Bloodstock 2024 – Band Feature: Praetorian
Bloodstock Open Air 2024 is right around the corner. Taking place August 8th to August 11th, the UK’s premier metal festival has, once again, delivered a stellar line-up. Featuring four stages of music and a litany of bands from within the rock and metal world, alongside numerous other forms of entertainment (such as official bin jousting)! You don’t want to miss out, so get off that fence, and pick up your tickets now!
Buy Bloodstock Open Air 2024 tickets here.
There are a lot of bands on the bill, and some you may not be that familiar with, which is where we come in. As is our yearly custom, we will be running features on many of the bands playing, aiming to give you some insight into who they are, what they do, and why they are a must see at the festival.
Praetorian
Sludge, post-metal, old-school black metal, and a little bit of doom. This is the sound of Praetorian and somehow the nonsensical combination actually works. In fact, it’s more than just a sound that works, it’s a sound that can be rightfully called fantastic. When Praetorian promise the listener a uniquely noisy experience, they tell no lies at all.
Formed in early 2015 in the deepest murkiest parts of North Hertfordshire, the heavy, noisy and riffy antisocial metal band announced their arrival in 2016 with the single release ‘Mystery of the Magic Man’, but it was 2017’s debut EP, ‘Grim Verbosia Splendour’ that turned heads. Especially alongside their ear-busting and neck-destroying live shows.
Two more singles, ‘Ticket To The Slaughterhouse ‘ in 2018 and ‘Knee Deep in Detritus’ in 2019, would lead to Praetorian’s second EP, also in 2019. Both those singles would appear on it, with the latter being the title track. While the EP is highly regarded, Praetorian’s momentum was halted by the arrival of COVID related restrictions, but that didn’t stop them writing and releasing their third EP, ‘A Deluge of Bad Faith’.
A fantastic example of Praetorian at their best and all three tracks are classics in their own right. Even if the accompanying video for ‘Ode to A Drunk Driver’ does give that track the edge. So, aside from that and a Bloodstock set that promises to be a blast, what’s next for Praetorian? They will be releasing their debut album ‘Pylon Cult’ later this year.
Be prepared for some really gnarly sounds. Not just with that record, but on the New Blood stage at Bloodstock on the Saturday of the festival. This is going to be so much fun, but don’t take our word for it though. We spoke to Praetorian about what it means to play Bloodstock 2024, what the festival means overall, and what attendees can expect from their show.
To play Bloodstock this year is special as it sort of underlines the hard work we have been putting in over the last few years, and to actually see our name on the poster and play a festival that many of us have been visiting as punters for the last decade or so is a very humbling experience indeed.
Bloodstock to us is a celebration of the sheer diversity of ‘heavy metal’ as a whole – you say to any random person on the street that you play metal and they’ll assume you are some nutcase who creates noise in a barn, but in actual fact the music emanating from the festival ranges from sing-a-long anthemic tunes to brutal riffs to slamming beats to just incredible songwriting from bands who have been plying their trade for decades.
For our set we might be a bit different to most of the other bands on the New Blood Stage. Expect lots of grim BM-influenced shouting, dodgy shape throwing, some bare chester nakedness, and last of all: lots and lots of heavy sludgy riffs played at varying speeds. We’re a fan of the sunny skies, but if it happened to be overcast and rainy during our set it would capture the mood quite perfectly. Plus more people would run to the stage for shelter. Ha!
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