Download
2006
Friday
June 9
Download is a festival of extremes and driving
(or crawling may be a better description) through the Leicestershire
countryside leading to the site the temperature is so extremely
hot that this could be mistaken for the equator rather than the
East Midlands. Three days in this heat looks set to be an endurance
test and this being a ‘metal’ festival I’m not
exactly expecting a chilled-out atmosphere, but never mind - bring
on the RAWK!
I think I’ve
stepped into some weird alternate universe, what in buggery is
hip-hop, light entertainer Will Smith doing on the main stage
giving the ‘horns’ to a baying crowd of metal-heads?
It dawns on me that I am stood watching Jada Koren Pinkett Smith’s
(that’s Will’s wife, that is) rap-metal band Wicked
Wisdom. Aside from the novelty, they’re not bad,
blending heavy-as-lead metal riffs and pounding hip-hop rhythms
to full effect. But for all their efforts they don’t stand
out above any other band of similar ilk. Nonetheless that there
Jada woman puts on a convincing show and can’t half holler.
I fall asleep
for a bit but am woken by Strapping Young Lad
– front-man Devin Townsend is a flaming nut-job and looks
a bit more saggy and weathered since I saw him fiddling guitar
strings in the Wildhearts. This is demented apocalyptic metal
for those people looking for a bit of sleazy intensity in their
rock n roll. The fat bloke next to me, shouting ‘fuck yeah’
every two seconds whilst head-banging like a nodding-dog seems
to be enjoying it. To start off with I admire his enthusiasm but
after ten annoyingly repetitive minutes I hope to god he passes
out from heat exhaustion so I can watch the band.
Crazy happenings
seem to be the order of the day and Animal Alpha
on the Myspace stage seem like an interesting proposition. Vocalist
Agnete looks like one of those Renaissance-style robot-things
from a recent episode of Doctor Who – this interests me,
but take the unashamed ‘glam’ out of the equation
and all you’re left with is a bland take of soft-metal.
Average is the word that pings into my brain, so I leave, only
to be hit by the full on aural assault of Soulfly.
It is easy
to see why Max Cavalera has been at the fore-front of metal for
a good 15-years, as he commands the main-stage like a heavy-metal
general and he and Soulfly wage war on the ear-drums of those
assembled with their trade-mark tribal rhythms and down-tuned
riffs. This is serious stuff, I need a little fun……….
But first
I take a walk back to the ‘press area’ for a drink
and to chill-out a little. I’m actually greeted by Ginger
of Wildhearts fame giving a press conference about his new band.
I stand listening to the usual schtick about performances and
how great Download is and watch several TV ‘journalists’
suck up so hard they might just inhale the guy. Half way through
some mentalists with ‘modified bodies’ start to ‘injure’
themselves. First one guy hammers nails into his mates head and
then as if to return the favour (I guess they love to share) the
‘head-nailed’ guy gets a power-drill and drills a
circuit-board into his friend’s breast-plate. They seem
to think the shock of this might be lessened by a little blue
light flashing on and off. I actually think it’s all kind
of funny, if you’re going to attention-seek you might as
well go the whole way.
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My
god! Funk-rock trailblazers Fishbone are
awesome, in the ten minutes leading to them taking the stage
a massive ball of energy has been building and with the
opening bar of the opening tune explodes into one funking
amazing live experience.
“The
name of this band is Fishbone. We’re from Lost Assholes,
USA,” states clown-prince, front-man Angelo Moore.
The guy’s funny and he makes me smile, in a completely
different way to the guitarist/trumpet-player dressed in
a leather waist-coat and gimp-mask. I dance a lot to their
fusion of heavy-rock, ska, funk, punk and ragga which makes
me sweat a lot – I hate to regret having fun but I
feel a little faint and have learnt my lesson about dancing
in thermo-nuclear heat.
“You like that don’t you?” quips Angelo
– yes I do.
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Still on a
high from the Fishbone fun, it is a great pleasure to see Deftones
again. The band were always lumped in with the whole ‘nu-metal’
thing, but they were always better than that and always ahead
of the game. In fact they were playing by completely different
rules.
The magnificence of their atmospheric, space-metal is fully apparent
throughout their main stage performance with front-man Chino Moreno’s
fractured, brutal and pain-filled vocals surging above the noise.
It begs the question why can’t more bands make such organic,
powerful and emotive rock – maybe because a lot of other
bands are crap.
Ending
the day, Tool aren’t one of them.
They show why so many fans would literally take a bullet
for them. Their physical performance is dull, they barely
move and front-man Maynard James Keenan looks like he doesn’t
want to be here – he even calls the crowd ‘hippies’.
I don’t think, by the looks on some peoples faces
at least, that metal-heads like that.
What Tool do have in their favour is some of the most prolific
and inspirational sounds ever heard from the rock genre
– each and every track from their 16-year history
is a blend of subtle prog-rock expansiveness and full on
neuron-bashing metal tinged with a spiralling freeform ambition.
Coupled with the mental psychedelic, stop-frame visuals
this is a set Download is truly lucky to have and it baffles
me why this is the bands first UK festival headline appearance.
The music speaks for itself and Tool don’t need to
put on a grand stage-show to rock the place, this is simply
top of the league metal experimentation to end the first
day of Download.
by Vashti
Bunyton
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