BOA 2017: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

[Noodle]

Yet more tradition.

The Good:
-New Blood stage sound seemed good whenever I wondered over there.
-Bloodstock still feels like home.
-Campervan folk were great.
-Showsec as good natured and chatty as ever.

The Bad:
-The Sophie stage seemed to struggle with getting vocals to sound good. Wintersun and Arthemis were prime examples (bizarrely Arthemis sounded much better outside), although Inquisition and Blind Haze were the lucky ones.
-It's starting to feel a bit too crowded whilst moving around the arena. It's no longer always a straightforward walk from the Sophie tent to the New Blood tent. It's almost as if Bloodstock's outgrowing the Catton Park arena.

The Ugly:
-The ending to my Friday night and subsequent Saturday hangover.
-Couple of dickheads wandering over to Campervans on Monday, finding the fire extinguishers and setting them off.

[JPMC]

The Good:
- Met some awesome people at my campsite. Came alone, spent the weekend hanging with them, great bunch!
- Sound seems much better on the main stage this year for some reason
- New Blood tent was consistently good.
- VIP area was definitely not as crammed as previous years. Decent amount of space to move around. If the mods are still trying to figure out the balance, I'd say it was possibly a little undersold this year, could have maybe had a few more in if needed. But it's an improvement on last year which seemed to be vastly oversold.

The Bad:
- Showers dying on Sunday morning
- Sound in Sophie stage seems to be a constant pain to get right. I only heard 2-3 bands in there who seemed to get it OK eventually. Just to suggest, has any of the crew thought of possibly raising the speakers up a lot higher and angling down? While I'm sure acoustic padding would be pretty difficult given the type of space the Sophie tent pretty much is, angling down and using people to scatter reflections may help instead?
- The fact that delikate is finishing this year. Awesome food as always

The Ugly:
- Midgard. Wow.
- The bunch of people in Midgard wrestling in the piss soaked ground near the portaloos. There's a limit...
- My decision to bring pot noodles for sustinance. What on earth was I thinking?

[NeglectedField]

In time-honoured tradition, is that really angry guy gonna march into this thread again like he owns the place and try to police what people can and can't complain about?

I'll give my verdict in a bit. In short, it's a good one.

[Slev]

The Good:
++People, the crowd, old friends, new friends.
++Bands: Endeavour, Morass Of Molasses, Blind Guardian, Lionize, Solar Sons, Ba'al, Malum Sky, Tales of Autumn, Redrum, OHHMS, zhOra, Blind Haze, Atragon, Netherhall, Na Cruithne, Mist, Bossk.
++Rock Soc tent & crowd.

Bad:
--The state of my back all weekend.
--Ridiculous amount of Death Metal almost all on the Friday. Spread it out a bit please, especially on the New Blood!
--Excessive numbers of bands clashing with bigger bands of the same genre, especially bad for the New Blood bands who are thee to gain exposure. Doubly a problem with the Friday thing!
--The queue to get in on Thursday. I joined the queue at 1700 when there is normally no queue at all, and even though there where no apparent extra security checks at that point, it still took almost an hour to get through.
--Anti-ram barriers that hadn't been filled, making them useless. If we're upping security, let's do it properly!

The ugly:
**The quagmire that was quarter of the urinals next to teh Sophie stage, rendering them unusable.
**Some moron letting off a smoke bomb in a portaloo.

[Turbo]

The good.

+ our rebranded irc camp now known as poopstock had some legends in it this year.
+ the weather excluding this morning which was a bit rank.
+ The bands I saw were all rather good (excluding Decapitated which I found to be dull).
+ dodgems! Although I could be more injured than I thought see bad.

The bad.

- I think I need to go to hospital, at least sitting on bruised ribs. Worrying if physically I can continue going to BOA for the weekend.
- missed a couple of bands I really wanted to see because I was suffering from said injuries.
- seemed to be over in the blink of an eye.
- that fucking queue, bless the guy that was queuing for an hour, try the over 3 hours I was in the queue with every fucking knobhead pushing in. Big shout out to the Welsh lads we caught doing just that and we didn't stop them continuing. Suppose some people are more important than others, queuing is for the plebs.

The Ugly

-- as it stands at least an attempted tent theft. My mates belongings looked like someone had been there looking for something valuable.
-- the same mate came back to her car to find someone had broke into her car. Being honest this has seriously changed my mind about driving again, would have been fucking marvellous to find the car stolen... not that I think anyone would with my car.

[Cerpin_Taxt]

The good:
Almost everything. The toilets were clean, the staff were friendly, the security was good, the weather was great, etc.
Great atmosphere as always
One of the best line ups ever for me

The bad:
The sound was a bit hit and miss, sometimes it was really awful.
The drop off point was moved to the car park, where it's basically pointless. The old spot was a great place to drop off your stuff before getting into the festival.
The step to get up onto the ramp/staircase, very hard to lift a trolley full of beer up it.

The ugly:
The queue to get in to the festival. It wasn't so bad for us, but it took some people more than four hours to get in. But, if this is the worst complaint I have for the whole festival it shows what a great year it was.

[Baldy77]

The good
Ward XVI
Seething Akira
Blood Oath
Megadeth
Newport helicopter
Decent weather
Motley Brew

The bad
King 835 or whatever
Too much death metal

The ugly

Seeing someone puke outside the Sophie tent and notice said vomit was still there Sunday....at least he make it outside I guess

[phuqsticks]

The Good:

1) 4th Bloodstock and not only the first time I've wanted to see all 3 headliners, but the top 3 on the mainstage on all 3 days.
2) Hell.
3) Battle Beast and Wind Rose upping the quality of fare available on Thursday night by several notches
4) Seeing some cracking performances from bands I previously knew little about - Seething Akira, Ward XVI, Kroh and Wolfheart spring to mind

The Bad:

1) Any frontman who thinks fans pay good money to hear them talking rather than singing. No names mentioned, draw your own conclusions......
2) Hell's technical issues
3) Finding out that one of my favourite bands, Nightwish, is announced as headliner for a festival I almost certainly won't be able to go to.
4) Me pushing someone just so I could get my hands on one of the plastic swords thrown into the crowd by Hanowar. I'm 47 FFS, what was I thinking?
5) Carrying said plastic sword with me all day, the day AFTER Hanowar played. I'm 47 FFS, what was I thinking?

The Ugly:

1) Leaving my accommodation in Tamworth on Friday morning to find I had a flat tyre and subsequently not being able to get to the site until mid-Soilwork.
2) King 810. Just say no kids

[WorMzy]

Good:
+ the people
+ the weather (with the exception of Monday..)
+ the bands (or some of them, at least)

Bad:
- "throughout the weekend" mead was only available late on Sunday. At least I got some this year..
- missed some bands due to overdoing the drink once or twice. Particularly bummed about missing Wintersun
- only me and Noodle turned up for the extra meet.
- the bands (Saturday was a bit sparse for good bands)
- the announcements
- travelling down from Dundee
- travelling back up to Dundee with no battery left and no access to a power socket for the whole fucking journey
- tent getting absolutely soaked on the Monday morning. Looking at the weather forecast, I'll not be able to get it dry for a while..

Ugly:
-- mankinis
-- piss wrestling

[Soze]

The Good

This is my first Bloodstock since 2013 and the good vibe is still there, great atmosphere, plenty of great bands (notably Blind Guardian, Kreator, Ghost, Municipal Waste, Amon Amarth, Possessed and Megadeth). Just a really great time, as I always remembered it.

The Bad

The sound is still variable, Testament in particular suffering. The increase in punters hasn't seen an increase in toilet areas, meaning some big queues (and that slushed up area near the top urinal which rendered one of them virtually unusable). The walk to the pick up point was irritating and the security guy near the usual area was obnoxious (threatened one of my mates with a fine and told taxi drivers they'd lose their license if they stopped there again. Which was a fucking nonsense as he has no such power either way).

As ever, it would be nice to have a bit more melody, it's all gone very thrash/death metal heavy in recent years. I love a bit of both but every now and then I like a cheesy sing song!

The Ugly

There seem to be more and more 'half pint full' throwers. If you think it's funny that someone somewhere is going to get hit across the back of the head with a half pint of beer then you're a cunt.

And King 810. I'm all for a spot of variety but jesus fucking christ that was shite.

[Skippy]

The bad.

- that fucking queue, bless the guy that was queuing for an hour, try the over 3 hours I was in the queue with every fucking knobhead pushing in. Big shout out to the Welsh lads we caught doing just that and we didn't stop them continuing. Suppose some people are more important than others, queuing is for the plebs.

Not gonna lie, my group did that. We are Welsh too - might well be the exact same group. I would apologise, its a bad thing to do, but at that point, anything that makes it slightly easier needed to be done.


The good
-Some very good bands. Especially quite a bit of quality on the New Blood Stage this year which is good to see.
- The weather. Not too warm, but until the Monday not very wet either. Pretty much perfect.

The Bad
-The obvious queue. Despite pushing past the main queue outside, waiting for about 3 hours between the entrance and the cubicles just a few yards away is stupid. There didn't seem to be any reason for it either, all the "car searches" and "sniffer dogs" was obviously just scaremongering.
-Similarly, the organisation on the Thursday. Seemed like noone had been told what to do about the searches, and the fact that the old drop off point went seemingly unused for the day was stupid, it could have made life so much easier for the people coming down the muddying, slippery path coming down. Although the addition of a ramp by the steps was welcome.
-The security. From them just refusing to help crowdsurfers, one getting in my friend's face when he tried to bring his car around, and just generally being pretty slow and unhelpful. It's also pretty disgusting that only the women in my group got selected for "patting down" (which apparently involved a lot more groping than searching).
-Too much thrash and death, or just generally uninteresting music. At the very least, a bit more needs to be done to shake the lineup around. Saturday seemed to be all thrash, Sunday all death metal.
- King 810 and Chelsea Grin. They just deserve a special mention.

The Ugly
-Watching someone fuck a burger.

[CrossOfIron]

Good: Main stage sound pa, lights,pyros and fire, best I've ever seen
Friendly, courteous, diverse and civilized crowd, as usual
Relaxed but vigilant security, just the 'right' balance.

Bad : I had a minor mishap with a 20 kg concrete block fallng on my ankle the day
before, medical staff doctor prescribed antibiotics and ice packs thanks

No Ugly it was all good



ps I went VIP camping

[houston4044]

The Good:
-Apart from Monday morning it didn't really rain (which considering the weather leading up to the fest is amazing)
-Easy Cheesy, the chicken shop and Deli Kate, all reasonably priced, filling and tasted amazing
-The selection and quality of the stalls and merch has improved vastly (if only the pound were stronger)
- The music, while had a few letdowns overall I had a great time and saw some of the best shows I'll ever see.

The Bad:
- The sound on RJD on Friday was poor throughout most of the day (I think only Amon Amarth escaped unscathed) rendering most of bands like Testament a sonic mess.
- The sound on Sophie throughout the weekend was patchy, however it was random as to what bands were affected and who wasn't
- The queues to use the toilets in the arena reminded me of Download i.e. too few facilities to keep up with demand
- The crowd was dead throughout most of the fest, it seemed quite tame compared to previous years (except for Skindred, they got the whole place going)
- The security, some where strict to the letter yet others were very lax; not knocking either approach but the lack of consistency wore me down

The Ugly:
-The queue to get in on Thursday. The biggest gripe of the whole weekend. Far too few people on the gates which were poorly planned led to a mass queue with little in the way of information. Either expand the size of the entrance, put an additional one in, or probably the easiest solution, have a gap between bag searches and ticket/wristband collection, the congestion caused by people having to move their stuff, put it back together and fish their tickets out was just a shambles. Have a small walk between the two to allow people to move off to the sides to pack their stuff before getting their wristbands would save so much time.

[BRT1494]

The Good :
+Hatebreed
+Twisted Illusion
+The Weather
+The Piss-Up

The Bad :
-Nightwish for 2018 .
-The loud cunt camped next to me thinking its acceptable to have a conversation that could have been mistaken for shouting at half 7 in the morning.
-Queueing for over 3 hours to get in.

The Ugly:
-Peoples inability to understand jokes after a few beers.
-Showering under freezing cold water carriers. What were we thinking.

[CharlesDexterWard]

The good:
*Getting to VIP at 1pm on Thurs to discover 1 person in the queue in front of me. Fastest check in ever.
*burger stall in main VIP camp area this year. Decent coffee etc and very pleasant folk to chat to at 7am.
*VIP showers and plenty of room for tents.
*security as pleasant as ever.
*all the great bands I saw.

The bad:
*King810 - absolute shit
*The cheesy chips making me so unwell I missed Amon Amarth
*the main stage sound on Friday
*the noise in VIP camping around 2am. Maybe just my neighbours but just too damn loud in the wee hours.

The ugly:
*The guy wandering around the arena with his cock out.
*the temperature the first night.
* the number of couples I witnessed having arguments that led to tears or screaming matches - one or two were verging in downright nasty. Not my business but not nice to see.
*the state of me getting up for work today.