Melbourne outfit Thornhill are the epitome of being cool without trying, blending alternative metal with a nu-metalcore edge. Frontman Jacob Charlton’s entrance alone summed up that genre-bending confidence, swaggering out at 11am in a huge fur-hooded jacket and sunglasses like he’d wandered in from a much later timeslot. Opening with ‘DIESEL’, the set drew exclusively from last year’s BODIES, the most prominent example of the swirling atmosphere wrapped around sharp, heavy riffs that Thornhill are known for. It was a shame for the hardcore faithful hoping for older cuts, but the crowd at the Apex stage clearly knew every word regardless. Before ‘Obsession’, Jacob spotted a fan sign reading “Horny for Thorny,” firing back without missing a beat that they’d better be. The crowd split neatly in two: devoted singalong followers up front, and those itching to throw down further back. This was very much a lovely, unexpectedly weighty way to kick off a day at Download.
Snot‘s Download debut very nearly didn’t happen at all. Frontman Andy Knapp had picked up a significant leg injury during a stage dive gone wrong at a Chester show just the night before, and yet he led the band through their first-ever Download appearance regardless. The band itself only exists in this form because of tragedy, disbanding back in 1998 after founding vocalist Lynn Strait died. Knapp paid tribute to him throughout by wearing a cap embroidered with ‘LYNN’. Despite the injury, the set never dipped in energy, all funky, groove-laden nu-metal that stayed relentless from start to finish. They opened with the self-titled ‘Snot’ and closed on ‘Absent’, a track pulled from Strait Up, the posthumous 2000 tribute album built around some of the final vocals Strait ever recorded. Ending the set there felt like equal parts tribute and proof that the band’s legacy is very much still alive.
There’s something touching about watching Black Veil Brides on the Apex stage almost two decades into their career, still being met with a sea of fans in Andy Biersack’s iconic makeup. Their sound has always been a glammed-up, gothic-tinged take on metalcore, drawing as much from Kiss and Mötley Crüe as anything heavier, and that theatrical streak was on full display here. They opened with ‘Knives and Pens’ before sliding into ‘Bleeders’ from their new record Vindicate, blending old and new without missing a beat. The alternative community mantra of ‘It’s Not a Phase’ was closer to prophecy than lyric at this point, especially when the whole crowd belted every word of closer ‘In the End’ back at the band. Some things really do stay eternal. See our interview with the band here.
Hailing from Marseille, Landmvrks brought exactly the no-frills, high-energy, modern metalcore that Download thrives on. Flanked by huge statue props, their set-up gave the Apex stage a surprisingly dramatic backdrop for a band whose sound is built more on relentless energy than spectacle. Chaotic in the best way, with good vibes running through the whole crowd, the pits reacted accordingly. They closed with ‘Self-Made Black Hole’, a track that went viral on TikTok years after its original release, yet somehow remains an absolute banger regardless of how you first found it. Frontman Florent Salfati signed off with a “Merci Beaucoup, Download,” his voice audibly cracking from half an hour of screaming. Even running on fumes, that’s a band giving us absolutely everything they’ve got.
A spontaneous discovery in the merch queue, Conjurer‘s doom-tinged post-metal set bled out into the open air before we’d even decided to go in. The Midlands four-piece have spent a decade refining a crawling, sludgy sound that’s as happy being crushingly heavy as it is unexpectedly tender, and that came through in full from outside the Dogtooth stage. Before ‘Let Us Live’, guitarist and co-vocalist Dani Nightingale spoke directly to the trans community in the crowd, declaring “We have always existed”. Someone nearby waved a non-binary flag throughout, a small, genuinely moving moment amid all the heaviness. Discoveries like this are exactly what Download should be about: wandering into a tent on a whim and walking out a fan.
After years of being dubbed Download’s most cursed band (from a set that ended early in 2024 because of the weather), Babymetal finally got the sunshine they deserved. The joy radiating off the stage made clear just how much that mattered. They tore straight into the chaos of ‘BABYMETAL DEATH’ as the screens behind them flickered through their usual theatrical visuals, the whole crowd throwing the signature kitsune hand sign right back at them within seconds. Su-Metal, Moametal and Momometal each bring something completely different to the stage, and the chemistry between them has never felt more alive than it did here. “Show me big circle!” Su-Metal demanded at one point, and the pit duly obliged, somehow finding room for a proper circle pit despite how packed the crowd was. Whatever your opinion on the band going in, it’s difficult to leave a set like this without grinning. Even the most hardened metalheads in attendance couldn’t deny it: Babymetal remain a phenomenal addition to this bill.
Having always been a pop-punk kid at heart, ducking into the Avalanche tent for As It Is felt like the perfect breather from a day of blastbeats and breakdowns. Marking the band’s first Download appearance since 2017, it was a healthy dose of light-hearted, wholesome fun. That’s not to say it was all soft edges, though. They still talked the crowd into a circle pit for heavier cuts like ‘The Wounded World’, a reminder that the band have leaned increasingly into a punchier, more metallic side of pop-punk. Frontman Patty Walters himself was a delight to watch, goofing around and flipping his mic on its cord between lyrics, somehow keeping just as much energy as the crowd bouncing back at him. They closed with ‘Dial Tones’, a song Patty introduced as the reason the band exists at all, and the whole tent belted every word straight back. As It Is created a genuine little hub of pop-punk community tucked inside an otherwise heavy festival.
Coming down the hill, the unmistakable riff of ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ rang out across the site, Axl Rose’s voice doing its best to lure the whole field toward the Apex stage. We took a sharp left instead, fighting through the crowd to grab a spot right up front for modern metalcore band Architects on the Opus stage. The space rewarded the effort by being absolutely rammed, with everybody properly shoulder to shoulder, backs pressed to fronts, and barely any room to breathe. It was obvious from the crush alone how many people considered Architects their real headliner of the night, Guns N’ Roses be damned.
None of that mattered the second ‘Elegy’ kicked off, the opening track from last year’s The Sky, The Earth & All Between, and the whole crowd went off instantly. This current line-up (now a four-piece following long-time guitarist Josh Middleton’s departure) sounded sharper and more electric than ever, helped along by Jordan Fish’s fingerprints all over the production. ‘Doomsday’ followed straight after ‘Whiplash’, and the crowd ate it up with a fervent hunger. As the sun dipped low, there was something almost funny about glancing sideways at the sea of people calmly sat watching Guns N’ Roses while our own patch of field tore itself apart in the pit.
That’s when things started to unravel. ‘Black Hole’ had to be stopped multiple times, the band’s usual giant wall of death falling completely flat at the breakdown, and frontman Sam Carter eventually marched off stage altogether after being given conflicting instructions through security. This chaos only deepened when they returned for ‘Impermanence’, where crowdsurfers got stuck hanging awkwardly mid-air after Sam had specifically asked for them. The music cut out again, and the band stormed off a second time. Amidst the silence, the crowd filled the gap in the set by chanting “F*** Guns N’ Roses!” at the top of their lungs while Axl crooned away in the distance, the irony lost on absolutely nobody.
When Sam eventually reappeared, he was clearly in a much better headspace. The frontman mock-scolded the crowd about how we’d “all been very naughty”, according to security. Amongst the good-natured humour, he also reassured us that he was the one driving the show and he wasn’t about to let anyone get hurt (despite announcing that he had only passed his actual driving test the month before). Later, he jokingly pleaded with the crowd by asking if anyone remembered push moshing, insisting that there was nothing wrong with it. The pit responded with exactly the malicious compliance you’d expect from a field of riled-up metalheads: moshing in slow motion, breaking into the Macarena and skipping around gleefully through ‘Deep Fake’ and ‘Curse’.
Sam took a moment ahead of ‘Broken Mirror’ to speak candidly about his own struggles with alcoholism, telling the crowd that anyone going through something similar should remember there’s always hope. It landed as a sweet sentiment from someone who’d been visibly furious not long before, feeling very much in keeping with a band who’ve spent the better part of a decade turning real pain into something cathartic since losing founding guitarist Tom Searle in 2016.
Spirits were soaring again by the time Landmvrks‘ Florent Salfati came out for ‘Brain Dead’, the earlier chaos already starting to feel like a distant memory. They played ‘A Match Made In Heaven’ to mark a decade since All Our Gods Have Abandoned Us, delighting the diehards down front. The band closed things out with the anthemic ‘Seeing Red’ and ‘Animals’, the latter still one of the most iconic modern metalcore tracks going, sending the whole tent home buzzing despite the stop-start chaos that came before it.
For everything that went wrong, the issues throughout almost proved the point on their own: Architects belonged on the main stage, not tucked onto Opus. A band capable of generating that much energy, that much frustration, and that much joy within a single hour deserves a stage built to handle it. Architects are nothing short of metalcore royalty at this point.
Full disclosure: we only really caught the tail end of Guns N’ Roses, ditching the Apex stage early to catch The All-American Rejects‘ acoustic set and grab a spot up front for Lucas Woodland’s DJ set. But even from the fringes, walking away with ‘Paradise City’ ringing out across the whole site, it was hard not to feel something. Twenty years on from their infamously chaotic first Download headline slot, this felt like a proper reunion. The band worked through a sprawling, three-hour set stacked with the singalong staples that make a field of tens of thousands feel like one room. Whatever you make of Guns N’ Roses in 2026, there’s something undeniably special about hearing their songs drift across a festival site as you trudge back toward camp. We didn’t get the full picture, and we’ll happily admit that, but the bit we caught was more than enough to understand why this one mattered to so many people.
