Bloodstock 2012: Ten Reasons Bloodstock Will Kick Your Ass

Everyone with a braincell in their noggin knows that Bloodstock 2012 is going to rule, but just in case you’re being a wally and are a bit unsure, we got Tom Dare to give us ten reasons why…

1. Legends

One thing you can always guarantee with Bloodstock is a selection of absolutely legendary bands in their fields. Black metal’s your thing? No problem, here’s Mayhem, the band that made the greatest BM record of the lot. Like thrash? Here’s Testament, the Bay Area giants. Oh, and Sepultura to go with them. Devotee of death metal? Here’s Deicide with Glen fucking Benton back in the band, along with technical wizards Nile and the filth of Benediction. Goth metal fan? Paradise Lost will bring the Northern misery better than any. Sludge nut? How about Kirk Windstein’s riffgods Crowbar. Still not happy? Then how about…

2. Alice Fucking Cooper

Bloodstock’s trick of getting a band to close the Sunday night with at least one song the entire bloody planet knows backwards continues with the shock rock superstar headlining day three. If you don’t think the best way to close three days of drinking, debauchery and metal is by standing in a field with your mates and singing along to School’s Out and Poison, your sense of fun is overdue for its 10,000 chuckle service. He can leave the Lady Gaga cover at home, though.

3. Atmosphere

The more intimate set up at Catton Hall not only makes it easier to get around than the massive festivals, it gives it a friendly, welcoming feel unique to the event. Where else will you see complete strangers hugging and making friends while watching a Scandinavian man with his face painted like a panda shrieking about Satan? Only at Bloodstock.

4. The Return Of Behemoth

We’ve had our share of shit news in metal over the last few years, but Nergal‘s recovery from leukaemia was the best news imaginable. The bible-destroying frontman and his band are finally back by overwhelming demand, and with the ear-ruining songs to justify their headline status. Demigod and Evangelion are two of the finest extreme metal albums of our time, and hearing those monstrous tunes again is sure to be a massive highlight. Slaves. Shall. Fucking. Serve.

Behemoth: Featuring Nergie Nerg

5. Brutality… In A Field

For those of us into the heaviest shit, 362 days of the year are spent in dingy dives, the downstairs of a pub or somewhere else sweaty and tightly enclosed. Then once a year we decide we need to get at least a little sunshine, and gather together in a grassy field under August sunshine to watch abominable destruction meted out arbitrarily, because watching evil metal in the outdoors is a little bit special. Even if it does make corpse paint look a bit gash.

6. Watain

The best black metal band in the world, one of the best live bands of any genre in the world, Watain’s rise and rise reaches a new peak at Bloodstock this year. After following up 2010′s perfect masterpiece Lawless Darkness with jaw-dropping UK tours with Destroyer 666 and depressive Swedes Shining, Uppsala’s finest blew the roof off the tent at Sonisphere with a sinister display of brilliant music and fuckloads of fire, before decimating this year’s Golden Gods. Every time they play, they raise the bar. This could be a show to say “I was there” about in years to come.

7. Best Sophie Tent Ever

The main stage’s greatness is predictable by now, but quite how fantastic the Sophie Lancaster stage cast is in 2012 is pretty mind-boggling. Stoner rifflords Orange Goblin, dreamy French magicians Alcest, English black metallers Winterfylleth, new wave of thrash kings Evile, loveable scamps Dripback, exceptional newcomers Ancient Ascendant, Slovenian industrialists Noctiferia, and the utterly ferocious Anaal Nathrakh are likely to flatten the place when they close it on Sunday. Special stuff.

Orange Goblin Rocking The Shades

8. Revelations

You can always rely on something fresh you haven’t seen before catching your ears at Bloodstock, whether it’s a new band on the New Blood stage – Pure Negative, Talanas and Saturnian made shitloads of friends last year, probably why the latter have been invited back for 2012 – or something simply a bit different to what you’re used to. Put money on Hatebreed to win over any remaining doubters, The Black Dahlia Murder to go toe-to-toe with the legends without remotely being put in the shade and a band making their UK debut’s to find themselves very welcome. A band called…

9. Demonic Resurrection

The epic Indian extremists were supposed to make their bow at Sonisphere last year, only for visa issues to royally fuck off all of us looking forward to seeing them, and to leave the band badly out of pocket. Bloodstock got them back though, and this time there will be no stopping them. Guitarist, vocalist and famous heavy metal chef Demonstealer and his cohorts are coming, and we can’t fucking wait.

10. Machine. Fucking. Head.

Headline set. Five songs from Burn My Eyes. Fire in their belly and a point to prove. An August evening. A field. Lots of beer. If this doesn’t sound like one of the best ways to spend a Saturday night in the world, there’s something funny in your drinking water. Machine Head will kick your arse all the way into next year’s Bloodstock. Bang your heads, motherfuckers!

Bloodstock 2012 takes place from August 10-12 at Catton Hall, Derby! Get your tickets from the Bloodstock website.