Bloodstock Festival Countdown : 24 Bands Not To Miss

The days are creeping nearer to the big B, O and A. So let's give you another one of the ROCKFLESH crew’s ones to watch. Today it's all about the might, majesty and magic of old school death metal.

21. 200 Stab Wounds - Sophie Lancaster stage, probably around 19:30 on Sunday

Hailing from Cleveland, 200 Stab Wounds are part of a venerable movement of new acts taking death metal right back to its roots. Over the intervening decades, death metal has spawned more variants than the entire Marvel back catalogue. However there has emerged a generation that wants to take it back to basics. This is death metal back at its raw, corrosive and brutal best. What 200 Stab Wounds have realised is that death metal sounds best when it is stripped down. It is never meant to be a complex or intricate musical form. It is at its most ferocious when the buzzsaw guitars and machine-gun like drums have space to breathe. 200 Stab Wounds have proudly retreated into the past and are creating death metal that is exquisitely contoured and blindingly brutal. For those waning on the Sunday night this will be the shot in the arm they will need to keep on going for the rest of the weekend.