Live Review : Download Festival - An alternative to June 12th 2022
Not only have we given you our Stewart's thoroughly subjective view of the weekend (iron maiden fans for £20 you can happily have his home address), we can now give you a bonus additional sunday retrospective. You see our Alex was there too and this is what he thought:
Static Dress are a band who are tipped to be the next “BIG” thing in our world, a claim that borders between truth and scepticism depending on who you ask. They were first on my radar at last years Download Pilot event where I first heard their song “Clean” and thought it was the greatest Alexisonfire song that Alexisonfire never wrote. Fast forward 12 months and they are in the exact same position; opening a tent on the final day of the Festival. What has changed is that they have gone from 4 lads playing their music to a tent of hungover punters to a group of absolute showmen who commanded the tent as if they were playing a main stage set smack band in the middle of the weekend. They were nothing short of absolutely stunning, and I will be incredibly shocked if they aren’t the band on everyone’s lips this time next year.
Wargasm have become something of a meme in my social circle after last years festival circuit. The phrase “well it can’t be worse than Wargasm” has been used to describe every shit gig that myself or my friends have attended in the past 12 months. You would hope that a band with as much industry backing as Wargasm have would evolve in the 12 months between absolutely terrible performances at Download Pilot and Bloodstock. But fuck me, they have evolved and then some. Their arrangements perfectly compliment their recorded material, as opposed to stripping away all of the character found on tape and sticking with a simple guitar, drums and bass live set up. The band sound as tight as anything and their following is undeniable. I am never one to have a stance and stick with it, I am always willing to have my opinions challenged and I’ve gone from Wargasm hater to a Wargasm “understander”. Top top effort
The leader singer of Powerwolf seems like a real lovely chap. Too nice in fact. A lot of Powerwolf’s set consisted of vocalist Attila Dorn initiating passionate, albeit elongated bouts of call and response with an audience who was more than likely hanging out of its arse; one particular case of this was 3 parts, lasted approximately 6 minutes and started off with what sounded like the opening verse of “Model” by Kraftwerk. When they played though it was nice, safe, catchy as fuck power metal, absolutely perfect for the slot they were playing. It’s a shame they rambled on and on about Metal Army’s and fighting the Metal War and other violent Metal-esque stuff. Stick to playing lads as you’re fantastic at it.
The Hara are a divisive band and then some. They first struck me as a group of lads who stumbled across a copy of “How to emulate Yungblud’s Success for Dummies” in a bargain bin in an Esso Garage and thought “let’s have a go lads’”. That was first my assumptions at last years Download Pilot, and I was proved massively wrong by them at the time, this is why I, nor anyone really, should base opinions on first looks. Vocalist Josh has the natural ability to wrap the audience around his little finger and the rise The Hara have seen in the past 12 months is nothing short of spectacular. Not to mention they have some absolute bangers to boot. They were however, the victims of terrible sound at Download which dampened their set for me personally as I could hear absolutely fuck all but Drums and ultimately had to leave as a result. For what I saw, they still had glimmers of the great band I’ve seen a few times this past year, but this just wasn’t it for me. How they can bounce back however will be the true test of what type of band The Hara is and I have every faith in them to do it.
Watching Jamie Lenman was this years “Frank Turner” moment for me. In short, when I have a Frank Turner moment, it is basically me FINALLY understanding a band or act that I could never click with listening too on tape, when I see them live for the first time; which first happened with, well Frank Turner. Jamie Lenman and his band sounded absolutely tight as fuck, and even though he very cheekily used this set to try out all new material, I couldn’t help but have a big ol’ smile on my face watching him do his thing. He’s a great vocalist, had some great banter and had a quality band surrounding him. The second he left the stage I had his entire back catalogue downloading on my phone. Astonishing stuff.
Volbeat are just great fun aint they. Yes they’re cheesy, yes they’re a bit Nickelback, yes he sounds like Cher, but they’re just great great fun. I was a bit worried about seeing them as the festival setlist they have played the weeks prior to their performance at Download suggests that they missed off quite a few of my favourite songs, but I didn’t care. It is hard not to smile at songs such as ‘Lola Montez’ and nod along to ‘Seal the Deal’. The highlight for me had to be ‘Wait A Minute My Girl’ though. That song is the absolute tits. In any other case, if a band played that, I’d roll my eyes and tell them to get in the sea, but I don’t know why they can, but Volbeat just get away with it, credit is also due for them actually having a LIVE sax playing the solo. Absolutely quality. It also presented a nice moment in which I got to meet up and spend a little bit of time with my fellow ROCKFLESH Compadres, some who I’d only met for the very first time today, so that was definitely a great moment also!
After heading over to the Second Stage properly for the first time (I caught maybe 10 minutes of Massive Wagons, but not enough to base a review on), I caught the last half of Skillet. Skillet for me have always been part of a genre of music known as “WWE Pay-Per-View Music”. All the usual suspects fall into this category, Saliva, Limp Bizkit, Three Days Grace, Creed etc… They are bands you never listen too (sans Limp Bizkit) yet you seem to know an extensive amount of their back catalogue due to their music being used across numerous WWE PPV’s back in the days before they started using Pitbull and Flo-Rida. It was a big old case of me sitting there being like “yep, I know that one, and that one. WAIT did they write this one too?!”. They were a huge surprise for me, a great surprise at that and provided me with a great trip down memory lane. The band were also on top form too and I wasn’t just swayed by the fact they had so many great songs, they backed it up with how they were playing it too and it was hard to find fault with them at all.
Up next was what I was expecting to be my highlight of the day, The Darkness. For me, “Permission To Land” is the finest British Rock Album of the 21st Century, end of story. Imagine having songs such as ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’, ‘Growing On Me’, ‘Givin Up’ and ‘Love Is Only A Feeling’ on one album, let alone your debut release. I was extremely excited for what I was expecting to be the best drunken singalong of the weekend. Sure they played the hits, the aforementioned four songs as well as ‘One Way Ticket To Hell’ and a few new tracks. Something however, felt off. No one around me was up for it. The sing along was muted by head nodding and toe taps and it seemed that the audience was there for the one song, their biggest song, ‘I Believe In A Thing Called Love’, which the energy was raised for, everything else went down like a wet fart in church. I was not disappointed in the band, the band played great, however, for me, atmosphere makes up 75% of a show for me and just seeing around me such disdain to some of the finest rock songs written was disappointing for me. I sincerely hope where you were stood was much better and it was just a situational thing for me and where I was stood but I was disappointed nonetheless.
The penultimate band of my day was Descendents. I was in a bad mood with punk up until this point after catching a real disappointing Bad Religion show the weekend before (link for the review is here). Bad Religion kinda made me realise that our heroes grow old. The energy you may see in older performances just can no longer be there due to age or health and it’s a crushing realisation. This was my mindset before Descendents took to the stage, I was just about to watch a group of 50 somethings trundle there way through 60 minutes of material. I was massively massively proved wrong by them. Descendents blew my absolute face off with their energy. It was everything I was hoping Bad Religion would have been. Songs Check. Atmosphere Check. Presence Check. This was not an aging punk band on one last legacy tour, this was a band who have formed in 1977 and has been on absolute collision course since then. They absolutely levelled the tent and proved to be a treat to those who decided to chose common sense over Steel Panther. Descendents. What a band.
The final band of my day was Biffy Fuckin’ Clyro. Biffy are currently the top of my league table of bands I have seen the most. My current tally is 12, a meagre count by some peoples standards, but something I wear with pride. What is glaring from the 10 minutes prior to the band taking stage was that it was absolutely dead. 5 years ago when Biffy Clyro last headlined was the same story, but they were up against Rob Zombie, so I’ll give the Download Punters benefit of the doubt. This year however the only clash was with about 40 minutes of Myles Kennedy on the stage basically opposite the main stage, yet it was still as dead as it was in 2017. Opening with a left field choice of ‘DumDum’ from their most recent album a “Hunger In Your Haunt”, Simon Neil and co. made a sombre opening statement, low lighting, blank screens and just Simons’ voice and a synthesiser ‘DumDum’ doesn’t hold its own against other staple Biffy openers such as ‘Different People or The Captain’, but still sets the tone for the rest of the show, which really begins with the titular track of their latest release which followed the opener. This show however was tame by their standards. Back in 2013 when they headlined the Reading Festival, they made an absolute massive statement by setting fire to the stage, setting fire to their guitars, blasting enough pyro to give Till Lindeman a semi and being absolute rock gods. It is clear looking back, that the 2013 version of Biffy Clyro was a version that was eager to please, this current version doesn’t give a fuck what people think about them and doesn’t want to please anyone, they just want to play their shit, if you like it, then good, if you don’t, they probably don’t care. Whilst I really like this unabashed version of Biffy Clyro, I really wanted them to succeed in their show. This wasn’t a home crowd by any stretch, and whilst they have everything needed to be a bonafide Download staple, they needed to look back to their previous Reading performance for tips in how to win over a very tough crowd.
Unfortunately, in my humble opinion, I wouldn’t blame anyone for not being convinced by Biffy Clyro based on this performance. The setlist was very up and down, favouring their latest two releases over performing a greatest hits set. Everything pre-Puzzle was neglected, there was no 57, no Justboy, no Glitter & Trauma, no Jaggy Snake, all songs that would’ve went down a treat to the Download Punters. I honestly believe that Biffy should’ve taken a leaf out of Muse’s book in 2015. When faced with the animosity of the Download Crowd, Matt Bellamy and co decided to whip out some of their heaviest material, neglected their more “radio friendly” outings, and went down in folklore as one of the finest underdog stories in Donington history. Biffy however played it safe, stuck to a setlist and stage production they had only marginally tweaked from last years festival circuit, and as much as I hate to say it, phoned it in.
That’s not to say it wasn’t all bad, however. Their performance of Cop Syrup was absolutely impeccable and was real stadium show worthy stuff, the violins, the firework serenade and the slow crescendo building up to the climax that was “Many of Horror” or, if you’re Simon Cowell, “When We Collide”. The Captain was also a pleasant surprise returning it to their set after neglecting it for a few years. Their new stuff also sounded absolutely fantastic and I sincerely hope there are some mainstays in there, especially Space and North of No South. Today as mentioned was not a home fixture, it was a scrappy 2-1 away win against a lower league team in an FA Cup Replay – they provided just enough for the sceptics to go from “meh” to “hmm” as opposed to completely winning them over as I hoped they would. I think their ship may have sailed away from the sea of people at Donington, and personally can’t see them returning, atleast not for a good while, but as I said, they’re Biffy Fuckin Clyro. Like they care.