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Event: Sonisphere Festival Artists: Iron Maiden, Pendulum, Alice In Chains, Slayer, The Union, Rise To Remain, Karnivool Date:
1st August 2010
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day started off on the main stage where KARNIVOOL had been
inexplicably bumped up into the running order, the Aussie band playing a
solid but unspectacular set which almost had me snoozing. Nothing
really inspiring 'til the last track which actually contained a riff of
some sort rather than the Incubus-lite tunes which preceded it. From there we had a short break before RISE TO REMAIN's 1pm set. In the packed Bohemia tent, Austin Dickinson's young charges thundered through a ferocious set which ended with the circle pit to end all circle pits, the highlight of which was a bloke running round the edge with his very young son on his shoulders loving every minute! Slightly dangerous but also very funny to watch! Definitely a band to watch out for in the future and probably main stage contenders for next year! Later on in the Bohemia tent we saw one of the sets of the festival from THE UNION, a fairly new project fronted by ex-Winterville vocalist/guitarist Pete Shoulder and also starring ex-Thunder guitarist Luke Morley. The band kicked off with the excellent 'Step Up To The Plate', a brilliant blues rocker from their forthcoming debut album, that put a smile on everyone's face in the tent. Shoulder is an excellent vocalist and with rumours that Iron Maiden legend Steve Harris was watching from the side of the stage, the band seemed to gain confidence and blazed through some of their own material such as 'Holy Roller' as well as the Creedence Clearwater Revival classic 'Proud Mary'. On performances like this the band are definitely worth checking out again. A vast change of pace next, where we hot-footed it across to the main stage again for SLAYER to rip our faces off with a blistering set which included the classics 'Angel of Death', 'Raining Blood', 'War Ensemble' and 'Dead Skin Mask'. A seemingly morose Tom Araya thanked the crowd as the band concluded their set 5 minutes early. However many many metalheads left happy as Slayer tore Knebworth a new one as was expected. We managed to catch part of a decent ALICE IN CHAINS set although I couldn't really comment any more on that other than that the new line-up seems to be working incredibly well, and Jerry Cantrell's vocal and guitar harmonies were spot-on as always. They were followed by PENDULUM who were, quite frankly, awful, but to be fair they worked the crowd well and a minor highlight was the introduction of In Flames vocalist Anders Friden for a track which had more of a metal influence than any other of their drum n bass workouts. And so it was left to IRON MAIDEN to close the festival. After the intro tape of Mars from the Planets Suite ended (a more spine-tingling tune you will never hear) the band kicked straight into 'The Wicker Man'. It was well documented that Maiden would be playing material from over the last 10 years on this tour, and they stood true to their word by launching into a monstrous version of 'Ghost of The Navigator', before going back in time to revisit 'Wrathchild', and zipping right back up to the present day and new single 'El Dorado', which sounded amazing. By this point Bruce Dickinson had the 55,000 strong crowd in the palm of his hand, and through modern classics 'Dance of Death' and a couple of cuts from the last album, most notably a stirring rendition of 'The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg', the band never let up and despite their advancing years never look like giving up. 'Blood Brothers' was poignantly dedicated to Dio, who, we were reminded by Bruce, was penciled in to play this festival originally with Heaven & Hell.
Review by: Dan Armstrong |
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