I love German thrash. In the good old days, our tutonic cousins embraced the genre with utter abandonment and even in the wilderness years, they managed to keep the flame alive.
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Today’s pick goes to SHVPES, a band we (by we, I mean “I") have absolutely raved about many times over.
I was delighted when they were announced for Bloodstocks Sophie stage on the Saturday of the festival, as SHVPES have delivered one of my favourite gig surprises ever when I saw them completely upstage both acts that followed them at a show last year.
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Ten Ton Slug are a sludge juggernaut that I'm still yet to catch live. Bloodstock will hopefully bring on successful slug hunting for me! The four-piece from Galway, Ireland, specialise in massively chunky riffs and hollering stoner vocals.
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Technically on-point and theatrically dramatic on stage, these guys personify what makes Bloodstock tick. I've seen the tech nu-metallers perform a couple of times now, and they really do put on a show.
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Rock shouldn't be pristine, it should be flithy, scuzzy and primal. Bong Cauldron play it low and dirty just as god intend Rock n’ Roll to be. Theirs is a wall of reverberating crunching primal riffs that rain down like a hailstorm of bricks.
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Witch Tripper are a band that have spent the last few years solidly making a name for themselves, and gathering a huge following of fans as they've done so. And once you've witnessed these guys, it's easy to see why they are revered right through the UK metal scene.
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In preparation for writing this, I put “Frolic Through The Park” on my Spotify and at once I was reminded what a forward thinking album it is. At the time (1988), I was transfixed by it as it moved thrash forward in leaps and bounds. There was funk (‘Bored’), massive self referential anthems (‘Devil’s Metal’) and Hardcore (‘Open Up’). There just seemed to be so much more in this record than everything else that was going under the banner of thrash.
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As a teenage thrashead in the late eighties, Xentrix were very much my band. They were only a couple of years older than I was and they had a youthful exuberance that was infectious. Back in 1990, I lapped up their second album “For Whose Advantage?” and could be regularly found in rock clubs under aged and over drunk eulogising over its greatest. Along with the rest of the budding UK thrash scene, they got swept aside by the tsunami that was grunge, but there is a happy ending here.
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One of my top picks for Bloodstock has to be Manchester party/comedy metal band Footprints in the Custard. For fans of bands such as Psychostick and Lawn Mower Deth, the 5 piece are renown for their epic silliness and catchy songs (and questionable costumes from time to time...). Footprints in the Custard are no strangers to Bloodstock, having played the festival before, they have become firm favourites of the Bloodstock attendees over the years.
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