Northeast Music Guide

Two Local Rock Bands Earn The Right  to Play Bloodstock Festival Over the last few months local rock and metal bands have been competing in the Metal 2 The Masses “battle of the bands” style heats at Newcastle’s Trillians Rock Bar. Last weekend the final was hosted at The Cluny and not one but two bands were chosen to play Bloodstock. They will be joining legendary local black metal innovators Venom at the festival making it a hat-trick of northeast bands entertaining people from all over the world. Bloodstock is the largest independent heavy metal festival in the UK with up to 15,000 attendees. The festival started in 2005 with only 700 people, an example of careful but ambitious growth. The size of the crowd at the Cluny reflected the enthusiasm for metal that seems to be experienced a rebirth in the Northeast. The overall winner of the final, chosen by Bloodstock’s Simon Hall, was The Souls of Jack Ketch: angy brutal metal with fearsome vocals and yet a really friendly...

Over the past few weeks, 25 great bands have graced the stage in the first ever Newcastle round of the Bloodstock Metal 2 The Masses. The Newcastle winner will go on to play Bloodstock Festival in August. There have been some high quality and extremely tight battles in the heat stages, but now only 10 bands remain. "I knew there was a lot of talent in Newcastle," says promoter Kev Morris of RFTK Promotions, "Though I hadn't expected some of the heats to be so tight." "I'm genuinely gutted for some of the bands that didn't go through - but - that only goes to show the bands we've got to be all the better" There are two semi finals which will reduce the field from 10 down to 5.   The semi finals take place in Think Tank on Time Square on May 15th and May 29th. This Sunday, 5 bands battle it out - they are; Hellion Rising - local Groove metal Arcite - Melodic Metal Guardian - hardcore from Nort...

A Night of Rocking Tunes and Also, Lovely Hair! The bands and audience gathered at Trillians for the first heat of the competition to get the chance to play Bloodstock Festival. It was a superb night of diverse styles of rock and metal, with every band giving an outstanding performance.  My personal marks out of 10 for the competing bands: Shards of Ruin….dramatic guitar and falsetto vocals reminiscent of Helloween. Great looking band. 7.5 Guilt City….fast guitars, volume up to 11. Harmonising riffs and aggressive tones. Still somehow manage to be catchy and worth putting on in the car. 8.5 Black Nevada have evolved and  polished their sound and have a danceable hard rock style in the same musical continent as Papa Roach. They have really grown musically since I last saw them.8 Dogsflesh… tuneful thrash,  had me thinking it's years since I listened to that Nuclear Assault album...