Bludvera are a five piece ‘New School’ Thrash Metal band from Liverpool, England. Combining great inspiration from the ‘Bay Area’ and Teutonic Thrash movements, their fast-paced shredding guitars and powerful vocals are comparable to those of Thrash legends Kreator and Slayer. Their E.P. ‘Terrorform’ is out now.
At this year’s Hammerfest – Episode V ‘In Fear of the Dragon’ in Pwllheli, Wales RAMzine chatted with the band about their new songs, their Spring tour and about playing at Bloodstock.
RAMzine: Congratulations on your performance at this year’s Hammerfest. Tell us about your original release: ‘Terrorform’.
“It’s our first real release, so it’s an EP – it’s not so much an album. But we are working on a full-length album now.
We’ve been together 5 years, but that release was in 2012, and we had just done loads and loads leading up to that so … it was a culmination of things.”
RAMzine: So you’re actually working on something new now?
“Yes. We haven’t got any titles or anything yet but we [played] two new songs on Saturday at Hammerfest which are gonna be on that next release. We’ve already got ‘Inhale the Rings of Saturn’, that’s a new one … and we have also got a song which I think is called ‘IntelliGenetics’. They’re quite different from anything on Terrorform …”
RAMzine: Had you played those songs before Hammerfest?
“… Em, no. One of them is absolutely fresh, we were testing it out on the crowds here. The other one we have played at one or two gigs but … you know … We just really wanted to see it how it went down.”
RAMzine: So how is this material different from your original work? Because you’ve been going for 5 years… What’s been going on during that period of fermentation?
“Well, by Terrorform we had all matured [musically]. It had been like 4 years or whatever, and the band was a lot tighter. So we’re hoping that this next release is even more of a progression from the last one. But we still feel that we are just trying to find our feet a bit, really.”
RAMzine: What do you want to do next? Do you strive to become masters of your own musical destiny?
“Yeah, you know, we want to play fresh. That’s it really. When we released Terrorform, we got nothing but positive feedback from it. And the next release is just, you know, experimenting too! It’s gonna be similar to Terrorform but it’s, you know, a progression. We’ve added a few more technical parts. We feel that we have all progressed as musicians. [Laughs]”
RAMzine: Where have you found your most energetic fan base then?
“Ohhhh. It is not just in the Liverpool circle you know. (Laughs). It’s not local. I’d say we find more fans (Pause) … in the smoke! Up Wakefield, you know, or up in Yorkshire by Leeds. They seem to like us. Yeah. Thrash bands from all over the UK go and play at The Snooty Fox in Wakefield – and it seemed to be where everyone was getting together and playing… and it’s like – yeah – that’s where we want to be.”
RAMzine: What about playing in the West Midlands?
“Erm, Yes. We have played Birmingham a couple of times. It was good. We played Scruffy Murphy’s and, you know, we are hoping to come back to Birmingham when we do our tour. And that’s gonna be very soon.”
RAMzine: So have you planned your tour yet?
“Yeah, we’ve got a few weeks worth of dates back-to-back – all over the UK. It’s our ‘Viral Tombs of Terror Tour’ along with friends: Septic Fatality and Shrapnel.”
RAMzine: How far North will you travel?
“Erm, Sheffield we think. We have played Glasgow and Edinburgh before, but on this tour we won’t be playing Scotland. But we are doing a London show at The Unicorn in Camden though.”
RAMzine: In 2011 you played Bloodstock? Tell us about that experience.
“Yes. We played Metal to the Masses to get onto Bloodstock … And we like aced it (Laughs) and then we got to play the show and it was just, like, we never figured it could happen. We go to Bloodstock every year as fans – so we didn’t think that we would ever be playing there ourselves. But it happened, and we had a great time. We met loads of people there- especially when we played at like 10.30 am in the morning. We even met a few people from Exodus.”
RAMzine: Do you not feel that 2012 was a bit of an anti-climax for you?
“Well, we had an alright time last year but, you know, looking back it was like “Oh! We were playing Bloodstock the year before, we had a great time…” It was not “As high” as the year before. As soon as we played Bloodstock – like a couple of months later – we lost our guitarist and we were like “Oh No!” And then we got Joey here …
… He’s like recent in the band – and then we just so happened to get onto Hammerfest this year so things are looking equally as good again.”
RAMzine: So was Joey involved in the actual song-writing process as well?
Joey: “Yeah When I was looking at Terrorform – I wasn’t on that release – But I was sort of looking at it – and I thought “Maybe we could sort of take it up a notch without over-complicating it”. Or, you know, sort of going back on ourselves, really …”
RAMzine: So what else is on the horizon for Bludvera this year?
“We’ve got this tour coming up – and we’ve sent our stuff into Bloodstock. But whether we will get on or not’s a different thing – but we’re always hopeful. If we don’t get on this year, we will push for next year definitely – with the next release. We’ll just hope that we’ll get on it. Yeah, Bloodstock’s totally next, we’re hoping anyway.”
RAMzine: What about Europe?
“Erm, we haven’t had too much on Europe. But we did get a gig offer in Japan recently – supporting Exciter and – not sure. It was a last minute thing though it was like … Really last minute. We had to decide within the week sort of thing. But it was a tall order… But hopefully next year.”
RAMzine: In a way, you kind of really need to be prepared for a trip like that.
“Yeah, you need to be fully prepared. Well we’ve learnt by that mistake and we’ve spoken to the guy and he said he’s hopefully gonna get us to Japan next year … so we will have a kitty of cash ready and we will have a proper plan!”
RAMzine: Cool. Well, we are all looking forward to seeing you on your forthcoming tour.
Thank you Bludevera.
