It’s that time of year again, when in the run-up to Bloodstock we endeavour to interview every band gracing the SOPHIE, New Blood and Jägermeister stages from 8th – 11th August 2019. This means you’ve got a chance to read up on all your favourite bands set to play over the weekend and decide which new ones you’ll want to check out.
As ever, we’re predicting some horrible clashes because, true to form, there are some great bands across all three stages so you should start planning who you want to see.
Our thanks to all the bands / artists for taking the time out to answer our questions!
AeSect – New Blood Stage, Sunday
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
Dave and Willow are from Dublin, Tony and Aido are from Longford, and Luke is from Wicklow.
How long have you been playing together as a band?
We formed in 2011 with Dave, Luke and Aido being the original . Willow has been with us for 3 years and tony for almost a year.
Where does the name of the band come from?
Picking a band name is tough and it took us the better part of a year to come up with AeSect. We are really interested in cults and sects of people, so the name originated from there.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We classify ourselves as technical death metal. We focus more on groove than straight up blast beats and alternate picking and that shows in our more recent releases. We have a prominent dual guitar sound and we pride ourselves on a very tight, technical live show. Every little aspect of the songs we play and the structures are gone over and over and over in the practice space and our attention to detail sets us apart from the rest.
What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
We bring one of the heaviest and most technical live shows to wherever we play. We are all constantly moving around trying to engage as many people as possible. Tony is often swinging from whatever fixture is above him on the stage and Dave, Aido, Luke and Willow reinforce the ferocious presence he has by encouraging people to in and headbang / sing along as much as possible.
Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
Both of our guitar players Dave and Aido have been before and we can’t wait to go back. It’s such a solid festival that really has no competition in of both band quality and audience quality. There’s never any fuss or issues at the festival and that’s a credit to all involved.
Which M2tM region did you win, or did you come through other channels?
We won the Dublin competition, put on by Oran at Overdrive.
Can you put into 10 words or fewer how it felt when you realised you were heading to Bloodstock?
Joy. Just sheer happiness our hard work had paid off.
What sort of setlist can we expect?
The heaviest set the New Blood Stage has ever seen. We’ve picked our best 6 songs to showcase our talents.
Which other bands do you most hope you’re not squished up next to so you can see them play?
We all love Ten Ton Slug, Black Shuck, Thy Art Is Murder, Soilwork, Anthrax and Cancer Bats so we hope we don’t clash with any of those!
What are you working on at the moment?
We’re currently in the studio recording our debut album. It’s going well at the moment and the songs are sounds amazing. You can expect that to drop in the near future.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
A lad called Evan got knocked out in one of our pits once at a gig called the Siege Of Limerick in Ireland. That was fairly bizarre watching from the stage. We found him afterwards to make sure he was ok. He said it was one of the best gigs he’d ever been too!
What drink do you throw back to get yourself fired up before going on stage?
Before a show were quite reserved drinking-wise as we need to be sober to play our songs, but we’d generally stick to the pints and have one or two to loosen up.
