As ever, we’re going to try and cover every single Jäger, New Blood and SOPHIE stage band before Bloodstock kicks off on August 9th. 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!
Imminent Annihilation – Hobgoblin New Blood Stage, Sunday
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We are from Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire.
How long have you been playing together as a band?
The band formed in 2011.
Where does the name of the band come from?
It’s been so long since we named the band we can’t actually remember. We were young and I suppose we went with what sounded cool to us at the time. I think the band name better encapsulates what we are about and the subjects we write about more now than then. I guess you could say we grew into the name.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We’re five guys that listen to completely different styles of metal which makes it interesting to write material. At the moment, you can definitely find a lot of death metal influence in our music as well as djent and tech influences. Getting those different styles to fit in with each other is interesting to say the least.
What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
We have a lot of energy and a good mixture of songs that I feel cater to a wide audience, from the brutally heavy to the contagiously groovy. We’ve also incorporated our own light show in to the performance. For us, playing live is more than just standing there and playing your stuff. If you’re not engaging with the audience either personally or have some kind of production value to your set it’ll be more difficult to stand out.
Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
Our vocalist Jordan, bassist Richard and guitarist Connor have. Only as fans. This will be our first outing as a full band.
Did you enter M2TM thinking you could win it? Which region did you win, or did you come through other channels?
We entered the competition in Oxford with the hope of winning for sure, but I don’t think we necessarily thought we could. The calibre of bands we were up against was high and the final itself was a difficult one to judge. I know if I was judging it myself I would have struggled. We definitely had to push ourselves to a new level and go super Saiyan.
What sort of setlist can we expect?
Bounce till you drop grooves and bone crunching heaviness. All rolled together into a burrito of brutality.
Which other bands do you most hope you’re not squished up next to so you can see them play?
The list is long but here are a few: Bloodbath, Orden Ogan, Alestorm, DevilDriver, Fozzy.
What are you working on at the moment?
Currently we are working on an album that we start recording at the end of September. So if all goes well that should be ready to release in the new year.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
I’m not sure about ‘wild’ but our vocalist Jordan once did a gig in a penguin costume and almost passed out because he was so hot in it. Or there was this gig last year where the crowd were doing ‘big fish, little fish, cardboard box’ to one of our tracks called “Human Culling Farm”. That was definitely an interesting site. Naturally Jordan joined in with them.
Jager, Hobgoblin Ale, Red Bull, Kingstone Press Cider, Kaltenberg Beer or Bulleit Bourbon? And, yes, we’ll be counting all the votes!
Jager is a drink that could have only been made by the devil himself. So, Jager!
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