Our regular run-down of as many of the upcoming Bloodstock bands as we can get to talk to us! Voidwalker play the New Blood stage on the Friday…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We’re based in Leicester, but also have members living in Nottingham and Sheffield.
How long have you been playing together as a band?
Robyn (guitar) and Calum (drums) first started writing and playing together in 2017, think it took us just over a year to find the line-up we have now, so about 5 years including pandemic years where we weren’t able to do much.
Where does the name of the band come from?
Honestly there’s no deeper meaning to Voidwalker. I think sometime in early 2019 we went on a night out as a band to try and brainstorm names (and came up with some bloody awful ones…) and Joe (bass/vox) came up with it about 5 pints into the night. It was the least bad thing we’d said all night, so just kind of stuck.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
I’d describe us as Progressive Deathcore, but we get labelled as Tech Death quite a lot. We don’t have typical verse-chorus type song structures so most songs don’t really have repeating sections, and we quite like to play with progressive concepts and unusual time signatures in our writing, and have a pretty broad range of influences genre-wise. But then, we play on 8 string guitars tuned pretty low and our main vocalist Miguel’s style is super death metal influenced, so it’s fairly heavy for the most part too.
What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
Musically, we’re pretty techy and I think the way our songs are written means we get a good amount of variety of sounds and styles into our set, with some good fun brutal sections throughout. We also love to see the audience get involved and have a fair few mosh sections, plus a bit towards the end of the set where Miguel gets people headbanging over a polymeter which is always good fun.
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Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
Our bassist Joe went in 2015 and loved it so much that he’s been back for every Bloodstock since. Think it’s the first time for the rest of us, but it’s been something we’ve all wanted to come to.
Which M2tM region did you win, or did you come through other channels?
We won the Leicester M2TM, with the final at Uprising Festival. Competition was crazy strong; there were bands we played with at each stage that we thought we might lose out to, and definitely made a bunch of friends along the way that we’d love to play with again.
Can you put into 10 words or fewer how it felt when you realised you were heading to Bloodstock?
Pretty overwhelming! There were tears – still hasn’t fully sunk in.
What sort of setlist can we expect?
Heavy and techy – if any readers want to listen in advance, our setlist will include “Tar Stained Lips”, “Boiling Point” and “Husk”, plus a few tracks we’ve not released yet.
Which other bands do you most hope you’re not squished up next to so you can see them play?
We were really nervous about clashing with Fit For An Autopsy as they’re a bit of a favourite within the band and one of our big influences musically, but we know we’re not clashing with them now which was a bit of a relief! Other favourites from this lineup include Meshuggah, In Flames, Zeal and Ardor and shoutout to our friends in Tribe Of Ghosts playing the SOPHIE stage on Saturday.
What are you working on at the moment?
We’re hard at work on our second EP which should be out later this year. Drums are recorded, we are just getting everything else locked down.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
At one of our shows? I (Calum, drums) briefly fell off the back of the stage during our M2TM final earlier this year (clearly got away with it!) if that counts. Joe (bass/vox) has managed to injure his leg before, and Miguel (vox) has also had a couple of incidents where he’s launched himself somewhere (including one where he fell out of the venue mid-song). Some of the pits we’ve had have been pretty wild too – a personal favourite was seeing someone cartwheel across the gap just as a wall of death was being opened.
What drink do you throw back to get yourself fired up before going on stage?
Boring answer, but just water for me – as the drummer our set is a bit of a test of endurance (and I probably go a fair bit harder than is necessary!), and I doubt I could play some of our parts properly after a drink of anything harder! Some of the others might have a beer or cider or two, and there’s usually a can or two of some sort of energy drink, but it’s not the drink that gets us fired up.
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Header image photo credit: Marissa Farrow
