Hail to the War Beasts
Orange Goblin front man Ben Ward has literally just come off the main stage after OG’s performance and is seemingly well warmed up to take over vocal duties with side project Ravens Creed. They clash with Clutch on the main stage and get a small crowd as a result but that doesn’t seem to hamper the performance.
Ward is in good form despite having to adapt his voice slightly to suit Ravens Creeds more death metal/thrash sound. It’s a minor point but the crash cymbal sounds awful right through the set and they do suffer from some other tech problems towards the end. Watson and Craske on guitar and bass respectively do a solid enough job although the sound and the nature of what they play makes it difficult to pick out all that they do. Ward works the crowd well. His foot up on the monitors, leering down at the front rows.
‘Imperial Leather’ and ‘Power of Spite’ emphasise the crushing heaviness of the band. It is a little one dimensional though but what do you expect from a thrash metal band? They do come up with probably the best song title of the weekend in ‘Hail to the War Beast’! It just doesn’t get any more metal than that. The tech problems with the drums do mean that a couple of beats are dropped and it occasionally sounds a touch messy. The crowd might be very small but it is quite lively and receptive and they go down well, just a shame there wasn’t a bigger turnout.