Our regular run-down of as many of the Bloodstock bands as we can get to talk to us! Warpstormer play the EMP stage on the Sunday…
Simple things first – where are you guys from?
We come from all over the place, but the band came together in New Cross, London.
How long have you been playing together as a band?
The band initially started as a recording project during the 2020 lockdown. Richard (vox) wrote the first Warpstormer EP and enlisted the help of Scott from Green Lung to record the guitars. With the songs finished, Simon jumped on bass and then, a few months later, Adam (guitar) and James (drums) ed in the same week. This line-up has now been gigging for just over a year and we’re currently putting the finishing touches on our first album as a band.
Where does the name of the band come from?
It’s a thinly-veiled Warhammer 40,000 nod (hey, if naming your band after a Warhammer thing is good enough for Bolt Thrower…) and it kinda conjures up that cool kinda magical space-fantasy vibe, which we like to think works with what we’re doing – hopefully nobody’s gonna check us out and think “well THIS is not what I was expecting a band called Warpstormer to sound like AT ALL” andthen go off in a huff.
Describe your music. What makes you unique?
Someone once described us as “stoner thrash”, which does a pretty good job of covering the general vibe, although perhaps “speed doom” might be more accurate. Thematically, we’re very much in the doom camp – our lyrical content could largely be summarised as a protracted existential crisis set to the biggest riffs we can cook up. The inspiration for those riffs comes from a range of places, all the way from trad metal touchstones like Sabbath and Iron Maiden to bands more traditionally placed in the hardcore bracket, like Converge or even Madball. Maybe it’s that latter stuff that’s filtered through into an inability to play slow enough for long enough to count as proper doom/stoner, ha. If you dig bands like High on Fire, Mastodon and Doomriders, you might be into what we’re doing.
What’s your live show like? Why are people going to watch you instead of another band?
We are proud to be an ‘amps band’ in that we don’t rely on midi instruments or click tracks when we play. We never want to let go of that loose, organic feel that makes a band
sound like themselves; what you will hear from the stage is the four of us just hammering it out on our instruments and vocal cords! Expect a double-amp guitar onslaught, plenty
of new tracks from our unreleased album and devastating riffs.
If you like what we do, consider ing us on Patreon for as little as £1 per month!
Have you been to Bloodstock before? What did you think?
Our drummer James played Bloodstock with our friends Lowen a few years back but, for Warpstormer as a band, this will be our first time and we are psyched.
When/how did you find out you’d been selected to play at Bloodstock?
Having just finished our first album, we sent off a few tracks to Simon who was curating the line-up and he liked the music enough to give us a slot!
What sort of setlist can we expect?
In London we play on lots of doom/stoner line-ups but for Bloodstock we are definitely going to be unleashing more of a tailored classic metal attack, comprising some old tracks off our first EP and a load of new, unreleased tracks from our first album.
Stage times haven’t been announced yet, so which other band do you most hope you’re not clashing with so you can see them play?
We are all very psyched about the Friday line-up: Clutch, Hatebreed and our pals Green Lung. We also have some die-hard Opeth fans in the band so it’s safe to say at least half of Warpstormer will be chained to the Dio stage at any single moment. We are playing on Sunday and, unless Carcass are planning a surprise afternoon performance at the same time as us, we will definitely be watching them after our set! (Note to Carcass: please don’t do this, we’ll be very upset.)
What are you working on at the moment?
We have a fun run of summer shows coming up – we’ve just done a show with Orange Goblin and then the week before Bloodstock, Green Lung were kind enough to bring us on board as for their London warm-up show. We’re currently finalising plans for releasing the album, which we’re very excited for everyone else to hear, and around that we’re trying to fit in playing as many shows as we can, with a particular emphasis on getting out of London and around to other parts of the country.
What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen or done at a live show?
Adam: a few days ago at a gig in a North London Gunners pub I watched a guy on stage smash his new Gibson 335 to pieces in front of about ten people in the audience.
What drink do you throw back to get yourself fired up before going on stage?
Adam: A 55p can of Boost Energy will do the trick. Richard: I try to limit my booze intake before shows, but all that bellowing’s thirsty work so I like to keep a couple of nice frosty lagers stashed around the stage to keep me refreshed.
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