It’s that time of year where we set out to interview as many of the Sophie, New Blood, and Jager bands as we can in the lead-up to one of the most anticipated festivals of the year, Bloodstock. Answering our questions here is Karma’s Puppet who play the New Blood stage on the Sunday.
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We’re from in and around Macclesfield.
How long have you been playing together as a band?
The band started in theory around 2019 but, following a bunch of line-up changes and a fairly infamous pandemic, we didn’t actually properly get going until much later on. We were able to finally play our first gig with our current line up in July of 2021.
Where does the name of the band come from?
Karma’s Puppet was originally a song from an old band that a few of members were in previously. The concept being that Fate and Karma are both intertwined and manipulated by the actions we take in life, much the same way a master manipulates their puppet. We always liked the name so when we were deciding on a name for this band Karma’s Puppet was instantly a favourite choice.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We prioritise 3 things in our music; melody, dynamics and groove. We have a pretty unique way of merging these in a way which is both truly original and also lends itself well to live performances. This can make it quite difficult to define ourselves in a single genre or style, but means there is usually something for everyone to enjoy.
What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
Live performances are our bread and butter, and we want the audience to have a great time. Also, we want to have fun too, so a Karma’s Puppet show is always full of a huge amount of energy and excitement and we encourage the audience to be a big part of that.
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Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
Some of us are Bloodstock veterans, others are Bloodstock virgins so it’s kind of a mixed bag. The members who have been before have always commented on how welcoming and friendly the festival is. The high calibre of the line up and very highly of the layout of the festival itself. It’s already no surprise that thousands and thousands of metalheads think of Bloodstock as their “home away from home”.
Which M2tM region did you win, or did you come through other channels?
We entered the Chesterfield M2tM at The County Music Bar. This was actually well over an hour away from us, so we owe our fans so much for coming all the way out there each time. As we had played this venue a number of times prior to M2tM we decided this would be our best option as we knew the venue, staff and tech team well. By the final we had fans attending from all over the UK which was really humbling and really made that one of our best ever gigs so far.
Can you put into 10 words or fewer how it felt when you realised you were heading to Bloodstock?
Mind blown!! But also relieved that it was finally over!
What sort of setlist can we expect?
Our set list will be heavily based on the one we used for the M2tM final, as we spent such a long time working on the finer details for it in the run up to the final. It has a huge opening, loads of opportunities for the audience to go mental and mixes up some of our newer material with some older fan favourites too.
Which other bands do you most hope you’re not squished up next to so you can see them play?
We’re playing on the Sunday and we’re all keen to see Lamb of God too, but we think we’re pretty safe with that one. It’s looking like we might clash with Dark Funeral and Ill Nino though which we’re a bit gutted about. However, the knowledge that we’re missing out on these bands because we’re actually due to play on the same bill is definitely a silver lining to that cloud.
What are you working on at the moment?
We are busy working on some brand new material at the moment which we’re really excited about. We’re hoping to start drip feeding some of this into our upcoming gigs as the year goes on too. We have plans for a new music video and some other “little projects” too but we can’t say too much on that just yet. However, we’re very active on social media and forever putting out content in one form or another so make sure you get following our pages so you can keep up to date with everything we’re up to.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
Right, we’ll tell you what happened, and why this is not our fault. It was the semi finals of the M2tM and we kick into our opening song. We’re all having a great time and the audience is going off like a bottle of coke and mentos…so much so in fact that the barrier (which is bolted to the f**king floor!!) rips out of the ground and into the hands of our startled (but also somewhat proud of themselves) fans. Not sure what those guys had for breakfast that morning, but we definitely want some.
What drink do you throw back to get yourself fired up before going on stage?
Generally it’s still beer all round at that point but our vocalist is a very good boy and won’t have anything to ruin his vocals before a show (what a pro!) but afterwards we’ll be hitting the IPAs and whiskey for the most part.
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Karma’s Puppet: facebook | instagram | spotify | bandcamp | youtube
