Download Festival 2009

The legendary Download Festival returned to Donington Park for the seventh year from Friday 12th June till Sunday 14th June, with bands such as Slipknot, Korn, Papa Roach and many more top class rock gods playing throughout the weekend. Being named “event of the year for 2009” by Metal Hammer’s Golden Gods Award just proves how amazing the festival was.

With approximately 100,000 people flooding through the gates, at every stage there was a sea of heads. It didn’t matter who was playing at the time, or where abouts you stood, in every direction you looked, all you could see were mass of people. Inthe campsite, everywhere you looked, more tents then you could shake a tent peg at. Even on the Thursday morning when I joined the scene.

After all the heavy rain on Wednesday night, the village and campsites were just a sea of deep, sticky, gooey mud. Fortunately within hours of my arrival, the mud had just about dried up and turned nice and hard. This was perfect for a nice stroll around the village and campsites to find out what was available. Even though I only had about £5 for the whole weekend, which did not get me far, I believe it got me a small portion of chips made out of cardboard, and a bottle of ‘warm’ water. This is the life, luxury.

Friday

The first band I saw on Friday was Hollywood Undead. If you like Eminem, then you may just want to give these guys a listen. However, for me, they were just awful, and did not sound like they were playing live. The sound was useless, with the music a lot louder than the lyrics. It was almost like hearing a mouse singing underwater.

The second band that played on the main stage were Welsh Rockers, The Blackout. I had never heard of them before, but I stood through their performance with an open mind, and if they are around later in the year, I would go to watch them once more.

After the Blackout I returned to the campsite until Limp Bizkit came on stage at 17:45. I didn’t particularly want to see these, but they are actually amazing live. They even dragged two lucky people at the front of the crowd onto the stage which was quite amusing to watch them bounce around, and then steal the microphone towards the end and sing, quite well.

Korn played after Limp Bizkit, and appeared to be effing fantastic. They were always keeping the crowd on their toes, and loving every minute that they performed on stage. They blasted out many hits, including ‘freak on a leash’, and also did a rather good cover of the legendary Pink Floyd hit, ‘Another Brick in the Wall’.

Saturday

Saturday appears to be a bit of a blur, and without any pictures to refresh my memory it makes things oh so hard to remember. What I do remember however is feeling quite rough after only an hour sleep and being rudely awoken (I can't even rememebr why and by what / who), what I do remember of the day was quite good though.

After spending all morning in the shelter of the campsite I headed to the main arena about 2 pm to go and find some interesting bands that may be on. The first band I saw was "The Answer". I had actually never heard of this band before but I was speechless about the vocals and backing music, I would definitely go and see them live again, and buy their albums. Just to add to the great performance though here was a brief moment of insanity where the lead singer Cormac Neeson jumped off stage and ran along the barriers, I just dived across the huge empty peopleless space to the barriers, and HIGH FIVED him as he passed. Parkour ninja style.

I then stayed at the second stage to watch “You Me At Six”. I'm not a huge fan of the band, but I just wanted to give them a chance and hear a bit of their music so stood at the front of the small crowd, able to watch the happenings on the stage. Not really much to comment about on the band, but they did play the only song that I know from them and that is “Save it for the bedroom”. Personally I thought they played quite well but not knowing their songs it was hard to tell if they were good live or not. Sadly however they are just not quite heavy enough for my liking, perhaps more tin then lead.

After that, I took a short slow stroll to the main stage so I could watch the "amazing" Marilyn Manson perform in the early evening. I love Manson’s songs so he was one of the artists that I desperately wanted to see, however, his performance left me disappointed. He arrived on stage 10 minutes late, and he was actually awful. He was so wasted that he didn’t know what he was doing, after every song he stopped for about two minutes at a time just walking around the stage without saying anything and then “started” the next song. The final song he sang was meant to be ‘beautiful people’ but he couldn’t even remember the lyrics. This caused an outburst within the crowd and people started to bottle him, he was then dragged off stage by his security guard, never to return. Even some of the band walked off during songs because of Manson’s behaviour.

After the disappointing performance by Manson, I returned to the second stage to watch "The Prodigy", and ended up in the middle of the crowd. But only for a while before I had to leave in fear of passing out. The Prodigy aren't exactly my type of band, however it was well worth seeing them, although it did not change my perspective of the band.

The final band I saw that day were Slipknot. Unfortunately I was unable to get close to the stage for this band, but that was probably best for my own safety. I only caught about four songs due to the clashing with The Prodigy who my friend was desperate to see, but two of the songs I heard were ‘Dead Memories’ and possibly my all time favourite Slipknot song ‘Psychosocial’. After the final song which I did not know, I headed back to the campsite, however just before I got to the exit of the arena, Slipknot returned for an encore, typical.

Sunday

Sunday morning I woke up after a nice refreshing 4 hours kip, and decided to get a full day in the arena, not really caring about who was playing that day. Although the first thing I did when I entered the arena was head straight for the Muller Rice bus and just sat in a nice big space not really paying attention to who was on the stage. This was probably the hardest day for me, after three previous days in the sun I actually got sunburnt, so my arms were burning, I was suffering from heat stroke and dehydration, and here I was eating Mullered Rice. However, none of this stopped me enjoying myself. The bands that I just heard (although not being physically able to stand up in the crowd to see them) were ‘Stone Gods’, ‘Tesla’, ‘Skin’ and ‘Black Stone Cherry’.

Finally I found the strength to move and go to the second stage to stand in the crowd because I wanted to be right at the front for when Papa Roach came on. So the first band I saw was Karma to Burn. But there was something wrong about this band whilst on stage. There was no vocalist. It was just the guitars and drums playing. Which was fine by me, as the music was really soothing, but it would have been better if the singer was actually present. Although not knowing any songs, it was perfect just to listen to the music, without having to remember lyrics.

Unfortunately whilst watching Karma to Burn, the second stage was infested with hundreds of bees that just appeared. But it was fun, just stood in the middle of the swarm not being attacked. Secondly, there was a band called ‘Volbeat’ I found them quite good. The singer was actually mental. He kept on cracking jokes, and even tried to get the crowd to be silent by shouting, “SILENCE…I KILL YOU” which I found very amusing.

Shinedown appeared after Volbeat, and after Shinedown there was a band called ‘Clutch’. In my opinion Clutch were awful. There appeared to be no atmosphere within the crowd, and was very little character and enthusiasm on stage.

Buckcherry appeared after Clutch, and I found them rather boring, and the crowd was getting rather big for Papa Roach who was on next. So really I did not pay attention to what was happening on the stage. During the gap when Papa Roach were getting ready there was a huge bottle fight which was fun (please note, plastic bottles, with no bottles being hurt in the fun), despite getting hit on the back of the head and turning around to look, only to get hit again.

Finally the four and a half wait was over for Papa Roach. The opening song was ‘Between Angels and Insects’ that got the crowd all ready for the next hour. It took only 10 minutes of Papa roach to separate me from my friends and get me crushed against the barriers. I can’t remember all of the songs that were played but I do know that I knew the lyrics to ALL of them, which is a first for me. The songs I remember were ‘Lifeline’, ‘Hollywood Who~e’, ‘scars’, ‘Last Resort’ and ‘Change or Die’. There were obviously more songs, some from the old Roach, and some from the new album. (Metamorphosis). I was a little disappointed that they didn’t play one of my favourite songs ‘She loves me not’, but hey, I can’t have everything.

After Papa Roach I decided to move to a different stage to go and see Go:Audio for some reason. I spent most of my time in the non-existant Mosh pit, that a lot of the time was just a circle in the crowd. I believe I even started a plastic bottle mosh. After Go:Audio, I decided to go and watch the last couple of songs from Def Leppard before heading to the campsite to wait for the famous Download Festival riots to start. But they never came. So I spent most the night watching the fire crew busy at work with people burning their tents, and watching them blow up after a couple of minutes burning.

Overall

Overall Download Festival was truly awesome, I am definitely going back again next year. My Highlights were probably Papa Roach, Korn, Limp Bizkit and the Blackout. If you haven’t been yet, I would definitely recommend that you go, despite the price of the tickets. Hopefully there will be some top class bands playing at next years festival too.