Written by:	Baz Anderson
Published:	August 18, 2011
Event:	Bloodstock Open Air 2011 (Website)
Location:	Catton Park, Catton Hall, United Kingdom
Galleries:	Bloodstock Open Air - Catton Hall, England, 12th-14th August 2011 by Baz Anderson (397)

Friday, 12/08/11 / Saturday, 13/08/11 / Sunday, 14/08/11

Here we are for another year of Bloodstock Open Air madness. The Bloodstock festival continues to be the best metal festival the UK has to offer, with the best range of bands, a comfortable amount of people, and the best atmosphere. The festival layout was exactly the same as last year with no major changes, the audiences did seem a little smaller and quieter than last year, but one of the best aspects of Bloodstock is that you will always be able to get a good spot to watch each band on the stages. The weather for this year could have been brighter, but it could have been wetter too. With short bursts of both rain and sunshine, the festival found itself mostly in clouds. Either way, this was going to be another Bloodstock festival to remember.

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Tom Warrior has a very good relationship with the UK, so it wasn't surprising then that Triptykon pulled a large audience of loyal fans who continued to chant his name. The band opted to play two of their longest songs "Goetia" and "The Prolonging", which in a 45 minute set took up almost the whole set. Celtic Frost's last hurrah of "The Prolonging" could have benefitted from the night time atmosphere, but otherwise Tom Warrior put on a great taster as to what his new band can do.



Setlist: Procreation (of the Wicked) / Goetia / Circle of the Tyrants / The Prolonging

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It is a shame that more people didn't decide to check Coroner out before the festival started, because the audience numbers noticeably dropped for the second of this Swiss double bill. As well as providing a guy sitting down at some kind of desk for our visual entertainment, the band brought their brand of slightly technical, somewhat progressive thrash metal that sounded really great over the huge system. The band provided no energy on stage, but instead delivered a superb show of their classic thrash metal.



Setlist: Masked Jackal / Internal Conflicts / Metamorphosis / Semtex Revolution / D.O.A. / No Need to Be Human / Divine Step (Conspectu Mortis) / Grin (Nails Hurt)

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Mille and company are super-popular in the UK for some reason, and therefore the audience grew to probably twice that for Coroner. Unfortunately there is only so much screaming for mosh pits and whatever that one person can take, and although Kreator were pleasing their fans, the show provided nothing interesting unlike the band on before them. Kreator always sound a little sloppy live, but thankfully a few of the old songs were good to hear blasting out again.



Setlist: Hordes of Chaos (A Necrologue for the Elite) / Warcurse / Endless Pain / Pleasure to Kill / Destroy / What Destroys You / Voices of the Dead / Enemy of God / Phobia / Reconquering the Throne / Violent Revolution / Betrayer / Flag of Hate-Tormentor

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After his own admittedly bad performance at last year's Bloodstock, Devin Townsend was humbled to be invited back this year to hopefully play set free from technical problems. No problems this year, he was straight into delivering a wildly different set to last year. Nicely "Kingdom" stayed in the set, but this set included some of Devin's weirdest songs such as the new "Juular", the old "Bad Devil" and Devin's first ever live performance of the song "Vampira" also went down extremely well. Everyone knows that Devin is perhaps the best showman in metal, so it goes without saying that as always he provided a thoroughly entertaining set outside of the music, and with it.



Setlist: By Your Command / Supercrush! / Kingdom / Stand / Juular / Truth / OM / Bad Devil / Deep Peace / Vampira

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Headliner for the first night, W.A.S.P. are always a great band to see live, and now the darkness of the night arrived too, this felt like the last box had been ticked. Even with an hour and a half headlining set, the band managed to produce a constant stream of classic favourites, although some were dragged out for stupid amounts of time, such as "I Wanna Be Somebody" where Blackie invited some guy from the audience on the stage to sing the chorus a few times. Blackie's voice of his own didn't sound too good during the fantastic new song "Crazy", but apart from this W.A.S.P. put on an entertaining set to close the first day of the festival.



Setlist: On Your Knees / The Real Me / L.O.V.E. Machine / Crazy / Live to Die Another Day / Babylon's Burning / Wild Child / Hellion-I Don't Need No Doctor-Scream Until You Like It / The Idol / I Wanna Be Somebody / Chainsaw Charlie (Murders in the New Morgue) / Heaven's Hung in Black / Blind In Texas

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Friday, 12/08/11 / Saturday, 13/08/11 / Sunday, 14/08/11

Written by Barry Anderson.
Photos by Barry Anderson.