The weekend metalheads across the UK have been waiting for has finally rolled around— Bloodstock 2025 has come galloping in, bringing with it weather just as sweltering as its 2024 incarnation. The festival’s 24th edition was a historic success, selling out its weekend tickets in record time and then managing to shift all its Saturday and Sunday passes to boot: as you might expect, Thursday, August 7th saw the place alive with fans of all kinds, eager for yet another excuse to head bang, crowd kill and drink way, way too much beer. Though the festival’s first day is never quite as grandiose as those to follow, the Sophie Lancaster stage was nonetheless alive with all manner of fantastic music.

Dead Flesh

What better way could there be to kick off the festival than with as much fanfare, chaos and sheer noise as humanly possible— enter UK deathcore band Dead Flesh, who were absolutely bringing the energy. The band have had an impossibly fast turnaround as far as Bloodstock is concerned, converting their performance on the New Blood stage in 2024 into a triumphant second stage show this year. As you might expect, then, the group went down a treat, filling the place with the pummelling deathcore riffs of cuts like ‘Swallowing Nails’ and their self-titled track: any band that can get their name chanted is surely doing something right. Of course, Dead Flesh’s pseudo-supergroup status had blessed them with all the confidence and experience to command the stage, even when Richard Stevenson’s gnarly vocals were sounding thin or got lost in the mix completely. Though their conventional staging and sound may have gotten them lost in the shuffle at Bloodstock 2025, it’s hard to argue that Dead Flesh didn’t kick the event off on a respectable note this year.

FourWayKill

As Bristol groove metal four-piece FourWayKill were sure to let you know, it’s been twenty years since the band opened Bloodstock’s main stage in 2005— high time to make a reappearance then, and to prove that the group can still work their magic after a vast hiatus. At first, it seemed that the group were still shaking off some inevitable rust, with those first few songs lacking the confidence to really get the crowd on-side: given the band’s genre, a lack of groove in the music would’ve been a death sentence. As FourWayKill plowed on through their show though, the cogs started to turn, transforming the fellows from past-their-prime curmudgeons into unstoppable riff machines. Chris Neighbour brought some of the most unique vocals of the day, with his bellowing baritone cries bashing their way to the forefront of the band’s sound— with him at the wheel, the groove only grew with every passing song. When the set apexed in the furious ‘Aggressor,’ FourWayKill solidified themselves as an act that are, very much, back in action. 

Gnome

Pointy hats were everywhere at Bloodstock— Gnome’s stock is rising fast as more and more metalheads fall for their charming antics and bruising stoner rock hooks. Before the Belgian three-piece even took to the stage, hundreds of said hats were handed out, such that the Sophie Lancaster stage contained more gnomes than your reclusive uncle. The band had the place packed to the brim in a way that Dead Flesh and FourWayKill hadn’t yet achieved: when Rutgar Verbist and company finally launched into the stomping ‘Old Soul,’ the cheers were deafening. Gnome are a band that place charm at the forefront of their appeal, whether it comes from Rutgar’s cheeky persona or from the hilariously overblown animations playing behind the trio— behind that facade though, the band were sure to deliver more than enough stoner rock goodness to satisfy even the most stoic of purists. Cuts including ‘The Ogre,’ ‘Duke of Disgrace’ and fan-favourite closer ‘Ambrosius’ had the place in chaos— at Bloodstock or anywhere else, there is no stopping these average-sized Belgians.

All For Metal

Some bands simply embody their genre: All For Metal, for one, are the most power metal that power metal could ever be. The six-piece made an incredibly theatrical entrance for a band playing the Sophie stage, with bombastic orchestral music giving way to the soaring guitars of their self-titled track. Power metal is always a popular genre at Bloodstock, and the crowd were obviously loving the catchy hooks and explosive solos that All For Metal brought to the table: their style is so archetypical of the genre as to sound lab grown, with Antonio Calanna’s piercing tenor vocals and the vicious lead work of Ursula Zanichelli and Jasmin Pabst smacking you in the face time and time again. Even more memorable than their songs (which did begin to blend together as the set drew on), though, was the group’s aesthetic— once again, it was power metal to the max. Whether they were getting the entire crowd to do kung-fu moves to ‘Year of the Dragon’ or bowing down to a flexing Tim Schmidt in ‘Mountain of Power,’ the extreme level of campiness All For Metal exhibited was positively infectious— though the lactose intolerant should stage away from a show as cheesy as this, the Bloodstock crowd were undoubtedly loving every aspect.

Me And That Man

Adam ‘Nergal’ Darski is an infamous fellow, with the satanic chants of black metal band Behemoth earning him a trial for blasphemy in his home country of Poland: it was striking, then, to see him without his corpse paint or howling vocals as part of Me And That Man. The group blend a plethora of genres— country, gospel, blues and good ol’ rock’n’roll, primarily— resulting in a show that Nergal himself described as “all over the place”— there were no blast beats or growls to be found here, with the Sophie stage headliner instead rounding the night out with bouncy rock riffs and luscious four-part vocal harmonies. For some, the band may have been an odd choice to fill such a crucial spot in the lineup (and, you have to imagine, many may have written the group off as nothing more than a side-project): for those who stuck around though, Me And That Man were bewitching. Nergal and company were obviously living it up on stage, dancing around to ‘Get Outta This Place’ and the as-yet-unreleased ‘A Song Without A Name’ without missing a beat musically. These raucous moments were a beautiful contrast against the set’s more haunting moments, including the fan-favourite ‘My Church Is Black’ and unsettling ‘Surrender,’ making for a show with as many twists and turns as there were jabs at the Catholic faith. For its energy, its fun, its sing-along moments and for its fantastic ‘Paranoid’ cover, Me And That Man’s show earned its keep as the Thursday headliner, and then some (and then some more).