NOTHING CAN STOP BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE
On Saturday, June 5, 2004, Bullet For My Valentine played Download for the first time. It was lunchtime, and the young Welsh band were fourth from the bottom of the bill on the Barfly Stage, sandwiched between cult alt-rockers Yourcodenameis:milo and long-forgotten East London pop-punks The Holiday Plan.
Few people there knew who they were – Bullet’s self-titled debut EP was still five months away from being released. But that didn’t matter. After six years of trying and failing to catch a break, they were finally on their way.
“The night before, we played the Camden Barfly with 36 Crazyfists,” says singer and guitarist Matt Tuck now. “We packed up the van, drove to Download, got there at four or five in the morning, no sleep, excited, then got up and played at one o’clock in the afternoon.”
Bullet had been putting in the hard yards since they’d formed in Bridgend as Jeff Killed John in 1998. They’d played every tiny club, beer-sodden back room and leaky shithole going, but this was something else. “We hadn’t been on a stage that big before,” says Matt. “The experience of it was challenging and demanding, but it felt like such a big moment.”
It was, but it wouldn’t be the last. Bullet were back at Download the next year and the year after that, jumping up a stage each time. Over the next decade and a half they became Download’s unofficial house band, making eight more appearances. They were main support on the big stage more than once, and even closed the second stage in 2010. But the holy grail – an actual, bona fide Main Stage headlining spot – eluded them.
That finally changed last June. Download Pilot was the first major British music festival to take place since the pandemic hit, and Bullet topped the bill on the third and
