A fucking great metal band from Bridgend ... apparently
It was something of a surprise to me that the Radio 1 Stage wasn’t packed for Bullet For My Valentine’s set on the Sunday night of Leeds. OK so they’ve plenty of haters within the metal world, but they sure as hell have a loyal following too. The tent was rammed near the stage, but there was plenty of room to move towards the back. This seemed odd, not least since this is a band who’ve graced the Main Stage in the past.
On the plus side Bullet turned in a hugely energetic performance which had the crowd lapping up every minute. The downer is that their music just doesn’t move out of being average heavy rock, with nothing there to really inspire and make you watch them leave the stage at the end while thinking you’d heard something special. That said ‘hearts Burst Into Fire’ and ‘Tears Don’t fall’ stand out from the crowd simply as there’s something different going on, the former is up there with the best rock singles of 2008.
Alongside an ecstatic reaction from those down the front, Bullet For My Valentine earned themselves acclaim from a legend of Welsh rock, with James Dean Bradfield dedicating a song during the Manics headline set to “a fucking great metal band from Bridgend” • so not a bad nights work for Bullet then, even if this reviewer wasn’t totally convinced.