Festival: Download, Donington Park

Artists: Rage Against The Machine, Skin, Y&T, Megadeth, Rock Sugar, Five Finger Death Punch, Reckless Love, Holy Grail, Hellyeah  

Date:  12 June 2010 

We decide to have a little bit of a lie in on the Saturday and head in to the arena as super-group Hellyeah are taking to the stage. Fronted by Mudvayne singer Chad Gray and featuring ex-Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul, their 2007 debut album didn’t quite live up to expectations but they do play well and they certainly have the crowd on their side though this may be more due to the presence of Vinnie Paul behind the kit than the music itself. The new songs do sound pretty good however and hint at an improvement upon their debut and there’s no denying that ‘Alcohaulin Ass’ is a great song for a sunny festival afternoon. 

Setlist: 1.Hellyeah, 2.Goddamn, 3.Cowboy Way, 4.You Wouldn’t Know, 5.Stampede, 6.Alcohaulin’ Ass.

Next up over on the 3rd stage are trad-metallers Holy Grail. A perfect throwback to the raw 80’s thrash of bands like Razor and Exciter, the band are barely out of their teens but play their set like seasoned pros. With song titles like ‘Fight to Kill’ and ‘Call of Valhalla’, they are definitely a band to check out for those who like their metal ‘true’ and balk at suggestions that Manowar are cheesy and over the top.

It appears that Flyleaf are running late so things have been swapped around a little and consequently, we’ve ended up missing half of Atreyu’s set so we decide to grab a bite to eat and head back into the tent to catch retro-rockers Reckless Love. The band hail from Finland and given their obvious, unashamed love of the 80’s, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you’re watching a tribute to Hanoi Rocks and Mötley Crüe but if you look beyond the image then you find that the band do have some very good and catchy songs. You could argue that they’re basically Steel Panther without the jokes but while the tunes are firmly rooted in the sex, drugs and rock n roll ethos of the Sunset Strip, there’s no denying that Reckless Love are very much their own band and with the right promotion, they could one day be the Mötley Crüe for this generation.


Back over on the main stage, it’s time for Five Finger Death Punch. The band have certainly been warmly embraced from the word go over here in the UK and the band are certainly on an upward trajectory following a solid second album in last year’s War is the Answer which makes it all the more disappointing that their set ends so prematurely on such a negative note. After several well-performed crowd-pleasers, including a surprisingly good cover of ‘Bad Company’, singer Ivan Moody decides to invite a few dozen of his new-found friends up on stage during ‘Dying Breed’ to share in the rapture which obviously displeases the security so much that they are forced to cut their set short and after a particularly fearsome version of ‘The Bleeding’ they reluctantly leave. 

You could argue that the security over-reacted given that nobody looked like causing any trouble whatsoever and that they were just pissed off because it’s the first time in two days they’ve actually had to do much beyond standing there and chewing gum like a line of brightly-coloured cows, or you could argue that the band should have known better and expected such a reaction. While the latter is a fair point, you’re left to wonder about the irony of showing a selection of previous festival highlights on the big screens which included footage of Iggy Pop doing the same thing in 2004 without any repercussions whatsoever. 

Setlist: 1.Burn it Down, 2.Salvation, 3.Hard to See, 4.No One Gets Left Behind, 5.Bad Company, 6.The Way of the Fist, 7.Never Enough, 8.Dying Breed, 9.The Bleeding.

Once again we head back to the 3rd stage to catch one of the most curiously anticipated sets of the weekend by the world’s most original covers band, Rock Sugar. Thanks to the far-reaching power of the internet, word has seemingly spread pretty quickly about these guys and the tent is rammed to bursting, much like Steel Panther was last year – seriously, if you haven’t heard these guys yet then you are missing out. In the unlikely event that you’ve not heard about these guys yet, they are a band from L.A. (where else?) who apparently got stranded on a desert island with the pop collection of a 13 year-old girl (check the website, I’m honestly not making this up!) that take two, sometimes three, songs and cleverly mash them together to create a fantastic concoction of over the top pop-rock which only the most depressed of emos would fail to grin and dance like a complete loon to. 

We get ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ by Journey mixed with ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica, ‘Voices Carry’ by ‘til Tuesday mashed with ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ by Guns N Roses, ‘Straight Up’ by Paula Abdul with ‘Detroit Rock City’ by Kiss, ‘Jessie’s Girl’ by Rick Springfield together with ‘Crazy Train’ by Ozzy and the whole thing finishes with a glorious mix of Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ and Mötley Crüe’s ‘Kickstart My Heart’. Truly the most fun you can have all weekend with your pants on and over far too quickly. Second stage and longer than half an hour next year please Download!

Next up on the mainstage is Megadeth. Dave Mustaine and co. have unfortunately suffered from a less-than-perfect sound at Download on the past two occasions and today is no different but there’s something else going on that at first I can’t quite put my finger on and then I remembered noticing a similar thing when I caught them on their 2008 tour – sometimes Dave Mustaine does not sing loud enough. 

For some reason, he often hunches into himself and fails to really project his voice like he should. Not that he’s ever been Bruce Dickinson or anything but come on Dave, put a bit of oomph behind your vocals! This point aside, Megadeth put on a very good show and it’s great to see Dave Ellefson back in the band where he truly belongs. 

Although time restrictions prevent them from playing Rust in Peace in its entirety, the set is heavily weighted towards the album that is currently celebrating its twentieth anniversary and we get no fewer than six of the nine songs including such rarely heard gems as ‘Five Magics’ and ‘Poison was the Cure’ which have lost none of their impact over the last two decades and sit perfectly alongside the classics and new songs from last year’s critically acclaimed Endgame album. As per usual, Mustaine shuns banter with the crowd in favour of playing more songs breaking only to thank the audience for being awesome and it seems the feeling is more than mutual. 

Setlist: 1.Dialetic Chaos, 2.Wake up dead, 3.Headcrusher, 4.In my Darkest Hour, 5.Holy Wars...The Punishment Due, 6.Hangar 18, 7.Five Magics, 8.Poison was the Cure, 9.Tornado of Souls, 10.Rust In Peace...Polaris, 11.Trust, 12.Sweating Bullets, 13.Symphony of Destruction, 14.Peace Sells / Holy Wars...The Punishment Due (Reprise).

The 3rd stage today is quickly turning into its own mini festival and we head in to check out 80’s rockers Y & T, back at Donington after a 26-year break. And if you’ve never heard of these guys and are in any doubt of how big they were back in the 80’s then consider this – at the Monsters of Rock festival in 1984 they played above Mötley Crüe and German metal legends Accept. After dropping off the radar somewhat in the 90’s, the band have been enjoying a bit of resurgence in the last several years and have a pretty huge crowd awaiting them and although they only get a short 40 minute set, classics like ‘Mean Streak’ and ‘Forever’ together with new songs like ‘Shine On’ win over plenty of new fans and we eagerly await their new album and upcoming headline tour in October.

Keeping it in the tent, next up are a band rejuvenated by their performance at Download last year, 90’s brit-rockers Skin. And if you thought the sound was loud in here before, Skin crank the volume up past 11 and nearly blow the roof off! Their riff-heavy rock goes down well and hopefully this run of good fortune will convince the band to fully reform and release a new album soon.

One of the most requested bands on the Download message-boards in the last couple of years has been Rage Against The Machine and this year Andy Copping has really come up with the goods and delivered one of the best live bands of the last twenty years. Anticipation is at fever pitch and when the band open with ‘Testify’ the crowd goes absolutely insane and mosh pits break out all over the place. News breaks afterwards that the only injuries sustained were a dislocated shoulder and a broken ankle and it’s amazing that nobody was more seriously hurt, the show having to be stopped twice due to crowd safety worries. 

In stark contrast to the grandiose spectacle of the AC/DC show last night, Rage perform without pyrotechnics or stage props and instead go for a more stripped down approach of just band members, instruments and a simple backdrop. For Rage, it’s all about the music and what follows is the soundtrack to many people in the crowd’s youth and some of the greatest protest-rock songs ever written. For many here this is their Woodstock or their Clash in Trafalgar Square and there is a very real feeling that this show could turn out to be just as historic. While this point is debatable, the band put one hell of a show and the energy between band and audience is electric. The argument about the contradiction of such an anti-capitalist band headlining such a money-making festival (where a burger will set you back at least £6) could ‘rage’ (see what I did there?) all day long but in reality the band are far too big to play smaller shows and to many, this does not devalue the band’s message one bit. 

In between songs we don’t get as many political speeches as one would possibly expect (Zack does manage one) but of course the set would not be complete without an acknowledgement of ‘that Facebook campaign’ of last Christmas and an enormous applause rings out when Zack dedicates ‘Know Your Enemy’ to Simon Cowell. Once the crowd settles down the band don’t take the foot off the gas for a moment and rip through a greatest hits set as well as a storming cover of The Clash’s ‘White Riot’ and of course ‘Killing in the Name’ sends everybody a whole new scale of apeshit. Hopefully this machine will rage for a long time to come and we will see a new album at some point – fingers crossed! 

Setlist: 1.Testify, 2.Bombtrack, 3.People of the Sun, 4.Know Your Enemy, 5.Bulls On Parade, 6.Township Rebellion, 7.White Riot (Clash cover), 8.Bullet in the Head, 9.Calm like a Bomb, 10.Guerilla Radio, 11.Sleep now in the Fire, 12.Wake Up. Encore: 13.Freedom, 14.Killing in the Name.

Review and photos by: Adam Grindrod.

 

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