Not quite hot enough
Britain, Britain, Britain, inventors of the cat etc...
So goes the 'Little Britain' intro to 'In Flames' headlining set at Bloodstock open air this year, it made me laugh anyway. It is the end of three days of sun, rain, expensive coffee, mud, cow shit and metal. Not necessarily in that order.
Sabbat and Arch Enemy have just finished their sets and really stirred up the crowd so when 'In Flames' come out voices and fists are raised like a sea of black clad devotee's. This, of course, is exactly what they are. Kicking off with 'Leeches' from the latest album they play like pro's and the crowd responds, heads are shaking and voices are croaking along. They follow it up with 'Crawl through knives' before going all the way back to...well the album before to be honest for 'Dead alone' this isn't a set for the early adopters as the bulk of the songs are from the last three albums. I can't fault 'In Flames' for that, even though they have an extensive back catalogue to draw from, play what the people want.
If you've seen any pictures of their stage shows you'll have seen fireworks and flames, well there was none of that to be had due to (according to Anders Fridén) some kind of worry they'd be mistaken for terrorists. I don't know about you but if I was a terrorist cell I wouldn't be on stage playing a metal festival while demoing my latest explosives. Maybe he was joking but he didn't sound like it.
Anyway, they played, the crowd on the whole seemed to like it but for me they couldn't top the performance we'd just had from Arch Enemy, they just didn't have the same connection with the audience for me, on each of the three days the band on second to last has been better than the headliner, good but not great.