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Download Festival - Saturday 13th June 2009
Ripper Owens, No Mericana, Symphony Cult, Hardcore Superstar, In Case of Fire, Fightstar, Static-X, None The Less, The Answer, Pendulum, Thunder, Marilyn Manson, Architects, The Prodigy, Slipknot
I seriously overestimate how long it takes to get to Donnington, and end up stood outside the arena, waiting for it to open at nine fifteen. But, thank God for my poor time management, because although it’s only two years since I last frequented Download, the layout’s undergone a serious overhaul.
Thankfully, I have an hour before the first band’s due onstage, which gives me enough time to do a lap of the festival site and work out where the hell everything is, and to buy my day’s supply of beer tokens (and receive a slightly judgmental look from the bar staff for requesting twenty quid’s worth of tokens at 10:15 am) before heading over to the main stage to catch opening act, Ripper Owens.
Despite being one-time frontman for Judas Priest, Owens’ portly build, and leather jacket and sunglasses combo, puts me in mind of Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst. Thankfully, his ballsy, oldschool metal owes more to his former Judas Priest outfit, than nu-metal, and he gets Download off to a suitably swaggering start.
Next, I head over to the Tuborg stage, where Midlands’ five-piece No Mericana are playing to a surprisingly healthy crowd, considering it’s still only eleven forty-five. Although they claim to be influenced by Brit-pop, there’s a definite emo/pop-punk vein running through their pleasantly melodic tunes. While they certainly look the part, and have enviable pre-noon energy, for me, they keep the ball rolling rather than truly excite.
I’m just in time to catch the tail-end of Symphony Cult's set on the actually-pretty-damn-huge second stage. Their female fronted gothic rock would probably have fared better in a rammed tent, rather than in the scorching early morning sunshine, in front of a few hundred mildly interested bystanders. Still, Charlotte Lubbock has the unsettling gothic temptress act nailed, wailing and warbling into the microphone, all the time shooting the crowd gleefully sinister looks.
Hardcore Superstar know how to make an entrance, draping the stage with eye-catching banners, and entering to a stirring fanfare amid lashings of smoke. The music is equally flamboyant glam rock. They have a few good songs, in particular the vigorous sleaze of ‘Beg For It,’ which inspires the day’s first sing along. Energetic and theatrical, Hardcore Superstar are entertaining enough, even if they’re not exactly my cup of tea.
After catching the proggy In Case Of Fire a few weeks earlier and being left intrigued, but not entirely sold on their early-Muse art-rock stylings, I was looking forward to seeing them again. Weeks previous, what really impressed me, was their enthusiasm in the face of an abysmal, thirteen-strong audience, and it was heartening to see them draw a more respectable crowd at Download.
In Case of Fire’s awkward rhythms and sudden about-turns, mean that they’re impossible to enjoy straight off the bat. Following a few listens to debut album ‘Align The Planets,’ and after seeing them live once before, I’m starting to get it and, although the majority of today’s crowd clearly fall into the ‘recognise the name, but never actually listened to them’ category, there’s a handful of people who seem to be very familiar with In Case of Fire’s material, and are loving every minute of their performance.
What a difference a few years can make. The first time I saw Fightstar was at Leeds festival in 2005, where they drew a massive crowd. Unfortunately, ninety percent of that crowd had come to jeer, hold up Busted flags and posters and throw bottles. Today, they draw an even bigger crowd, and no-one is jeering. And it’s easy to see why. ‘Palahniuk’s Laughter’ is a shot of spiky post-hardcore aggression, while ‘Paint Your Target’ is pure, sneering contempt and ‘Death Car’ sounds even nastier live than it does on record, but it’s with cuts from their latest album, ‘Be Human’ where Fightstar really step things up a gear.
The dark, orchestral crunch of ‘War Machine’ makes you completely forget the soaring temperatures and squint-inducing sunshine, and the pre-recorded orchestra wails of ‘The English Way’ are enough to give you goosebumps.
Next up are self-proclaimed pioneers of ‘evil-disco,’ Static-X. Although their recorded output never quite does it for me, they’re always entertaining live; if only because frontman Wayne Static looks like something out of a Manga comic - with his additional foot of just-received-an-electric-shock hair, devil’s-tail beard and a facial expression that’s permanently poised between mildly confused and mildly annoyed, as though he’s trying to remember whether he switched the gas off.
Stand out tracks are ‘Stingwray’ and ‘He’s A Loser,’ the former a no-brainer industrial stomp, and the latter getting the entire field shouting “I’m with stuuuuuuuuuuuupid” while making the ‘loser’ L-shape symbol against their foreheads. It’s not big and it’s not clever, but it sure is a lot of fun, although Static-X lose points for having a woman in fetish gear serving them shots inbetween songs. I’d have much preferred an additional song, to watching lingering shots of her on the monitors.
After four hours of being crushed down the front, I relinquish my place and go in search of water, out of fear of collapsing from dehydration and heat exhaustion. While I had every intention of heading back and catching the whole of The Answer’s set, I’m slightly concerned because there’s a man stood in front of me with something written on the back of his T-shirt, only for some reason I can’t make out what it says. Getting out of the sun for a while suddenly seems like a good idea. Thankfully, Watford’s None The Less are just about to start inside the Bedroom Jam tent.
Their debut mini album might have just missed the spot, but I’m pleasantly surprised by just how good they are live, wisely playing up the hardcore side of their sound, and delivering a brutal half and hour set that whips up a considerable mosh pit. As frontman Andy points out, it’s not often unsigned bands get offered such lucrative festival slots, and it’s easy to see why None The Less were given this prestigious honour.
As None The Less bring their set to a triumphant finish, I sprint back to the second stage and catch the last twenty minutes of THE ANSWER’S set. Serving up bluesy rock and roll, The Answer incite bouts of group air-guitaring, as the entire crowd wishes they could turn out solos of that calibre. Even frontman Cormac Neeson’s dad-dancing can’t detract from a solid, worshipping-at-the-altar-of-AC/DC performance.
Pendulum's journey from drum ‘n bass club-botherers to two places below Slipknot on the Download bill, is one nobody could have predicted. Kerrang! may try and pass them off as a dance/rock crossover but, let’s be honest, Pendulum are a prime example of how a lot of heavy rock and metal fans are, randomly, quite partial to a bit of hardcore dance.
After the initial jolt of Pendulum’s thumping pre-fabricated beats, shrieking synths and frontman Robert Swire’s DJ-style vocal improvisations, has worn off, Pendulum are damn good fun. While their pounding drum ’n bass is perhaps better suited to an hour’s spent going off your nut, rather than as a festival slot at the end of a long, hot day, with five hours of music still to go, they still manage to get the crowd moving. The sight of a pit full of dreadlocked metalheads, throwing some shapes to ‘Tarantula’ isn’t a sight I’m going to forget in a hurry. Set highlight is, of course, the twisted electro of ‘Blood Sugar,’ which has the most maddeningly addictive bit of synth-work ever devised.
And, straight from modern day drum ‘n bass to classic British rock, as Thunder play to a rammed tent, over on the Tuborg stage. While getting inside the tent proves impossible, that’s of little consequence, as the people outside sing along as rapturously as those squashed up inside. The atmosphere is electric, even if you can’t see the stage, let alone the band.
Next up, is Grandfather of goth Marilyn Manson, whose performance is jaw-dropping for all the wrong reasons. After catching Marilyn Manson at a few festivals and at Manchester GMEX two years ago, I can honestly say he gets worse with every album release.
Before the diabolical ‘Eat Me, Drink Me’ he was still just about pulling off that pouting, teenage angst shtick. After ‘Eat Me, Drink Me’ he was considerably more insipid, due to his setlist being infiltrated by its droning, self-pitying rubbish. Now, he’s just released another snooze-fest album and, tonight, he looks like a man defeated. He also looks drunk, or possibly drugged up or, equally possible, so fed up with life that he doesn’t care whether he turns out a rubbish performance. It’s uncomfortable to watch. Although Manson tries to pass it off as part of the act, when he falls to his knees, paws at his already smeared make-up, flops around on the floor, and flings his microphone away in disgust at the end of every song, it isn’t an act. There’s also his bizarre between-song behaviour, as he beckons an army of roadies to hand him a jacket, a coat, a see-through poncho, a selection of hats and bottle upon bottle of water, which he takes one swig from then throws disdainfully into the audience. When he attempts to interact with the crowd, it’s mumbled and garbled and he doesn’t look like he knows where he is, let alone how to engage with his fans.
Instead of the tongue-in-cheek teenage rebellion we’re used to, Manson looks like a man who doesn’t want to play this game anymore. It makes for a riveting performance but, at the end of the day, you’ll be left feeling that Manson is starting to believe his own pantomime-goth image.
There’s just enough -time for a chunk of Architects before The Prodigy lay waste to the second stage. Again, it’s a struggle to get inside the Tuborg tent, but it’s worth the effort just to see Architects dramatically split the crowd in two for a wall of death - before running headfirst into technical difficulties. Frontman Sam Carter is left mumbling about how grateful they are to be here, while the wall of death-ers grow increasingly impatient. Fair play to Architects though, they don’t let this nightmare situation dent their confidence. The technical difficulties are sorted out in double-quick time, the crowd runs into one another, and Architects slip seamlessly back into their stride.
After missing The Prodigy’s arena tour- earlier this year, I was ecstatic to be seeing them at Download and clearly I wasn’t the only one, as people poured into the second stage area. Why they didn’t garner a main stage slot is anyone’s guess, especially with great new tracks such as ‘Omen’ and ‘Warriors Dance’ getting an airing. Again, much foolish dancing ensues, but The Prodigy have one up on Pendulum, in that there’s a focal point to the band, as dual vocalists Keith Flint and Maxim Reality rave it up onstage. Flint in particular drips punkish contempt, proving that Pendulum may have tunes to rival The Prodigy, but they don’t have half the stage presence.
And then, it’s time for tonight’s main stage headliners, Slipknot. The crowd who’ve gathered to watch the masked mentallists is, in itself, mind-blowing. Even more mind-blowing, is that Corey Taylor manages to make eighty per cent of that crowd squat down on the floor, for ‘Spit It Out.’ Slipknot may have pulled this trick a million and one times before but, when ‘Spit It Out’ is rumbling towards its climax, and the tens of thousands of people are bobbing up and down on the floor, in anticipation of leaping up and going mental, the sheer stress and adrenaline is overpowering.
After all these years, Corey Taylor doesn’t appear to have lost his passion for performing, with furious between song rants against everyone and everything, and a particularly vitriolic introduction to long-standing fan favourite ‘People=Shit.’ The dark creep of ‘Vermillion Part One’ is particularly unsettling, and ‘Psychosocial’ receives a speed boost that has it gnashing even harder than it does on record.
Fifteen bands in just over twelve hours - thank God I get to go home and sleep in a proper bed!
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