As ever, we’re going to try and cover every single Jäger, New Blood and SOPHIE stage band before Bloodstock kicks off on August 10th. Your chance to check them out and start planning which bands to get there early for!
Trust us when we tell you that this is bound to result in some frustrating clashes because, as ever, there are some great bands on these three stages.
Our thanks to all the bands for taking the time out to answer our questions!
Mantra – Hobgoblin New Blood Stage, Friday
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We are from the Truro/Redruth area in Cornwall, UK.
How long have you been playing together as a band?
I think we must have properly got a full line up together around March/April of 2014. After which we spent a good year or so playing the odd show here and there and then going back to writing our first EP The Withered World which we released this time last year!
Where does the name of the band come from?
From what I our bassist found it in a dictionary and thought it’d be a cool name and we just kind of kept it from there!
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We’ve always been huge fans of bands like Testament, Sylosis & Megadeth but we also love a lot of the more melodic metal bands like Trivium and Children of Bodom. Bands that can keep it heavy but still have this rich sense of melody in their composition, I think because everyone in the band has various influences spanning across multiple genres we have a mix of different bands that have influenced us all as individuals contributing to what makes our sound stand out.
What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
As mentioned previously, our songs generally change up often and we don’t tend to stick to one specific genre. We play what we like, whether it’s thrashy or melodic or just straight up heavy I think the audience we’ll be consistently interested in what we’ve got for them as the songs throughout our set will be constantly changing and progressing in a very natural way. I think people who are seeing us for the first time will have a lot of fun with the songs we’ve got for them as they’re fast, heavy and grant plenty of opportunities to mosh and really get involved.
Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
All in the band have always dreamed of going to Bloodstock but this year will be everyone’s first time going which is very exciting. Bloodstock has consistently throughout the years had amazing line-ups year after year (with this year being no exception) so we’re excited to be a part of it for sure.
Did you enter M2TM thinking you could win it? Which region did you win?
We hoped for it of course but we were so surprised to hear we’d won! There were so many fantastic bands playing in the finals so the competition presented to us was strong. We put a lot of practice in for each performance but the first heat was our first show with a completely new line-up, after our long-time guitarist left in February of this year. I think we were mostly just apprehensive about how the new line-up would feel and how the first show would go but three shows in with the new line up and winning M2TM is a pretty good start if you ask me! We won for the Devon/Cornwall region.
What sort of setlist can we expect?
We’re going to be playing a few songs from our first EP as well as a couple of new songs from our album. The new songs we have are a bit more technical as we’ve had a lot of time to all progress both as musicians and songwriters so it’ll be somewhat different from our EP tracks but I think people are really gonna like the new stuff we have for them. But if people want to give us a listen before checking us out we do have our music available everywhere at this point.
Which main stage band do you most hope you’re not squished up next to so you can see them play?
That’s a tough one! I’d love to catch bands like Whitechapel and Chelsea Grin as I’ve never seen either of them but I’d be gutted to miss out on Testament. They’ve been a big favourite of mine for years and have been on my bucket list of bands to see for a long time now so I must get them crossed off!
What are you working on at the moment?
We are currently writing our debut album, writing process has gone somewhat stagnant as we’ve been preparing for our appearance at Bloodstock but once we come back we’re going to be hard at work getting the writing process finished and should hopefully have the album finished by the end of this year/early next year.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done on tour?
So far we’ve only been on one and I don’t anything too crazy happening. I’m sure that’ll change within a couple years though!
Jager, Hobgoblin Ale, Kraken, Kingstone Press Cider, Kaltenberg Beer or Bulleit Bourbon? And, yes, we’ll be counting all the votes!
Jager!
