As ever, we’re going to try and cover every single Jäger, New Blood and SOPHIE stage band before Bloodstock kicks off on August 10th. Your chance to check them out and start planning which bands to get there early for!
Trust us when we tell you that this is bound to result in some frustrating clashes because, as ever, there are some great bands on these three stages.
Our thanks to all the bands for taking the time out to answer our questions!
Raised by Owls – Hobgoblin New Blood Stage, Saturday
Simple things first – Where are you guys from?
All of us are from a little town in Derbyshire called Ashbourne. It’s a fairly small town that a lot of people refer to as the Gateway to the Peak District. A Subway store opened here last year – extremely exciting stuff!
How long have you been playing together as a band?
We’ve been making a racket and recording it in each other’s bedrooms since approximately 2015 but we took our final form as a five-piece in November 2016. We played our first ever show in January this year, which happened to be the first round of Metal 2 The Masses.
Where does the name of the band come from?
We were talking about this the other day and cannot actually the exact moment we coined the name ‘Raised By Owls’. We wanted to take a typical metal band name like ‘Raised By Wolves’ or ‘Raised By Lions’ you know, a strong and fierce animal that you might typically associate with metal and replace it with a not so metal sounding animal. Like an owl.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
We like to think of our sound as a melting pot of extreme metal subgenres. There are elements of death metal, grindcore and a few hints of black metal. We try not to restrict our sound to a specific genre – if it sounds good we will use it. Actually, if it doesn’t sound good we’ll probably still use it.
Our lyrical content takes a comedic approach, we don’t take ourselves or our lyrics too seriously and we think the music expresses that. From the start, we always said we wanted the lyrical themes to be absurd. Our focus on the EP was to poke fun at British culture and British celebrities.
What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
We like to have a lot of fun and people who come to see us live generally like to have a lot of fun as well. Like the rest of our material, there is nothing that is to be taken too seriously. People normally get pretty silly at our shows and we love it!
Why would you come and watch us instead of another band? Well, we pay homage to our lord and savior Ainsley Harriott and we also like to get the crowd to participate in a very British wall of death. For our very British wall of death we split the crowd down the middle and depending on how you pronounce the word ‘scone’ is which side you go on.
So, if you like the sound of a scone themed wall of death and a dedication to Ainsley Harriott then our set will definitely be for you.
Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
We have all been going to Bloodstock as fans for years. It is by far our favourite festival in the UK, every year is such a blast! Great bands, great beers, amazing atmosphere and lovely people – what more could you want?
It is truly an honour to be returning this year as performing artists. It’s going to be brilliant.
Did you enter M2TM thinking you could win it? Which region did you win?
This year we won the Nottingham Metal 2 The Masses competition.
Honestly, no we did not expect to win. As we said earlier, the first heat of the competition was our very first show as a band! A couple of us had not even performed on stage before that point, so it was all a bit uncertain as to how it would go. We were just happy people didn’t hate us. As the competition went on, it became apparent that the competition in of other bands was extremely tough. We were up against so many incredibly talented bands and it was really cool to share the stage with all of them. When it came to the final we were just very happy to be there and be a part of it – a bit like when you take a dog out in the car and it gets really excited and hangs its head of the windows.
When announcing the winners I think we all thought it had gone to someone else so it was a very cool surprise when they called out our name. It will be a moment that none of us will be forgetting any time soon. We are extremely grateful for everyone who organised, took part, and came and showed their .
What sort of setlist can we expect?
We will be playing a mix of songs of our debut EP The Great British Grind Off that we dropped in October last year. Get yourself familiar with our tunes by ing it for free at our bandcamp.
We will also be playing the Chucklevision theme song before our song about the Chuckle brothers. Come and have a dance!
Which main stage band do you most hope you’re not squished up next to so you can see them play?
I believe we are playing the New Blood stage on the Saturday, and there are far too many bands we would like to see that day so chances are that we’re going to be clashing with somebody we like. The main bands we will be checking out on Saturday are: Fallujah, Winterfylleth, Havok, Annihilator, Abhorrent Decimation, Municipal Waste, Kreator, Ghost, and Macabre.
What are you working on at the moment?
We’re currently practicing our set to get it sounding as tight as possible for Bloodstock. We’re also looking at expanding our merch and finally getting some physical CDs of our EP out there. Then after summer we’re just booking more gigs for autumn/winter and recording some more daft music videos. End of the year/start of next year we’ll probably start looking at writing some new material for our next release.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done on tour?
Wildest thing we’ve seen? Lee went to the toilet in a Hungry Horse pub in Cambridge the day after a show and there was bloke in the bathroom with his tros around his ankles asking Lee to “make him feel better”. He politely declined.
Wildest thing we’ve done? We once all polished off a pack of Hob-Nobs between the five of us before taking to the stage. That was a pretty crazy night!
Jäger, Hobgoblin Ale, Kraken, Kingstone Press Cider, Kaltenberg Beer or Bulleit Bourbon? And, yes, we’ll be counting all the votes!
Hobgoblin Ale all the way, baby!
Thanks for the interview! We hope we see some of you crazy owls down the front at the New Blood stage on the Saturday of Bloodstock! Stay weird and stay metal!
Raised By Owls: facebook | bandcamp | youtube
