A BAND from Wrexham will be playing one of the UK’s largest metal festivals after winning a competition.

Scars of Remembrance are a metal band comprised of five members, all from Wrexham, and after winning a regional Battle of the Bands competition, they will play at the Bloodstock Open Air festival later this year.

Drummer of the band, Ben Burke, 39, has been speaking to The Leader about the band’s disbelief and excitement.

“It’s really amazing for all of us involved, we’re at the age now where we don’t really have fans, not many people come out to watch our shows when we gig, and now we get to go and play Bloodstock, the UK’s second largest metal festival. It’s incredible.

“Bloodstock runs this competition called Metal to the Masses, which is like a ‘Battle of the Bands’ type competition, there’s around 20 across the UK I think, and we competed in the North Wales version.

“There were four heats, we managed to get to the semi final in Colwyn Bay, and when we got through that to the final, I think that was when we all started to think that we could actually do this.

“The final was held in Wrexham last Friday, and we got told that night that we’d won, and we were all in shock.

“This is something we never expected would ever happen. To us this is all a bit of fun, a hobby really, we never dreamed that we would get the chance to play Bloodstock.”

The quintet has been announced on Bloodstock’s official website; they are scheduled to play on the festival’s Hobgoblin New Blood Stage on Saturday August 10.

The festival takes place across an entire weekend at Catton Park in Derbyshire and is expected to attract around 50,000 people.

Mr Burke explained how big of a deal this is for the members, saying:

“We’re all grown up now, we’ve got kids, mortgages, jobs, this isn’t the type of thing that we ever thought we would get the chance to do, so now to think that we’re getting the chance to do it is amazing.

“It’s something that we’ve all dreamed about in the past and now the dream is going to become a reality.”