THURSDAY 13th August

Going back to its days as a much smaller indoor event, the Bloodstock festival has always been a bit of a marvel on the UK circuit, growing into the only non-mainstream event to rival Download for the attention of metal fans. And despite a few controversial line-up announcements over the last couple of years as it grows in size, is still fully deserving of its reputation as “the only true metal festival in the UK.”

This year's line-up was no exception, with quality bands wall-to-wall over the course of the three days, leaving practically no room to catch a breath between sets. Arriving late on the Thursday afternoon with my friends Stuart, Del and Eric (and a huge thanks to our Dundonian mate for driving us there and back) after a few navigation mishaps we found ourselves in the good company of a crowd of old festival buddies – (Nina and Paul) and some new introductions (for me at least, Jim and Gaz) and set about the obligatory first night mayhem.

The year before the organisers had pulled a major surprise by roping in Brit metal stalwarts Marshall Law and Conquest of Steel to play in the karaoke tent, but this year they went for the much classier option of having a troupe of strippers on show instead. It seemed like a great idea at the time, but after a few minutes struggling to see anything through a crowd of slathering, transfixed males I was longing for the sight of a few overweight true metal Yorkshiremen in denim and bullet belts, making this a contender for the saddest sentence ever to be typed.

Putting this grimly British scene behind us we ventured into the funfair set-up for a while, where we suffered the misfortune of the worst would-be ghost train ever built (let's just say we'd have been better served paying a homeless guy a few quid each to pull some scary faces) before it was back to the campsite for endless hours of Manowar karaoke.

FRIDAY 14th August

An unwelcome hangover and unexpected blazing sunshine made for a ropey start to the day, but our squad eventually gathered its collective composure and made a break for the festival grounds.

NWOBHM demigods Blitzkrieg were a late but very welcome addition to the bill and were lined up to play second on the opening day, so it was a great disappointment to come to the stage to find the slated opening act Million Dollar Reload in mid-song. It later turned out that the Irish rock band had been running late and the swap had been arranged as a safety measure, though I don't think it would have been too much to ask for a couple of notices advising of the change to be stuck up in a few strategic spots. Making it even tougher to swallow was the later development that MDR had apparently showed up in plenty of time after all but for some reason the slots couldn’t be switched back. An inauspicious start…

Putting this disappointment behind us we spent a bit more time back at the campsite before heading in to catch Finnish melodeathsters Insomnium. The third time I've seen them without ever actually listening to one of their albums, they left the same impression this time as they did the first two – thoroughly decent, but also completely assembly line and, without doing anything far wrong, completely unmemorable.

Another trudge back to the tents led to us getting a bit too comfortable and missing the start of Die Apokalyptischen Reiter's set. The very definition of Wacky Germans, their madcap power/melodeath/folk/whatever blend is a bit hit and miss, and the first couple of songs we made it in time for were quite puzzling, almost Rammstein-like stuff that left me a bit cold. They finished in fine fashion though, with a trio of bouncy songs to match their energetic stage show that includes gimp gear-wearing keyboard player Dr Pest keeping himself busy (steady) in a sex swing. The only song they played that I recognised was their fantastic metal sea shanty Seemann (no sniggering back there), for which vocalist Fuchs (oh, come on!) plucked a young lady up from the audience to first serenade and then launch back onto the crowd on a rubber dinghy. Those Germans…

The first band on the bill I was imminently familiar with was Municipal Waste, and their manic thrash/crossover stylings seemed like the perfect antidote for any remaining cobwebs. The Waste go hand-in-hand with all sorts of crowd surfing and moshing antics of course, and while I'm well past the stage of caring about that sort of thing there’s no disguising how amusing these sort of shenanigans can be when viewed from a safe distance. The massive quantity of songs gathered from all three of their albums to date as usual blurred into a haze of short, sharp bursts of aggression that made the perfect soundtrack to watching a massive wall of death, a Guinness-supervised (and sadly failed) attempt at setting a world record for crowd surfing in a single song and an ever-expanding pit. They even found the time to throw in a song from their upcoming fourth album which sounded more like fully-formed thrash with less of the expected hardcore influence and maybe hints at a new direction for the Virginian funsters.

Forsaking Katatonia for a quick scour of the merchandise stalls and some welcome shade from the gruelling sunshine back at the tents, a short rest of the legs and a few beers made for the perfect build-up to the first British appearance of German thrash titans Sodom since 1989, though in what was becoming a bit of a feature by this stage we managed to miss the start of their set.

Of the "Three Kings" (along with Destruction, who kicked up a storm here last year, and Kreator, playing the next day), Tom Angelripper and his cohorts are the band I am the least familiar with, but expectations were high for such a well-regarded act and were thoroughly exceeded. The furious nature of their ageless brand of Motorhead-inspired thrash was contrasted by their effortless and easygoing stage presence, as Angelripper grinned his way through the song and band introductions. Amidst such mandatory thrash classics as Outburst of Evil and Agent Orange they squeezed in their smirksome rendition of Surfin' Bird from the M-16 album, from which the masterful title track was also aired.

Their cover of Ace of Spades that has been known to crop up in their sets recently was sadly missing, but with the constraints of a 45 minute slot it was probably best that they stuck to their own material. A superlative display that defied just how long they have been in this game (and special mention must also go to Angelripper's vocals, which are still holding up mightily), it hopefully won’t be another 20 years before they return to these shores.

Rather than beat a retreat this time our party hung around to ensure a good vantage point for Saxon. Rather scandalously not headlining, the resultant set was an abbreviated version of the one seen on their recent tour for Into the Labyrinth, and as expected they took to the stage with the fiercely epic Battalions of Steel, the stunning opening track to their latest album.

A couple of more new songs such as the malevolent Demon Sweeney Todd and the so-so Live to Rock – I know it's the most recent single, but as an encore opener it's a bit of a damp squib – peppered the set, and otherwise their hour onstage was a jam-packed inventory of metal classics.

Biff Byford is of course one of the greatest frontmen ever to take the stage, and he didn't disappoint with his usual affable banter, even if he seemed as impressed as I was with their comparative lowly billing. Strangely, he chose to tell the crowd on two separate occasions that Metal Hammer was currently beating Kerrang! in the sales stakes, of whatever relevance that was meant to be. Sadly he didn't keep us up to date on how Mizz was faring against Sugar but I guess I can forgive that transgression for the magnificent shift he and his bandmates put in. Songs like 747 (Strangers in the Night) and the shout-along masterpiece Heavy Metal Thunder resolutely refuse to get old, and there isn't a metal audience worthy of the name that won't go apeshit for the extended crowd interaction section in Wheels of Steel.

Bringing things down just a shade was the atmospheric righteousness of Crusader, and, just as I was beginning to worry that they had run out of time to play it, they cranked out Princess of the Night to complete the 'Planes, Trains & Automobiles' trilogy after 747 and Wheels and closed a truly triumphant performance.

The headlining set-up had been unexpectedly re-jigged this year, with the first two days of the festival each featuring a pair of co-headliners with a 75-minute set. The first of Friday's duo were Arch Enemy, a band I was pretty mad about a few years back but had laterally allowed to more or less slip off my radar.

Angela Gossow's vocals are often a hit or a miss live, her performance at Bloodstock in 2007 letting down the rest of the band, but on this occasion she was pretty good, hitting most of her screams as well as could be expected. Her crowd interaction is still a load of old bollocks, sadly, but is ignorable with the rest of the band playing to such stunning levels of precision.

There was a bit of a surprise and slight disappointment in store when Angela announced that since they had just finished re-recording a collection of songs from their generally ignored first three albums with original vocalist Johan Liiva they would be "playing some old stuff." With my favourite Arch Enemy albums being their debut Black Earth and Burning Bridges, the final album to feature Liiva, I was hoping to hear some forgotten classics like Eureka or the stunning Angelclaw, but apparently "some" means "one" and after running through The Immortals it was straight back to more familiar climes.

And while the machine-like impassiveness of their later works doesn't quite do it for me on record anymore, there is no denying that they are one of the most well-oiled, professional sounding live acts you are ever likely to see. The Amott brothers in particular are an exemplary guitar duo, their individual solo spots nothing short of a joy to experience. Christopher in particular played an utter blinder, the immaculately clean execution unbelievable to behold as every single note he played rang clear as a bell.

Undoubtedly excellent songs like Burning Angel, Ravenous and big hitter Dead Eyes See No Future were belted out to great effect, and the crowd gave a similarly rapturous response even to material I find more questionable like My Apocalypse, showing the massive level of support the band have built in the second half of their career. So while not 100% my thing anymore, there is no doubting the quality of the performance Arch Enemy continue to put on.

After several hours and three consecutive bands of more or less uninterrupted standing, the prospect of staying on our feet through Carcass without any sort of rest period was pretty unbearable, so back to the tents it was for a not-so-quick relax that once again led to the start of the set being narrowly missed.

Putting in a tougher shift than we were willing to were Michael Amott and Daniel Erlandsson, fresh from their efforts with Arch Enemy for a second consecutive appearance. Erlandsson, continuing to stand in for Ken Owen, deserved particular credit for two back-to-back displays of complex and arduous drumming, and especially for doing the more intricate and relentless blasting of Carcass' material second of the two.

Having watched them in the blazing mid-afternoon sun of the Sweden Rock Festival last June I was looking forward to catching the Swede-Scouse outfit in their natural habitat, and their medical-themed misanthropy certainly went down well in the night time hours. Focusing more on the mid-period of their career, forgoing most of the purely grind-based early material and that from their controversially melodic final album, Swansong, it was a display of crushing British death metal and proto-melodeath from the groundbreaking Heartwork release. Bass playing throat-roarer Jeff Walker provided his usual ultra-sardonic patter between the songs that elicited a few smirks amidst all the aggression, and guitarist Bill Steer looked to have lost not an inch of his fret-wringing prowess after so many years in his throwback blues band Firebird, weaving complex riff patterns and dazzling solos in effortless tandem with the mercurial Amott.

There was also time later in the set for Ken Owen to make a brief appearance, something he has been doing at select shows since the Carcass reunion kicked off last summer. Eleven years on from the brain haemorrhage that left him in a coma a for ten months, it is a sad sight to see a once-incredible drummer impaired to such laborious movements, but at the same time it is miraculous that he is even still alive to do these shows with his old friends, and the chanting of the crowd after his short drum solo was genuinely heart warming.

The rest of the night was spent with an altogether more satisfying stagger around the fairground, with the dodgems and the waltzers booting the ghost train into touch before Del and Nina braved the massive slingshot contraption (later dubbed the Vomit Comet) that we had been cagily watching launch punters about a hundred feet into the air all day.

I managed to dodge taking a turn on this guaranteed spew machine through the stingy Scotsman routine ("fifteen quid!?!") before we stumbled across the divine insanity of forky forky. I don't think there's any possible way to describe dancing around in a circle taking turns to throw cutlery at a courgette without making it sound like a hallucination of some kind, so I'll just leave it at that.

SATURDAY 15th August

After GWAR had cancelled their appearance at the festival, there was a slight temptation to check out Uncle Rotter, as Nina had been saying they were of the same zany persuasion, but at 10.30 in the morning I was more content cowering inside the my tent porch like a vampire in the Mojave desert. After seeing the shameful depths Battelore have sunk to these days on last year's tour with Korpiklaani they were written off long before kick-off, so it was a more relaxed morning before it was time to head in for Swedish old school crew Wolf.

With their newest album Ravenous blasting more or less constantly from Jim's speakers, it's safe to say I was pretty pumped up to see them, especially after their disastrous appearance at Bloodstock a few years previous. A massive (and uncharacteristic) sound fault ended up robbing them of most of their stage time, making it a bit of a wasted journey across the North Sea, and they were no doubt keen to settle the score this time around.

Culling most of their set from Ravenous, they kicked off with its galloping opening track Speed On, which is typical of their beefed up Iron Maiden-by-way-of-Mercyful Fate style, all razor-sharp riffs and kinetic soloing. Also on show from the new disc were the creepy, mid-tempo Voodoo (hardest chorus to sing along to without sounding like a total twat since Breaking the Law) and the absolutely dominant Hail Caesar.

Niklas Stålvind's nasally vocals still do not 100% convince in the live environment, and in fact when the band’s livewire Johannes Losbäck made his brief vocal contributions it made me wonder if they maybe had the wrong guitarist behind the microphone, but their performance was still top-notch and they kicked the day off in fine fashion. Finishing on the excellent Evil Star, and with Losbäck leading the crowd in a chorus of wolf howls, they left the stage to an ecstatic reception and should get a warm welcome on their upcoming UK tour later this year.

Having found ourselves separated from everyone else, Del and I were making our way back to base camp when we were drawn to the unsigned tent by some promising sounds from inside. We made it in time to catch the last two songs by a young four-piece who eventually got around to introducing themselves as Nefarious, and were both quite impressed by their up-tempo thrash antics. It was a shame we only caught the tail end of their set, but at least there's another unsigned British thrash band to keep an eye out for.

Catching an early afternoon break after almost unanimously agreeing that The Haunted were about as welcome as Varg Vikernes at a medieval church preservation conference, we eventually dusted ourselves down and went back to the unsigned tent to show a bit of support for Glasgow's own Switchblade Scream, winners of the Scottish edition of the Bloodstock 'Metal 2 the Masses' competition. One of the newer bands on the scene up here, they nonetheless have a couple of members with fairly extensive stage experience and are a well-honed and very professional outfit despite their tender years.

They way they blend their mixture of power metal with hints of thrash and even glam in the vocal department doesn't exactly make for my preferred tipple, but like a small-scale version of Arch Enemy the previous night, there is no denying their proficiency as a live act, nor indeed the flashy skills of their guitarists or the power of vocalist Matt Dorian's pipes. One song in particular (the name of which I didn't catch) impressed, bearing a strong early Firewind influence and as such featuring suitably exquisite lead guitar and a couple of mean riffs.

Switchblade Scream's exit unfortunately meant we had to abandon the sanctuary of the unsigned tent's shade, and with no one being overly bothered about catching the end of Entombed's performance we grabbed a drink and hunkered down by the sound desk to at least have a listen to the long-running outfit. As expected, most of the songs they played carried the stink of their later "death 'n' roll" stuff rather than the savage death metal style of their early material, and most of it sailed over my head without leaving much of an impression.

After the stop-start nature of the day so far, it was time to really get stuck in with a run of bands I had been looking forward to, starting with none other than doom lords Candlemass. Having seen them a couple of months before on their own turf at this year's instalment of Sweden Rock but not being able to fully get into the gig due to a series of sound problems, an unusually flat crowd and me wilting like a lily in the crippling heat, I was hoping to walk away with a much better impression despite the far shorter time slot and was thankfully not disappointed.

The constraints of the set meant they had time only for a couple of songs each from their two oldest and two most recent albums with everything in between left by the wayside, but most of the real obligatory classics were performed with considerable vigour. New-ish vocalist Rob Lowe (of American doom brethren Solitude Aeternus) certainly has a big pair of shoes to fill after stepping in for the one-of-a-kind Messiah Marcolin, and while he has to adapt the songs to suit his own less operatic style he certainly does them justice. The most notably different of his interpretations comes with the legendary Samaritan, but the startling emotion of the song remains intact. Also making an appearance from the Nightfall album was my own personal favourite ’mass song, the mighty Gallows End. The jarring breaks between typically epic melancholy and stuttering aggressive riffing make for a genuine doom masterclass, and Lowe nailed the skyscraping vocal aerobics as though the song was written for him.

He sounded a bit less assured on the raucous up-tempo egomania of new song If I Ever Die, losing his place on a couple of the challenging a capella sections, but the rest of the band expertly held it together. From their newest album Death Magic Doom they also played the altogether more sinister Hammer of Doom (or as I prefer to call it, Black Sabbath), along with Emperor of the Void from the preceding King of the Grey Islands album, both of which are strong slices of modern doom, but it was the early material that really shone brightest, with the legendary Solitude bringing the set to a rousing conclusion before they returned to the stage for a storming rendition of Rainbow's Kill the King.

Following on from this were another band that broad daylight doesn't seem the most ready-made setting for in the form of Vikings-turned-shoegazers Enslaved. And while Candlemass seemed mighty and tyrannical enough to swallow the sun and use it as a power source, Enslaved unfortunately withered a little under her harsh rays. The droning, progressive approach of the music they are making nowadays isn't really built for this sort of environment, and while in a cramped club they make for compelling viewing, right in the middle of a festival line-up they tend to sag a little and can’t quite grip the attention in the same way.

The only clash on the entire bill that had presented me with a dilemma of sorts was the choice between Kreator and Celesty, but having seen the German veterans twice already and with Celesty making their UK debut there was only going to be one winner. Thankfully it was only a partial collision and there was time to see about 25 minutes of Kreator's set before scurrying over to the Sophie Lancaster stage.

Most of the songs I had time to witness was of their more recent work, including the title tracks to their last three albums, and we arrived as they were playing Hordes of Chaos (A Necrologue for the Elite), the excellent opening number on their latest effort. Violent Revolution and particularly Enemy of God are among the best of Kreator's post-millennial comeback material, towering neo-thrash that the band executed magnificently.

Mille Petrozza was more or less the complete opposite of Tom Angelripper's relaxed presence the day before, his daft between-song ranting as usual becoming pretty teeth grating alarmingly soon after starting out risibly amusing. Also in contrast to his more laid-back counterpart, his voice has not held up to anywhere near the same levels, his proto-black metal screeches now replaced with a forced, monotone scream. It doesn't really detract from the quality of their live performance though, and thankfully they played the seminal Pleasure to Kill before I cleared off. Also aired was the less satisfactory Phobia from their largely forgotten 90s period, but four out of five was a fine return and I marched off to see Celesty well satisfied.

I had been aware of the Finnish band for a number of years but had never got round to listening to them until I realised with only a couple of months to go before the festival that they had somehow been added to the line-up without my noticing. Now well-versed in their two most recent albums I was looking forward to a half hour of some uplifting melodic power metal, something that had been somewhat lacking on the bill this year.

This first venture to the second stage during daylight hours (it doubled as the karaoke tent at night) proved to be like stepping into a stinking sauna, with the impressive amount people there to see Celesty clustering as close to the small stage as they could get.

Even with only five members – keyboard player Juha Mäenpää had fallen ill just a few hours before they were due to fly to the UK – the Finns looked a little cramped in the conditions but set about their task with plenty of zeal. Getting the levels right with a keyboard band on a small stage is always a bit of a challenge, so considering the already quite stifled sound they were suffering from (later turning out to be a bit of a feature for this tent) it may actually have been for the best that they were relying on backing tracks with their regular ivory tinkler missing.

Subscribing to the same philosophy as a lot of bands over the course of the weekend, they focused quite heavily on their newer material, with plenty from their excellent, highly ambitious new album Vendetta being proudly trotted out. The effect of the symphonic flair was lost a little with all the dashing orchestral flourishes coming from the sequencer, but the dead-on performances of the remaining members – even if Teemu Koskela struggled to have his guitar solos heard amongst the clamour – were exceptional, and they seemed delighted to be there despite the hindrances they had to endure.

Frontman Antti Raili and chatty guitarist Tapani Kangas made for a lively duo between songs, at one point pontificating on the harsh tones of the Finnish language and getting the audience to chant a fairly aggressive-sounding phrase that turned out to mean "cotton candy rainbow" as proof.

The highlight for me was the superb Like Warriors with its inspiring Gamma Ray-like chorus soaring through the muddled sound, but their full repertoire for the day was massively enjoyable and provided a more than satisfactory melodic power metal fix.

With the prolonged heat and periods of standing still beginning to take its toll on everyone, I failed to persuade anyone Arthemis would be worth the extra lactic acid build up and headed back to the SL stage on my lonesome. Not a band I had ever known much about beyond their association with Power Quest, the knowledge that it would probably be my last chance to see them before vocalist Alessio Garavello departed both bands for pastures new in a couple of months time made checking them out a necessity.

Despite more barely adequate sound from the tiny stage, they played well and got a good response from the small but dedicated band of assembled followers. Sadly their most recent album has seen them stray away from their signature power metal sound to incorporate more of a hard rock influence, so while the performance was good the songs were sometimes a little lacking from my point of view. Garavello is a lively frontman though and his enthusiasm is infectious even if he failed to get much crowd interaction on the go, while his soon-to-be ex-Power Quest bandmate Andrea Martongelli is a superb lead guitarist who left a lasting impression with his wild soloing.

Finally cranking out some pure power metal towards the end of the set, they finished their own material on a high before belting out an unexpected cover of the Anthrax classic Metal Thrashing Mad, which gave welcome little energy boost to propel me back to the campsite.

Apocalyptica were still finishing up their appearance by the time I left the tent, but with Blind Guardian - probably the band I was looking forward to most of the lot - up next as the first of the co-headliners it was all about conserving a bit of stamina at this stage.

Guardian were supposed to make an appearance at Bloodstock the year that they merged the indoor and outdoor festivals into one, but the resultant change of dates ended in them cancelling, so the anxiety to see that put right had only increased expectations, and the huge crowd gathered before the main stage was rippling in anticipation as the War of Wrath intro tape set the stage.

They played a set that, while not exactly all-encompassing, gave a decent view of their long career so far, with most of the songs coming from the most popular mid-period era between Somewhere Far Beyond and Nightfall in Middle-Earth, beginning in perhaps unexpected fashion with the folk-tinged When Time Stands Still (At the Iron Hill). Things really kicked up a gear though with the incredible Another Holy War, a song that had been missing from the set on their last album tour. The layered vocals on the chorus, as with many Guardian songs, make it impossible to fully perform live, but the adapted version Hansi Kürsch offers onstage is nothing short of stunning and it was clear enough by now that the bards were well and truly back in town.

Not letting up the pace, they immediately tore through a pair of classics with Nightfall and the Script For My Requiem. Both these songs are the proud owners of two of the most stunning choruses I've ever experienced, and being part of a crowd filling in for the choir vocals from the album versions is a truly special experience.

After the newer song Fly, which remains a tune I still haven't quite figured out three years after the fact, they pulled another unexpected move (at least from my point of view) by playing the wistful epic, Quest For Tanelorn. André Olbrich had no difficulty in replicating the solo originally played by Gamma Ray's Kai Hansen, and the song went over smoothly before the mass sing-along of Valhalla made its mark both on the crowd and what was left of my exhausted vocal chords.

The first of two really big surprises came when the band treated us to a new song, called Sacred, to be featured on a computer game of a similar name, and while it wasn't the most immediately striking Guardian song, its subtle intricacies and weaving structure suggest an interesting direction for the new album, expected next year.

Immediately after this though they managed to shock me even further. With the acoustic guitar set up in front of Marcus Siepen I thought I was certain of what was coming next, but when Hansi pointed out that it was "too early for The Bard's Song" it could mean only one thing. Lord of the Rings is often an unsung favourite among the Guardian faithful, and only creeps in and out of the set occasionally, but it remains one of my all-time favourite songs and one I had convinced myself I would never get the chance to hear live. The band's performance took me right back to my younger days of just getting into power metal (it was one of the first songs I ever heard by a European metal band and was largely responsible for pushing my musical tastes towards what they are now) and the nostalgia coupled with years of anticipation doubled up to make it what will undoubtedly be my most cherished memory of this year’s festival.

No Guardian show would be complete of course without the band's two most widely regarded classics, and the encore provided both. The Bard's Song – for real this time – united the crowd in a perfect sing-along, its beautiful, melancholy atmosphere almost tangible in the night air, and had it not been for Lord of the Rings would probably have taken home the prize for the most perfect moment of the weekend.

Of course Mirror Mirror was the one everyone was waiting for, eliciting mass euphoria on the chorus amidst the rampaging rhythms and pounding drums, and Olbrich's massive, absolutely perfect solo - the only one I've ever consistently heard draw a sing-along too – still dizzyingly brilliant every time it's played. Despite failing quite miserably in our attempts to kick off the customary re-start of the Valhalla chorus as the band left the stage (bloody philistines), that wasn't going to dampen the waves of enthusiasm and I trotted off to the tent content in the knowledge that I had just witnessed one of the shows of my life.

Having been less than impressed (to say the very, very least) with de facto headliners Cradle of Filth when I saw them in Glasgow a few years back, and knowingly they were never going to top the performance I had just witnessed, I decided to let Guardian close the night on a high and settled down by the tent while nearly everyone else gradually trickled away to see Dani Filth and co.

While I'm not much of a fan of them, I was nothing less than astounded to later find out that they had been pelted relentlessly by a minority of cretins in the audience, eventually culminating in guitarist Paul Allender taking a hit so hard from some sort of over-sized gobstopper (seriously) that he required medical attention and the band quite rightly refused to return for a planned four-song encore.

Congratulations to the Cro-Magnon lackwits responsible for short-changing the genuine Cradle fans in attendance and sullying the reputation of the festival, you’ve definitely proved that you are without doubt the hardest men on the planet. But please, just go back to the Reading and Leeds festivals where you belong; you are not wanted here.

SUNDAY 16th August

The final day of the festival forced the earliest start of the lot, with Sabaton taking to the stage at the rather testing time of 11:55. For a band that have slogged as hard as these Swedish power metal troops to build a UK following with a pretty degrading support tour and couple of trudges through the club venues on their own, it was pretty shocking to see them granted only half an hour on stage.

Making a point of how precious time was to them, they dispensed with their usual intro tape and tore straight into a set comprised almost completely of songs from their third, newest album, The Art of War. Beginning with the opening pairing from the album, the rampaging Ghost Division and the pounding, mercilessly catchy title track the crowd were up for it from the get-go, putting aside the early kick-off time to give them one of the best responses of the weekend.

Watching vocalist Joakim Broden belting about stage would make even the most weary of festivalgoer nod their head in approval though – unable to wipe the Cheshire cat grin off his face for more than a few seconds at a time, the diminutive singer performs as though he has 50,000 people in front of him every time he hits the stage and his relentless eagerness is as communicable as the plague.

Knocking it up a notch was the all-conquering speed/power metal anthem 40:1 and on the flip side of the coin Cliffs of Gallipoli provided the goosebumps moment with it's poignant lyrics and aching melodies.

Heading back to their older material only briefly on the final two songs, they finally gave the expectant crowd what they were waiting for with their most popular song, Primo Victoria, which sent the audience into a fit of pogoing, and they wrapped things up brilliantly with a medley of the closing tracks of their first two albums, Metal Machine and Metal Crue. The cheeky lyrics to both – a list classic song titles for the first and band names for the second - are perfect festival fodder and left at least me with a smile nearly as wide as Broden's.

After this came my only wimping out moment of the festival – the plan had been to go to the unsigned tent to watch Welsh folksters Annwn, but with a wary eye on the rock solid run of bands ahead on the timesheet my resolve caved and after a quick scout around the merchandise stalls – pretty poor for t-shirts this year, but with a few CD bargains to be found – it was time for an extended period of taking it easy back at the watering hole (tough life, this festival lark) in preparation.

German folk metal band Equilibrium were a total unknown quantity, but with a decent reputation behind them there was never any doubt about them being investigated. They played a fairly typical style of modern melodic death/folk metal, reminiscent of a more epic Ensiferum, but were no less impressive for it.

Vocals that altered between blackened scowls and more sombre clean tones paired most typically with sweeping symphonic arrangements (backing tracks again, sadly) and heroic guitar melodies, but there was also room for a few Bavarian drinking tunes more reliant on jaunty rhythms. The more exact nature of their songs was lost pretty quickly, but the overall effect was very impressive indeed and future listens will definitely be on the agenda.

It had been a bit of disappointment when GWAR had cancelled their slated appearance only a couple of months in advance, but when the replacement act was announced, all was forgiven and then some. Scouse misery merchants Anathema may have seemed like a bit of an oddment on such an all-out metallic line-up, but I wasn't giving a toss about that, not at first anyway.

As the time ticked by it occurred that the former death/doom pioneers latter-day melodic, atmospheric rock music, though doubtlessly superb, may not have gone down too well in an audience expecting immediacy in the form of big riffs and hyper-kinetic solos.

Perhaps wise to this predicament, the band – down a couple of regular members – picked a few of their more uptempo (if not exactly upbeat) songs to kick off the set with. The pairing of Fragile Dreams and Empty from 1998's Alternative 4 – the album where their abandonment of metal really kicked in – got things off to a flying start, and the amount of voices chanting along to the "maybe I already knew" chorus wail of the former suggested there was maybe a bigger amount of receptive ears in attendance than had been feared.

Having already picked out the hulking frame of Nick Barker (ex-everyone) behind the kit in place of John Douglas, the mystery keyboard man standing in for Les Smith was eventually revealed to be a de-gothed and mostly de-haired Martin Powell, back in the fold after chucking his touring gig with Anathema in 2000 to join Barker in Cradle of Filth. The Cavanagh brothers, Danny, Vincent and Jamie, didn't seem put off by the absence of their usual bandmates though, and went about their routines with the usual expertise.

You would have thought playing in this sort of environment would have been, well, an anathema to them (God I'm so clever I even astound myself), but unlike Enslaved the day before the sunny setting didn't have any effect on how well their music transmitted. One of the most special moments of the festival came when Lee Douglas, sister of the erstwhile John, took the stage to sing the achingly beautiful title track to their most recent album, A Natural Disaster. It was a genuinely surreal experience to be part of a sea of sun-beaten metal fans transfixed by a downer ballad, and it underscored the uniqueness of Anathema's position at Bloodstock.

Maybe paying lip service to the fact that they were after all playing a metal festival, the end of the set saw A Dying Wish from their final doom/death album The Silent Enigma before they pulled the biggest surprise of the entire event. With Powell making an early exit and Danny rather cryptically stating that they were trying the next song because Nick Barker was one of "only about three people in the country who can play it" I was scratching my head a little at what was coming next, but just about the last thing I expected to hear was a cover of Iron Maiden's Phantom of the Opera. I spent the first few seconds gaping blankly with a you-have-got-to-be-kidding-me look plastered to my face before marvelling at the note-perfect execution of the intricate classic – if I ever had any doubts about Danny and Vincent maintaining their talents as metal guitarists over the years they were well and truly confounded here as they nailed the weaving harmonies and solos as though they were their own.

A completely perfect end to one of the best performances of the festival, about the only complaint to take away from of the festival was the unbelievably hard time given to the sound guys by the ever-prissy Danny over the sake of no more than the positioning of a few leads.

In the time before Turisas' appearance I headed to the backstage bar with Stuart, Eric and Nina to catch a bit of a breather. Some shade and the use of the heavensent, immaculate portaloos were good enough, but I also got the privilege of having brief a with chat with Magnum vocalist Bob Catley.

Slightly refreshed, we headed back into the swelling crowd that was gathering for Turisas. Of the recent wave of folk metal bands they are undoubtedly the most popular in the UK - thanks in no small part to Metal Hammer championing them as some sort of genre-creating prophets – but their relative fame shouldn't be confused with a lack of legitimacy. Their grandiose symphonic/progressive take on the folk metal style is often hugely impressive on disc, and while their anthemic songs generally transmit well in the live environment, their reliance on backing tapes to replicate the massive orchestral samples and keyboard sections neuters the performance a little as an unhealthy percentage of the music isn't actually being performed live.

Still, they get away with it more at a festival set than an indoor venue, and the enthusiasm and crowd interactions of the musicians onstage catch the attention more than the lack of a symphony orchestra in the background.

Despite his voice improving over the years and possessing a powerful stage persona, Mathias Nygard still fails to completely impress as a vocalist, but with their enormous choir choruses songs like the opening Holmgard and Beyond and the sombre One More are tailor-made for crowd participation and cover the frontman’s occasional failings well enough.

Festival favourite Rasputin was given it's usual airing, the audience split into opposing accordion- and violin-led camps for the sing-along, and their signature song Battle Metal caused the expected pandemonium. Leaving the stage after playing their biggest (ok, only) hit left me genuinely worried that they had cleared off after a criminal 35 minutes onstage, but they put my fears to bed with a triumphant performance of the epic closer to their second album, Miklagard Overture.

Unlike on the initial tour for The Varangian Way, Jussi Wickstrom thankfully played the clean guitar into instead of relying on tapes, so the song came a little closer to the full amazing power of the studio version. Leaping around all over the place from solemn intro to the majestic choir sections and the spiralling prog metal instrumental break - and of course topped by its mighty chorus crescendo - they finished to thunderous applause and, for some reason, multicoloured confetti. And why not?

By this point just about everyone had more or less hit the wall, with the prospect of so many more bands in a row causing my legs to turn to jelly, but Del and I summoned what was left of our resolve to go and see Moonspell. The Portuguese gothic metal band have never quite broken through in this country despite continued success on the continent, and chances to see them are few and far between, so despite being mostly unfamiliar with their music I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity, even after almost being crushed to death by one of the two mountainous Slovakians (one of whom waving his country's flag as though his very life depended on it) we found ourselves stuck behind.

Unfortunately the time Moonspell appeared on the bill meant that even though I was enjoying what they were doing, I was watching it all through a haze of exhausted detachment and didn't take many memories away with me. The show was mostly comprised of a fairly impressive set of dirges, driven alternately by creeping riffs and gloomy keyboards and topped by alternating harsh and sonorous clean vocals from Fernando Ribeiro.

The songs that I took the most away from came at the end of the set and were maybe predictably culled from their earlier albums, being at once more aggressive and containing an inch or two of epic black metal dissonance, and at least gave me something to think about in terms of listening to them properly and hopefully seeing them again in the future.

Instead of wasting more precious stamina going to and from the tent we collapsed next to the stage and caught a good bit of rest before everyone else filtered through and we took our positions for Amon Amarth. Rested and more familiar with the band in question, I'd snapped out of my stupor and enjoyed myself a lot more in the company of the long-running Swedes.

The set focused quite heavily on their terrific newest album, Twilight of the Thunder God, and from my point of view at least the show was all the better for it. While the album has seen them up the melody and tone down the death metal aspect of their sound somewhat, the reduction of intensity also saw them produce their most varied and unpredictable work to date.

In saying that, despite the title track being - at least in my estimation – far and away the best song Amon Amarth have ever done, it doesn't quite work as the opening song at a show for some reason. It's probably just that I think it should be saved for a couple of songs in to give the fans a kick-start, but no one else seemed too bothered by it's early inclusion, and whichever of the guitarists (sorry guys) played the astounding solo originally provided by Stone's Roope Latvala on the album did a great job of replicating it.

Other songs showcased from the newest album included the amazing Live For the Kill, Free Will Sacrifice and the rumbling menace of Guardians of Asgard. Johan Hegg – perfectly amiable despite his fearsome appearance – assured us it was a shame that Entombed's L-G Petrov wasn't around to reprise his duet from the album version, but he got on with the job just fine by himself. Older material began to surface towards the end of the set, and the twin towering epics Cry of the Black Birds and Death in Fire resonated through a captive audience who gave a deservedly vocal ovation when the band took their leave.

With the finish line now in site, any thoughts of fatigue were banished. Despite quite fancying a look at Satyricon, I had been most impressed by Eden's Curse on the recent tour they did with Stratovarius, and decided to have a gander at them in the Sophie Lancaster tent before Europe provided the last hurrah on the main stage.

The grand plan was to watch their set from 21.00 to 21.40 and immediately head down to the front to secure a good spot for Europe. The best laid schemes, eh? Either due to another unscheduled change to the timetable or technical difficulties they were 20 minutes late – and rather ridiculously, after having set up their own gear in full view of the fans, insisted on hiding at the side of the stage while their intro track played itself out.

Despite it all, from the 20 or so minutes of the set that I saw before scarpering they put on a great show. The sound again was very compressed and suffocating, but the songs didn't lose much of their rich colour. Their style of bombastic and highly polished melodic metal isn't really for everyone, but anyone who can appreciate huge late 70s/early 80s AOR-style choruses and sweeping keyboard arrangements would be in their element with them.

In all honesty the only song I can distinctly remember from the set was the powerful Masquerade Ball, but the overall impression the band left was a positive one. Contender for the strangest incident of the festival (and good lord there were a few teakers) came when a couple of the stage crew performed an F1 pitstop-style replacement of the bass drum between the first and second song, toddling offstage quite the thing with the old one as though they'd left the rest of the kit up on bricks.

Heading to the main stage nice and early, I was eventually picked out by Stuart and Nina and we found ourselves in what seemed at the time to be an ideal position just a few people from the front.

The reaction to Europe's announcement as the final headline act had been met with overwhelming criticism (at least on the Bloodstock forum) with many unhappy that such a distinctly non-metal band were closing a metal festival. The thrust of just about everyone's argument of course focused on the fact that the band are still, 20 years and a few albums after the fact, seen as a one-hit wonder of no musical merit. A bit of research – too much effort for some, it would seem – of course reveals that despite their chart success, Europe are first and foremost a rock band, with their early material in particular from the UFO school of heavy rhythms and blazing solos.

Reports afterwards revealed that both the band and the organisers were positively shiteing themselves backstage in the run-up, but you'd never have known it with Joey Tempest running the show with his usual swagger. Opening with the brand-new title track to their forthcoming Last Look at Eden album seemed like a bit of an odd move, but what a song it turned out to be. More 80s sounding than most of the material on Europe's post-comeback albums, it seemed a very promising track but was muddied somewhat by the sound which was very heavily biased towards the bass, unfortunately rendering the first few songs all but unlistenable. Scream of Anger, the heaviest song Europe have ever done and the one most likely to ingratiate them to any hostile sorts in the crowd suffered the most, with the kick drums crushing everything else into a pulp. I later found out that everything had sounded crystal clear further back into the crowd, so thankfully it wasn't a disaster for the band, but it made me wish I had just stuck it out with Eden's Curse and settled for a spot a bit further back.

The sound guys soon steadied the ship though, with the levels being more or less righted (though still a little low-end heavy) for the rest of the set. A few newer numbers were peppered throughout, but thankfully it was a proper festival set made up mostly of the band’s classics. Seven Doors Hotel from the self-titled 1984 debut offered a bit of added heaviness and the amazing solo from John Norum was a joy to behold as always.

While their newer material is a bit hit-and-miss, Always the Pretenders is an outstanding bit of work and it was welcome in the company of its more well-known forbears. A couple of my personal favourites thankfully retained their place in the set. The emotional Sign of the Times, with its gentle piano playing and inspirational chorus came quite early on, and the raucous (and delightfully silly) Ready or Not made a late appearance just as I was beginning to think too much time had slipped away.

Despite the continued efforts of a few determined morons shouting "Final Countdown!" between every-single-song (oh, I see what you did there…) the audience had been a mostly respectful, if somewhat static bunch. More people than I expected, though, burst into life for the band's 'other' party rock hit, Rock the Night, which closed the set in explosive style. Returning to the stage they tore through The Getaway Plan before giving the biggest percentage of the audience the only thing they were there to see with their 80s mega-hit. Even for all the criticism it inevitably attracts for its cheesy synth refrain and ridiculous lyrics, it just happens to be a great song anyway, and regardless of how serious the crowd were taking it, the amount of people joyously bouncing up and down was testimony to its lasting charms.

Seemingly winning over a good deal of their doubters, the veterans thoroughly vindicated a pretty big gamble on the part of the organisers, and my hat's off to both of them for giving us such a brilliant ending to the festival. All that was left to do now was have a few celebratory beers and one last go at a Manowar karaoke massacre before bringing the lights down on another near-flawless Bloodstock experience.

After saying our goodbyes to friends heading in different directions, the long road home the next day seemed to breeze by after such a great weekend in the Derbyshire sunshine, and Bloodstock once again proved itself to be the only place to be on the festival calendar for the UK’s true metal hordes. With the tenth anniversary looming, they will no doubt be looking to pull something special out of the bag for next year, but they'll have a lot of work to do if they plan to top their efforts in 2009.

- Posted By: Craig at 00:47 on 30/10/09

Bloodstock Open Air

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