Slayer - Bloodstock Open Air - 14/8/16

You know you’re watching a black metal band when the stage set consists of two 30-feet high inverted crosses, made of Marshall amplifiers SPURTING FIRE!
Saturday at Bloodstock was a bit too shouty for me. In the Jägermeister tent, Cybernetic Witch Cult started our day with awesome psychedelic space dinosaur rock and back projections from Ralph Bakshi’s ‘Lord of the Rings’. Pulverise delivered the best Taylor Swift cover of the weekend – don’t know the name of the song, but I heard the original for the first time recently and there wasn’t a great deal of difference, except that Pulverise did it better. On the big stage, I was surprised to enjoy Rotting Christ from Greece, and Gojira from Japan. Shining were disappointing – not enough saxophone and jazzy bits to break up the misery. And then Mastodon headlined. I’m a bit of fan – have the first two or three albums, but the sound was awful: all drums and vocals. We wandered back to the bar. But to round off the night we had Acid Reign – the self-proclaimed Kings of UK Apple Core! One of Iain’s all-time favourites and an absolute crack: “…the security guys are telling me that they’re bored. Not enough of you are throwing yourselves over the top and they’ve nothing to do but listen to us play.”
On Sunday, in the Jägertent, Dirty King (who I met in the morning coffee queue and are very nice chaps) did the best ‘Ace of Spades’ of the weekend, slowing it down to stoner-rock ala Black Rebel Motorcycle. Jukebox Monkey and Attica Rage rocked out with equal majesty. I’m now looking for a metal festival which is only the bands I saw over the weekend in that tiny tent – every one of them was a gem, who I’d happily go see again.
Meanwhile, back at the big stage Metal Allegiance were apparently all well-known metal people having a holiday as a covers band. I knew the songs, but not the guys on stage.
After all these years, I finally enjoyed an Anthrax gig! I was whinging about them in a recent shirt, but the sunset gig at Bloodstock was a corker. They whipped out Joe Jackson’s ‘Got The Time’ at last and then delivered new material that sounded like old material and it was all fab!
And to end the weekend in bloody style: Slayer. Like Anthrax, they are one of the “Big Four” US West Coast bands and still giving a giving a thumbs-up to Satan every night. By this time we were knackered, and going down the front was not an option, especially having seen one poor guy being carried out of the mosh during Anthrax’s set (I read recently that he’d accidentally head-butted someone and collapsed, only to be picked up by a bunch of guys in the crowd and carried through the field to the ambulance). Slayer played a blinder – I wouldn’t claim to know their work very well – but it was all good. And the fire-spouting Marshall stacks still make me grin.
Now, if either Cropredy or Bloodstock would like to move to another weekend, my summer festival experience would be awesome.