A Shirt on Sunday: Bloodstock Open Air 2019

Dee Snider broke my knee.

Following the success of last year’s trip to Cropredy Festival with Iain and his youngest son, we thought we’d make a return to the finest heavy metal festival on this fair isle, aided and abetted once more by Andy Egg. We were last there in 2016 for the farewell of Twisted Sister, so it seemed a good time to revisit and watch the return of Dee Snider.

Bloodstock is now in its 19th year – created by two fans who wanted to return to the glory days of the 80’s metal festival ‘Monsters of Rock’. Over the year’s it’s grown from an indoor event to a 4 stage event in the countryside, modest in size but large enough to get some major bands. Of the stages, the smallest tent can hold 50 people, but even the biggest stage area isn’t that big for a festival, so it’s impossible not to get a good spot. Plus, the sound management is excellent and you can only ever hear the band you’re watching, which is more than many festivals can boast.

We managed to camp within a few metres of the excellent spot we had last time, but where three years ago it was a hot and sunny festival, this weekend boasted a lot of rain, and on the Friday afternoon a monsoon shower that dumped a centimetre of rain in 15 minutes and left us drenched to the bone. We know it was a centimetre of rain because we met a woman who’d left her Tupperware container of olives behind when she ran into her tent and that was how much water was in the bottom. Meteorology - one of the many services offered by A Shirt on Sunday.

And the music?
Thursday:

Blind River is a swampy blues monster of a band and a great way to kick off our festival weekend.

Footprints in the Custard just don’t do it for me. They’re a comedy metal band where I can’t make out the words, although ‘Ride, My Little Pony, Ride!’ is fabulous.

Rotting Christ is a Greek thrash metal band. I really shouldn’t like them but I really, really do! They just have a great ear for melodies and are a little different from the norm.

Friday:

We started with Xentrix, a band very much in the mould of early Metallica. Thus excellent.

Next up was Metal Church - one of Iain’s choices and a great slice of classic metal.

We then had a short monsoon and missed a few bands while we dried off.

We returned to the arena for Countless Skies - a more nu-metal sort of band with a very good young guitarist.

Powerwolf is a bonkers dress-up band from Sweden, complete with comedy side-kick keyboard player. The finest in Euro-metal.

In the break we stopped off at the tiny Jägermeister stage for Skypilot, a blistering heads-down three-piece band, occasionally verging into Husker Du territory.

More Euro-metal from Sweden with Sabaton. They do songs about war. Indeed, only songs about war. There were a lot of things going bang, but they weren’t as much fun as Powerwolf.

The night ended with Grand Magus, and aging power-trio with a welcome Hawkwind thing going on.

Saturday:
Parallax Method are slightly Faith No More, slightly stoner rock and all round excellent. My favourite new band of the weekend.

Goat Monsoon was apt from a weather perspective and made a good thrashy noise.
Iain wanted to watch Swallow the Sun, but watch was pretty much all we could do, as strong winds blew the sound into the next field.

Back into a tent for Guardians of Time; Euro metal from Norway this time with a great singer and solid songs.

The Wildhearts were on the main stage and thus suffered from (the) wind. Which is a great shame as they’re a sleaze-rock band with a long history of splitting up, so I may not get to see them again.

At this point the organisers stopped the show. They dropped the main stage lighting rig and announced that the next band was being delayed to the next day. Thus we returned to check on the tents and drink beer.

Luckily the organisers decided the wind had dropped enough to allow Anthrax to come on, albeit an hour late. They never fail to entertain and we had a good sing-along.

And that was it for the day. None of us wanted to watch Parkway Drive so we opted instead for an early night.

Sunday’s schedule was a mess so we saw bands we couldn’t identify and missed a couple we wanted.

We did get to see Boss Keloid, who I’d loved at Hammerfest and didn’t disappoint this time. A guitarist who makes keyboard noises and a singer pulling faces. It’s all a bit Faith No More and thus wonderful.

And then Dee Snider broke my knee. Not literally, but I had no choice but to bounce up and down like an idiot throughout his set and a couple of hours later could barely walk. Apart from the music it was a chance to listen to one of metal’s great front men talking rubbish. Today he was bargaining with Mother Nature over the weather then explaining that it was a daylight show so he’d see anyone going off to the loo during the new stuff. We got a load of Twisted Sister songs and a few from his solo album, that weren’t quite as good (of course) but we didn’t dare leave.

After that, Queensryche could only be a disappointment, and they were. Every song sounded the same and we wandered off.

Sitting out Cradle of Filth we found ourselves listening to The Lazys. We couldn’t get into the tent but they were a great bit of pub metal from Australia.

However the biggest disappointment for me was the Scorpions. Back in the day they delivered some of the finest heavy metal albums known to man, but now at the age of 71, Klaus Meine’s voice is totally shot and it was shocking to hear him. Matthias Jabs is still a fantastic guitar player as is founder Rudolph Schenker. Motörhead’s Mickey Dee is under-utilised and while the stage show is impressive the whole thing left me depressed and I returned to my tent after half an hour.

Still a great festival though, despite the weather and Dee Snider who between them blew nearly everyone else off stage.

Sorry, no videos for this, as it would go for days