It’s that time of year where we set out to interview as many of the Sophie, New Blood, and Jager bands as we can in the lead-up to one of the most anticipated festivals of the year, Bloodstock. Answering our questions here are Devastator who play the New Blood Stage on the Sunday afternoon.
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We are from Derbyshire. We’re slightly scattered around the Midlands but the band as an entity is based in Derbyshire.
How long have you been playing as a band?
It will be five years this year, at least as a “serious” band. We spent a handful of years just getting drunk playing the same couple of Sodom tracks over and over again – it was very much just a get-together between us all – get blasted and play some big evil riffs!
Where does the name of the band come from?
We’re going to disappoint you, but there is no real backstory behind the name. We had a previous name and after we started to take things a little bit more “seriously”, we decided to change to Devastator – there are some pop culture nods that surround it but they weren’t in any way influential as to why the name was picked. We just liked it and it stuck!
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
Black thrash or speed metal would suit us best, but it’s up to the audience’s interpretation really. We’ve been tagged under many things from black metal to old-school death metal to just very recently when we were called ‘Trad’ Metal. Look, we wear our influences on our sleeves, that much is incredibly obvious to those who have listened to us and followed us from the very beginning. We wouldn’t say we’re reinventing the genre black thrash – we are just paying homage to all of our influences in the best way we can. Of course we do our own spin on things but to say totally unique? Perhaps to some yes and perhaps to others maybe not.
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What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
We excel in our live performances – we truly believe we are built for the live stage. What the Bloodstock faithful can expect is a total assault of old school speed and intensity, and those who like it fast, loud, rude and swimming in blasphemy will be greatly satisfied – and that is a promise.
Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
Yes indeed we have, some of us have been attending since 2015 – one of us has been attending the festival for over 20 years now! It’s our favourite UK festival and the true highlight of every year, from the layout to the atmosphere right down to the line up, it’s just the best.
Which M2TM region did you win? Or did you come through other channels?
We were asked to perform directly. We were quite taken aback at first as the e-mail was sent in early-mid July. We are honoured to be asked to play this festival – we almost still can’t believe it ourselves but here we are!
Can you put into 10 words or fewer how it felt when you realised you were heading to Bloodstock?
Shock, disbelief, excited, thankful, proud…D-beats, riffs, cans.
What sort of setlist can we expect?
Well, what we can say is the Bloodstock faithful will be getting a lot of the previous album Baptised in Blasphemy… maybe all of it – you’ll just have to wait and see.
Which other bands do you most hope you’re not squished up next so you can see them play?
The big two are Orbit Culture and Venom (Inc). The latter is a huge influence on us and they’re playing their genre creating album Black Metal in full – that is something we just cannot miss. So fingers crossed we have enough time to catch them play those legendary songs!
What are you working on at the moment?
We are currently working on a new album – Bloodstock might get some of that new material live…
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
The most recent is the recent Rammstein shows. That band knows how to put on a stage show – flames left, right and centre. In of ours, we had a stormer in Glasgow during the heatwave where a dedicated patron attempted to stage dive off the PA in this basement show – he sort of achieved it without hitting the ceiling!
What drink do you throw back to get yourself fire up before going on stage?
Nothing like a cold beer to get you in the mood for a rock show – that’ll do nicely!
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