleven years since Phoenix, Arizona Thrash legends, Flotsam and Jetsam last graced the stage at Catton Park. In that time, they have issued four full length records and passed the forty-year milestone. All of us whose mis-spent youth was soundtracked by Doomsday for the Deceiver and No Place for Disgrace, among others are in seventh heaven with the performance this afternoon. Eric looks and sounds in fine form today, rolling back the years and smashing it with alongside bands half their age’s energy and commitment. Michael Gilbert and Stephen Conley’s harmonies are straight out of the Eighties, as new songs, Primal and A New Kind of Hero from their latest record, I Am the Weapon, sit comfortably beside established Flotsam classics like I live You Die.
At the other end of the experience spectrum come deathcore upstarts and touted next big thing, Paleface Swiss, who take to the Ronnie James Dio stage like they own it. And for a time this afternoon that’s the truth of the matter. This is the band’s first UK festival appearance, and I don’t imagine it’ll be long before Download come knocking on their door; such was the gathered masses at the front of the stage, the melee of bodies clambering over each other to get across the barriers, that even a platform the size of the Ronnie James Dio stage will be grown out of shortly.
This years’ Cursed album gets the most tunes aired; from the opening carnage instigator of Hatred to the closing notes of Love Burns, the band show absolute faith in the new material. Only Nail to the Tooth predates Cursed, which comes with an invitation to open the pit up. Best Before: Death is a hard-hitting ballad that comes with a call for unity, otherwise it’s chaotic breakdowns all the way. Security is given a mid-afternoon work out with the number of souls breaching the walls during The Gallow: there goes a hot-dog, followed by a member of Slipknot, tailed by Jesus Christ himself. Please End Me and River of Sorrows brings the show to its conclusion and sets the bar for Bloodstock 2025 incredibly high.
Survivors of the very first Bloodstock Metal Festival at the Derby Assembly Rooms in 2001, Orange Goblin is the first of four back-to-back former headline acts on stage today. Topping the stage in the Darwin Suite that night, Goblin would go onto become a genuine British Metal Institution. Sadly, 2025 not only marks the band’s thirtieth year, but also their last, and this is their final UK festival experience.
The Motorhead-meets-Sabbath hybrid takes us on a nine-track tour through their recorded history. Starting with oldie, Solarisphere from the sophomore Time Travelling Blues album, is a chilled-out meander through stoner riffs. Scorpionica and Saruman’s Wish complete the trilogy of tunes from the first three records. The Filthy and the Few is all about that driving rhythm, while the title track from the newest album (Not) Rocket Science demonstrates Orange Goblin were always evolving.
It's clearly an emotional afternoon for the band, and that emotion is seen most obviously during the introduction to Quincy the Pigboy, when the enormity of the decision becomes a reality. Only Red Tide Rising is left, and Ben Ward sadly announces: “We have been Orange-Fuckin’-Goblin, baby”, the past tense already sounding too final for comfort. There’s the tour in December to look forward to, but Goblin’s absence will be sorely missed.
2007 Friday headliner, Lacuna Coil wowed back in October on their pre-Sleepless Empire tour, and the even though the Italians haven’t played here since 2014, they hit the stage like returning heroes. Layers of Time and Reckless, both from 2019 get the show going and for all their gothic influences the band have a devastatingly heavy low end. All bar Cristina have donned face-paint – or have overdone the sun-screen – and the first new song brings with it a burst of streamers fired high into the evening sky. They’re caught by the wind and blown back to hang from the stage’s superstructure for the rest of the set.
Gravity, Oxygen, I Wish You Were Dead and closer Never Dawn are taken from the latest record; an updated Heaven’s a Lie from the Comalies XX rerecord is well received, as is Karmacode’s mega-hit Our Truth. Cristina pays the band’s own tribute to Ozzy in regaling how he pushed for them to appear at Ozzfest in 2004, exposing them to thousands of new fans and exploding their US profile.
The time given to the 2026 band announcement was well-used by the crew to remove most of the offending streamers, ready for the impending imperial wrath that is Emperor. The previous couple of times the Norwegian legends have appeared at Bloodstock they have been playing an album in full. This year is different, in that anything goes and get something from every release. Obviously, In the Nightside Eclipse and Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk will dominate the set, but we get combinations not yet heard in this field.
The short establishing intro gives way to Into the Infinity of Thoughts with its huge bombastic symphonic darkness. Ihsahn is playing a lilac telecaster which I can’t imagine he ever envisaged when writing many of these tunes. The ever-present Samoth provides the second guitar and Trym is on the drum stool. Long time bassist Tony Ingebrigsten continues his role and multi-instrumentalist Jørgen Munkeby – whose band Shining had just been announced for next year – handles the keys and backing vocals.
In a Wordless Chamber isn’t as black as the earlier material, leaning more into the progressive feel Ihsahn’s solo work would take, but Thus Spake the Nightspirit is sheer black metal perfection in anyone’s book. This begins the airing of four back-to-back Welkin tunes, including Ensorcelled by Khaos, The Loss and Curse of Reverence and With Strength I Burn. Curse You All Men flails with the darkness of the under-rated IX Equilibrium album, followed by which is the trio of Cosmic Keys to My Creation & Times, I Am the Black Wizards and the obvious set closer Inno a Satana, which brings about – unusually for a black metal show – a sing back from the
crowd. The first encore of the day comes in the form of Ye Entrancemperium and Emperor leave the stage. It was enough to bring a grown made to tears, but there’s no time to dwell on that, as Nailbomb are on in the tent and by all accounts, access is damned-near impossible.
It's been a decade since Trivium made their Bloodstock debut, and this is their first return to Catton Park since that night in 2015. Maintaining their Friday night headline slot, the Floridians were an extreme popular announcement last August as the number of shirts this afternoon attest. Once touted as the next big thing, the twenty-years since Ascendancy has been a torrid one for a band who had greatness thrust upon them at an early point.
It's a one-two-three of Ascendency tunes at the opening of the set: Rain, Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr and Like Light to the Flies all fire up the capacity crowd. Most recent song on offer is Catastrophist from 2020, which pairs well with Silence in the Snow’s Until the World Goes Cold.
Following the drum solo comes the ever popular A Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation, which even I remember from back in the day, Vengeance Fall’s Strife and a live debut for the as-yet unreleased Bury Me With My Screams from the Struck Dead EP coming at the end of October.
Trivium know how to headline a festival and make this show special by dragging out a series of guests: Rob Flynn thought he might be getting a rest day before his headline show tomorrow, but he's pressganged into providing backing vocals for Sabbath’s Symptom of the Universe; Ihsahn has barely had time for a brew and a biscuit before he’s whisked back onstage to assist with In Waves, Josh Baines of Malevolence lends his pipes to The Deceived; and there’s some Sleep Token-ary afoot during Throes of Perdition.
Add to that Trivium’s cover of Master of Puppets and they really could not put a foot wrong with the adorning crowd. Ten years apart and the question as to whether the band is of headlining status has again been answered with a resounding: Yes.
Photo credits: Tim Finch Photography
