Mad About Rock

  Monday 3 November 2025: Download Festival, the greatest rock and metal festival of all time, returns for its molten hot 23rd edition, reborn and recharged in 2026 as DLXXIII. Announced today are three monumental headliners, with their only UK shows in 2026 - Limp Bizkit, Guns N’ Roses and Linkin Park – with over 90 more colossal names spanning the full spectrum of rock, metal, punk, emo, hardcore, alternative and classic rock. This year’s festival will take place on 10-14 June 2026 at the spiritual home of rock in Donington Park, Leicestershire. Tickets onsale now at www.downloadfestival.co.uk . In 2026, Download XXIII will host a trio of legendary headliners: nu-metal icons Limp Bizkit – headlining Download for the very first time - on Friday, hard rock royalty Guns N’ Roses on Saturday and the mighty Linkin Park performing at Download for the first time since the band reformed in 2024 with lead singer Emily Armstrong. With this holy trinity of headliners and a mammoth undercar...

  tealdeer and Surya to perform on the New Blood Stage alongside a line-up featuring Trivium, Machine Head, and Gojira This August, two rising forces in the UK metal underground – tealdeer and Surya – will take to the New Blood Stage at Bloodstock Open Air 2025, joining a stacked line-up headlined by Trivium, Machine Head, and Gojira. Following victorious runs in the Metal 2 The Masses initiative, both bands are ready to show the metal world why they’re ones to watch. tealdeer - Friday, 12:00 PM - New Blood Stage Hailing from the Midlands, tealdeer are bringing an eclectic, high-concept dose of chaos to Bloodstock. Their sound is an unpredictable blend of alternative metal, influenced by everything from System of a Down and Dance Gavin Dance to black-and-white horror films and sixteenth-century carnival music. It’s theatrical, intense, and utterly captivating. Drummer Rob Green captured the band’s shock on the night of their M2TM victory: “If you’d have told me, earlier this year, ...

  BLOODSTOCK IS NEXT WEEK!!! Let that sink in, only one more weekend to go!! And there’s a whole host of information to share from more details about this year’s event to how and when you can get the cheapest tickets for 2026, so read on, dear metalhead, for the full lowdown. OZZY First off though, all at Team BLOODSTOCK are devastated at the loss of Ozzy, the one and only Prince Of Darkness. Some members of our team were lucky enough to be at Villa Park for the almighty Black Sabbath’s incredible final show, others watched the live stream… all were moved. The impact that Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne had on heavy metal can never be overstated. It’s been touching to see all the tributes from across the world since his passing, and we know BLOODSTOCKers have big hearts. There will now be an unmissable 17m Ozzy tribute wall next to the main stage (by the charity stands), and BLOODSTOCK encourages all fans to write their heartfelt messages of tribute and/or condolence on it. There w...

  With only a little over 3 weeks to go until it’s time to make your annual pilgrimage to Catton Park for BLOODSTOCK, let’s reveal the final bands performing this year… and a few more details on other cool on site entertainments too! With this last wave of Metal 2 The Masses winners now locked in, 2025’s BLOODSTOCK lineup is complete — and it’s packed with underground heroes! From thrash to tech-death to ambient metalcore, these new additions to the Timothy Taylor New Blood Stage prove once again that the future of heavy music is in very safe and very loud hands. Friday welcomes Merseyside champions OGUN , pioneers of “Pyar Scouse Metal” and masters of melodic thrash chaos. Reformed in 2022, the Liverpool wrecking crew have gone from strength to strength, recently dropping their debut album World Of Hate — and they’re ready to tear up the stage. Joining them, Brighton’s victors DEVILHUSK channel disillusionment, self-doubt, and existential fury into a genre-smashing metalcore as...

  The UK might have been gripped by a heatwave of late, but BLOODSTOCK has some news that’s even hotter, revealing a whopping seventeen more bands set to take to the Timothy Taylor New Blood stage in just a few weeks time. With the winners of the grass-roots-supporting Metal 2 The Masses finals ranging from Somerset to Poland, your new favourite band might be lurking right here, so do check out any names you aren’t already familiar with and get excited for what’s in store! Without further ado, Friday welcomes Nottingham winners tealdeer , bending reality with their unpredictable alt-metal mash-up of SOAD, DGD, horror films, and carnival chaos - led by masked guitarist ODM (Ominous Deer Man). Joining them are Poland’s champs RASCAL , delivering lightning-fast twin lead speed metal soaked in classic heavy and thrash energy, and Kettering’s BACKSEAT JULIET , a glam-soaked rock ’n’ roll riot — loud, wild, and proudly over the top. Saturday brings London deathcore bruisers SYMBYOTE...

  With their seismic debut album 'Deathwish' dropping Friday, 27th June, and a pummeling new single and video 'Backbone Of Existence' landing this week (see video below), PERPETUAL PARADOX are set to dominate the modern metal landscape. Forged in fury and driven by defiance, the band’s brand of heavyweight riffage and sonic hostility is impossible to ignore. We exclusively caught up with the Paradox crew as they gear up to unleash chaos, and they let us in on the tracks that have defined, inspired, and fueled 'Deathwish'. Ollie Miles (Lead Guitar): Bleed from Within - 'I am Damnation':    "I just love BFW, and this opener on their Shrine album is them at their best. The riffs are so catchy, and that middle interlude right before the outro, which is just a few lead notes on guitar, but placed so perfectly, ties it all together amazingly well. It's a style of dynamic I tried to emulate when writing for this album." Jorge Nuñes (Rhythm Guit...