Beez Does The Download Festival Headliners
Beez gets his rant on about this year’s Download festival headliners!
It’s got to be said, with the kind of bill that Download had put together this year, there also comes a hefty weight of expectation. With great power comes great responsibility (if you listen to a bloke in red and blue spandex who’s always flinging webs around the place).
It delivered everything we wanted and more, didn’t it?
First off, we tip our hats to the headliners. We’d already blogged about how Faith No More were astounding at Brixton but they took it one better at Download. Patton’s flawless delivery on ‘Take this Bottle’ was enough to raise every hair on my body stand to attention, the roar that went up as that opening power-chord to ‘Epic’ was out of this world and that they played ‘We Care A Lot’ this time around was unbelievable. We expected and they delivered. Awesome.
Slipknot. I don’t even know where to begin on this one. Christ on a bike, after Metallica played ‘Master Of Puppets’ in its entirety, I didn’t expect to ever see a headline set better than that. I was wrong and Slipknot delivered it.
Outrageously heavy from the get-go, the Des Moines noise machine opened with the first three tunes from their self-titled record. It had been a rumour that they were going to play the record from start-to-finish for a while and when the 4th song broke this trend, it was disappointing for all of about 0.23 seconds before they started kicking our ass again.
You know when the Prodigy used to play festivals in the mid-90’s and would get crowds from the front to the back throwing shapes? Imagine that with moshing and you’ve got ‘Duality’. Your friendly neighbourhood Beez was found, what is technically named, losing his shit. Ending with the “get-down on the floor, jump the fuck up” ‘Spit It Out’, this was something else entirely. Listen out for this week’s podcast. I might get teary over this one.
And on to the gamble of Def Leppard. It’s worth remembering that it was only about 5 years ago that Def Leppard were being booked into large clubs and here they are, back at the summit of the mountain at Castle Donington. I expected to enjoy Leppard for the kitsch factor. I totally underestimated just how good a band Def Leppard are and feel like a chump for doing so.
‘Action’, ‘Make Love Like A Man’, ‘Animal’, an unforgettable ‘Two Steps Behind’, ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’…it was almost like they were taking the piss with how many cracking songs they have!
When Joe Elliott spoke of how this was the first time Rick Allen had returned to Donington since his famous 1987 comeback show on the same stage, it was a moment. A real moment that was followed up with an encore of ‘When Love And Hate Collide’ and ‘Let’s Get Rocked’. Yeah, that is how you close a festival!
It’d be wrong to leave without saying who I’d like next year, wouldn’t it? Alright, seeing as you’re twisting my arm, I’d have Rammstein, Aerosmith and another exciting reformation that we didn’t see coming.
That was the headliners, check out the best of the rest of the bands from the Download festival.
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Are Rammstein big enough to headline Download?
With there stage show, i’d say yes…
Rammstein, Aerosmith/Maiden and SOAD?
Yes, yes they are. Dont believe me, watch any recording of their live shows after the ‘Mutter’ album and see for yourself (hell, watch ‘Live Aus Berlin’ and that was before ‘Mutter’ and the cash they could inject into live performances)
Rammstein, Aerosmith and SOAD would be a cracker. I can dream cant I? ;-p
I can imagine Blink 182 being one of the reformed bands at Download next yeaf though.
Oh, and FNM and Slipknot owned.
Of course Rammstein are big enough. FNM were hardly huge over here after The Real Thing (or arguably, Angel Dust) and not only did they headline but they were one of the bands of the weekend. Rammstein would be an awesome headliner
yes to what people are saying ,except aerosmith. I would love SOAD to play again and seeing rammstein bar bumming the keyboardist will be amazing too. I would say maiden instead of aero to finish the event.
If they follow what is likely to be a trend of “Classic rock sunday” …I would be stoked to see Van Halen closing the festival!!
If they have a reformed band opening…S.O.A.D would be killer!!
As for drawing in the monstrous crowds for saturday…Who else but IRON MAIDEN can get a crowd to sing along word-for-word to most songs?
This years festival seems to be a new beginning for DL, with ‘07 being the last of the “Old style” festivals, and ‘08 being the transitional/experimental (and shite) year, this year is the year of the rebirth!
you obviously forgot trivium closed the 2nd stage in a brilliant fashion
your ignorance is blinding
you might all think i’m crazy but for me next year blink 182!!
oh and slipknot was fucking brutal and i loved every second of it
Nah man I’m all for blink to come back here!
Espesh if it’s for next year’s Download!
But ideally, Rammstein should be one of next year’s headliners.
Don’t watch Live Aus Berlin, watch VOLKERBALL and THEN you will see how they are more than capable of not only playing to a sizeable crowd in Nimes arena but getting them to singalong (not to mention in a foreign language)!
NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!!! Never Aerosmith!!!!
Its about fucking time we had Van Halen, Eddie would rip the main stage in two. But having said that, Ozzy and Black Label both have new albums out there next year, I’d like to see another Ozzfest Saturday, but given the poor state of Downloads line-up this year, i think its doubtful to see many REAL rock bands. More than likely it’ll be 3 soul destroyingly wank ‘bands’ with a few glimmers of hope way down on the bill.
Dod- poor state of the line-up?!?!?!? Faith No More? Slipknot? Korn? The Crue? ZZ Top? Down? Manson? (He was rubbish, but still a big name) Whitesnake? Def Leppard? They might not all be to everyone’s taste, but there’s no denying it was an impressive line-up stuffed full of big names. Best Download so far I reckon. 06 was pretty spectacular, 07 was good (MCR nearly ruined it though), 08 was fairly poor, apart from KISS who put on the best Download show ever (in my mind, still the best despite Slipknot coming close this year), but the general quality throughout the whole boll marks this one out as the best for me.