Festival season is OVVVEEEEERRRRRRRRR!!!: Part Two: Bloodstock

Its funny how when you're texting/msning a girl that you're, even only slightly interested in, you wait the same amount of time before replying that they did before replying to your last message...generally a little longer, to be safe. They normally do the same, resulting in the exponential growth of reply time, in a game of false dis-interest. Of course...this can make any meetings a fucking nightmare to arrange in time.

So yeah, Bloodstock,...Thanks to good ol Headbang, 5 of us got press passes, so we could hang out in the really quite pleasant press section, with free Monster Energy drinks...predictably resulting in me never sleeping and being even more of a "Bro" than usual...and my girl-with-boyfriend, who I also wrangled a pass, often feeling too sick to fool around. She also woke me up at 6 every morning getting up going to get a shower, but with the Monster, I was ok! Also met dudes from The Rotted (who are like, one of my favorite bands), The Haunted and Municipal Waste, which was chill. Everyone was totally down to earth and just cool to be with...especially Ben from The Rotted, who was already on "s'up" terms with Paul, through several prior interviews. Oh yeah, and I got to interview Equilibrium too.

Me with the Benster

Thanks to me getting CDs that actually work in the Thrash Metal Bandwagon, I was able to put on all sorts of annoying screamo crunk and deathcore on the journey...I like to think our arrival to the site was something like this

Although it was really us spilling out to some perplexed looking dude in a cut off Morbid Angel t shirt.

But yeah, we didn't do as many crazy things as Wacken I guess, just hung out backstage, drank energy drinks, photoed loads of bands, and watched them, which, I guess is what you're meant to do.

It was also a pleasant surprise to see Severed Heaven, this band I played with a while back, on some crappy unsigned stage.

I have a massive thing about the skull of the one with the blue streak...I always notice if a girl has an attractive skull.


As well as the singer from Sabaton's crotchal rip...

The power metal village people

Also, Cradle of Filth had to cut their set short due do one of their guitarists being hospitalised by a Gobstopper....seriously....

Incoming confectionary just out of shot

Although in general the people were quieter and more civil than Wacken (at least in the cararan site we were at). We did at one stage have to endure the noise of 3 middle aged men playing a Metal Hammer "battle metal" (read: shitty themed power metal) compilation from about 4 years ago out of their shitty transit van, basically fucking up the speakers, and not seeming to give a shit that it was skipping and fuzzing all over the shop. Nothing kills a moment with your girl like Dream Evil's "The Book Of Heavy Metal" being blared into your tent like a fuzzy old friend you thought you'd ditched a long time ago. I have no idea where i'm going to be when i'm middle aged, but i really hope its not at a festival with 2 other middle aged male loosers, making everyone hate me by blasting a compilation from a magazine aimed at a much younger demograph, with songs about "being a warrior". This is possibly the most laughable and half arsed attempt at being "down with the kids" that i've probably ever seen, beating anything David Cameron has done in recent years. What made it all the more depressing was how the CD itself was from about 4 years ago, and just about all the bands, and the general scene, have moved on massively. Kill me if this ever happens to me.

One night as well, we decided to venture out of the safety of our nice press pass assured camper van site, to the one for regular paying customers...where bands of people roamed around, awkwardly repeating phrases and memes, and got irritatingly drunk. Being that this wasn't in Germany, there was a massive male/female imbalance, meaning any girl was subject to intense attention from many, many very nerdy guys. At one point we found ourselves in with some extremely annoying Scottish people, who wouldn't shut up about Alestorm, a shitty Scottish pirate metal band (yeah, I know), so being the dickhead I am, told them all that they sucked, which bought some sanity to the group for a while. But we were sick of them anyway, so we stole someones hip flask and left. My girl was pretty much covered in nerds all the time as well, so at one point I had to push in and shout sarcastically "HEY GUYS, WE FOUND A GIRL....AT A METAL FESTIVAL!!!" and proceeded to drag her away. We never returned to this cest-pit.

My interview with Equilibrium was cool, kind of both a success and failure I guess, they had loads of interviews that day, and when I got to them they seemed pretty knacked, and the previous guy interviewing them had a big print out of "questions" and a professional looking microphone rig, so I took a more informal route. I loosened things up at first by chatting in German a bit (that instantly gets people on your side), and then for the interview, instead of doing my pre-arranged questions, I just chatted about, alcohol, food, mainly fish and chips, as well as cheese, and about how strange Bavaria is. Their Bass player also has an extremely, deep husky voice (for a girl), that some German girls have...it's very attractive in an unconventional way. Its a voice that tells you it's about to give you a good rodgering.

Yeah, not really much more to add to this.....it was a not particularly crazy, but still solid few days...............fuck it. Here's one of my demin jacket wearing friends dancing to brokeNCYDE for your amusement and/or horror...


And here's another picture of that glorious crotchal rip, on the singer of Sabaton, who, if I was gay, I would be so on his balls.....

Gay Porn: I'm gonna have to take you back to the station for some "questioning"

I think I might follow this up with a post about "people in bands I have a man-crush on".