Bloodstock Festival 2024 – Saturday. Fresh from their warmup at The Underworld, Combichrist played a set pulled entirely from their latest album, CMBCRST. This was a set that had the potential to be quite divisive, although despite the recent release, much of this had been out as individual singles over the last few years, so there is an element of familiarity in some of the material.
Bloodstock Festival 2024
Catton Park, Derbyshire – Saturday 10 August 2024
Combichrist
Divisive is probably the key word here as Combichrist is a band who are not afraid to test their fans and are more than adept at providing musical twists and turns when least expected. This is very much the case in the studio and carries over into the live environment.
Live, Combichrist are an intense juggernaut of aural and neural battery. Musically they remain with a strong nod to the more industrial sector yet the techno beat element that stands them aside from acts like Ministry and Rammstein remain there.
This is a band that have ripped up the rule book and are not prepared to give way on their intent. It is their way or the Highway.
Opening with Planet Doom, the tune comes over as though it is a theme for a low-budget horror film with its repetitive keyboard intro before the guitars rip across and the meltdown kicks off.
With Wolves Eating Wolves and Compliance following the intensity does not let up with the band creating a sound built on a techno industrial brain crunch of pure metallic force. Screaming vitriol and angst, Andy LaPlegua is a shamanic frontman with his live band, a surly bunch of musical gunslingers.
Children Of Violence is a sonic riptide with Eric 13 on lead guitar unleashing a hellish firestorm of shredding viciousness. The aural assault of this band is non-stop, and they step from one intensive cavalcade to another.
Just as your ears have stopped bleeding and are crying out for mercy so a further tirade of aural magnitude tears into you. The only let up being the sudden downturn of guitar and the tidal shift into techno dance and keys before the drilling guitars fire up again and take you on a further nightmare rollercoaster ride into aural and neural madness.
This is a band that more than competently addresses their dark fantasies and questions their listeners lyrically. Musically, they are capable of dropping from screaming drum and bass-driven Metal into a hypnotic techno trance beat, leaving the audience to decide whether to mosh or rave.
Sonic Witch and Heads Off bore this out with a weaving cauldron of maelstrom proportions as the circle pits grew, creating great swirling clusters of heaving Metaldom.
This was a quite mesmeric performance clearly retaining old fans and encouraging numerous new ones into the dark and intense world of Combichrist.
Bloodstock 2024 will be held over the long weekend of 8-11 August 2024. MetalTalk’s Paul Hutchings, Adrian Stonley, Paul Monkhouse and Keith Conlin will be reporting from Catton Park.
Take Part: Are you at Bloodstock this year? Who are you looking forward to seeing? Want to get in touch and tell us how it’s going? Email MetalTalk Editor Steve Ritchie to tell us how it’s going for you. Bloodstock@MetalTalk.net
#boa24. For more information, visit bloodstock.uk.com. You can view a map of Bloodstock at bloodstock.uk.com/bloodstock_map.jpg
MetalTalk Bloodstock 2024 coverage is at https://www.metaltalk.net/tag/bloodstock-2024.
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Weekend early bird tickets (Thu-Sun) for Bloodstock 2025 are available to purchase at the box office on-site for £175. Child weekend early bird’s are £45 (ages 4 -11). Mini moshers under age four can come for free.
Wednesday early access is also available for those who want to max out their Bloodstock experience – an early bird adult Wed-Sun ticket costs £200. There is no additional cost for children under 4, or aged 4-11, to arrive with a parent on Wednesday.
Bloodstock 2025 tickets can be purchased online from the official Bloodstock website.
