Bloodstock Community

We're halway through our first round in Sheffield. Attendances have been solid, 50+, 80+ and 80+ so far.

Of those that got through we have:

From Heat 1
Dead Blonde Stars (Alt Rock / Grunge / Alt Metal)
Hunter-Gatherer (Alt Rock / Alt Metal)

From Heat 2
Thunarwulf (Folk Metal)
Descendancy (Contemporary Metal / Screamo)

From Heat 3
Dead Cosmonauts (Instrumental Post Rock / Post Metal / Space Rock)
Like Rome (Mathcore / Noise Rock)

Quite a mix so far, and a pretty darn high standard too. Our 3rd Heat was the closest we've ever had a top 3.

Format for us this year -

6 First Round Heats. Top 2 Progress + 2 Bands who start from the Semis (Covid stopped them previously at Semi stage) + 2 wildcards (bands with the highest judge scores that haven't already qualified)
4 Semi-Finals. Top 1 Progress + 1 Wildcard.
Final. All-dayer. 2 Guest Openers, 5 Finalists, 2 Guest Headliners.

We've gotten a bit further along now. 2 Semis down and 2 to go.

So far, our finalists are:

DEAD COSMONAUTS (instrumental post-metal)
BANSITH (alternative metal)

Our remaining semi-final line-ups are:

Fracture - (deathcore / tech death)
Rothschild - (alt metal / post-hardcore)
Rosehill - (melodic metalcore / melodic hardcore)
Zero Wolf - (goth metal)

and

Dead Blonde Stars (grunge / alt rock / alt metal)
Descendancy (contemporary heavy metal / metalcore)
Like Rome (mathcore)
Sour Tusk (hard rock / stoner rock)

For anyone interested in attending a / some finals, here's the latest dates and venues:

April 29 – Leicester (O2 Academy)
May 6 – Edinburgh, Scotland (La Belle Angele)
May 12 – Belfast, Northern Ireland (Voodoo)
May 13 – Dublin, Rep of Ireland (Fibber Magees)
May 20 – Sheffield (Corporation)
May 20 – Manchester (Rebellion)
May 25 – Norwich (Brickmakers)
May 27 – Milton Keynes (Craufurd Arms)
May 27 - Leeds (The Library)
June 3 – London (The Dome)
June 3 – Newcastle (Trillians)
June 3 – Osijek, Croatia (Ex-Epic)
June 10 – Chorzów, Poland (Leśniczówka Rock & Roll Café)
June 16 – Colchester (Coda)
June 17 – Gravesend (Leo's, Red Lion)
June 23 – Birmingham (Devils Dog)
June 24 – Hitchin (Club 85)
June 24 – Wrexham, North Wales (XS @ The Penny Black)
June 24 – Bristol (The Exchange)
June 30 – Bournemouth (Bear Cave)
June 30 – Cheltenham (Frog & Fiddle)
July 1 – Burnley (Sanctuary)
July 1 – Stoke (The Underground)
July 1 - Northampton (The Black Prince)
July 1 – Liverpool (Zanzibar)
July 1 – Cardiff, South Wales (Fuel)
July 8 – Nottingham (The Old Cold Store)
July 8 – Saltash (Livewire)
July 8 – Oxford (Jericho Tavern)

Fracture got through our latest Semi, and tomorrow is our last Semi.

Attending the Scottish final for the first time, based on the line up it looks like a very good day out.

Our final is in 10 days. We have:

BANSITH (alternative metal / contemporary metal)
DEAD BLONDE STARS (alt rock / grunge / alt metal)
DEAD COSMONAUTS (instrumental post-metal)
FRACTURE (deathcore / tech death)
THUNARWULF (folk metal)

Dead Blonde Stars won the Sheffield M2TM. It was a fantastic final, and they were brilliant.

Shame ThunarWülf didn't make it, this line up badly needs some folky stuff.

I thought I would give a quick shout out from Hitchin M2TM.

We had our first semi-finals yesterday which saw Sentient and Extreme Death Art go through to the final (full disclosure, I'm the guitarist for EDA).

The other bands on the bill however were very good. Velour Fog are really worth checking out if you're into your grunge, almost Alice In Chains if they kidnapped Yngwie Malmstein and force fed him Steel Panther pies. Skarlet Envy are also a fantastic bunch from these 'ere parts. female led gothic type. Nearest I can imagine is if you took a little bit of Crematory and Within Temptation but gave it little drop of In Flames branded wake up juice.

Onto the two winners. Sentient are tech metal/djent. At least to my ears, I will caveat I'm just not familiar enough with djent to really attempt to label and I would hate to say the wrong thing. All I do know is last night's show was crazy good. They make it look easy and it's a well deserved progression to the final. If I was gun to head forced to namedrop, I would throw Mechanise era Fear Factory into the hat but really, you'd be better off just having a listen for yourself. I'll leave a link to their video here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhQTSEWk9dY

Extreme Death Art, as I say I'm in it so I don't want to come off biased. We are basically Vader / Decapitated / Arch Enemy wrapped up in an angry little ball. It's been rather odd, our very first gig was this year's M2TM Hitchin, we didn't even have a vocalist yet. We did not expect to get anywhere at all but here we are. Given the new-ness, we have pretty much no interwebs presence so all I can leave you with is our first (instrumental) set from the venue. We do now have an angry little dude to shout at you, alas no real footage as yet. So there's this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cntFy3L4FPY

Cheers for reading and giving a click those who did