Download Festival 2012 Review

Download festival review 2012

The 10^th year of a festival to take place in Donnington under the name of Download Festival. Download organizers and fans have made the festival one of the most talked about Rock and Metal Festival in the world over these 10 years. Rock and Metal fans from all over the world travel to Donnington each year, and its no wonder why when festival promoter Andy Coping keeps on bringing amazing line-ups! This years festival sor mega headliners The Prodigy, Metallica, and Black Sabbath.

The prodigy opened with Worlds on Fire. They finished with classic Smack My Bitch Up before coming back with an encore that included Take Me to the Hospital, AWOL, and Their Law. They provided a stunning light show with lasers, and crazy videos.

Metallica opened with their very own epic take on The Ecstasy of Gold by Ennion Morricone, providing an exciting dramatic start. They then kicked off with Hit the Lights. After Master of Puppets, the four horsemen, for whom the bell tolls, and hell and back – Metallica played the whole black album from finish to start. They started with the struggle within and ended with Enter Sandman, playing the whole album exactly backwards in track listing. There was only one encore for Metallica this time, as they came back to play Battery, One, and finishing with Seek & Destroy.

During a break in Enter Sandman! Front man James Hetfield got the crowd to repeat – “Metallica, Metallica, were like Family, it’s a family, its Metallica family”

Fans in the crowd were holding up signs saying ‘Fu**IN PROUD TO BELONG TO THE METALLICA FAMILY’.

Saxon is a band that has been around for years! But they are still rocking. “We played the very first castle Donnington in 1980, we played a tent somewhere over there” Said front man Biff Byford. On top of playing Download in front of thousands of fans, they are just about to set off on a world tour. This could be their last world tour. Biff said to the Download crowd ‘this could be our last time on this stage’. The excitement seemed to get to him, when he found some wood with wheels on the bottom (probably for moving kit) and decided to surf across the stage on it.

Some would call them a comedy act, some would call them a totally rockin’ band stuck in the 80s! Steel Panther confused some people, but made everyone laugh. From the Foxiest guitar player Lexxi Foxx asking ‘who likes the zoo’ to Lead singer Michal Star explicitly telling the audience what he would do to some of the girls in the audience. This is a band that you can’t help but laugh at. They opened their set with a song off the new album ‘Balls Out’ called ‘Supersonic Sex Machine’.  They played some of the classics from their previous album Death to all but metal such as Asian Hooker, Community Property, Eyes of a panther, and party all day.  Its great to see thousands of rock and metal fans sing the line ‘my heart belong to you, but my Cock is community property’.

They ended with their most well know song ‘Death to all but metal’ with special guest Corey Taylor (lead Singer, Slipknot) who actually provided vocals on the album.

Cancer Bats couldn’t play their set due to the late opening of the area on the Saturday morning. Billy Talent were however nice enough to let them play 1 song during their set they chose Hail Destroyer. The Bats got re-scheduled to play the Red Bull Bedroom Jam stage after The Gallows. Despite The Prodigy playing on the main stage at the time, Caner Bats pulled in a good crowd. They opened their set with their version of Beastie Boys song ‘Sabotage’.  The excitement had built up with the hardcore fans, who were disappointed to miss there set earlier on that day. They may have played a small tent but that didn’t stop the circle pits!

Ones to look out for in 2012 are Golden Tanks. Named after a Cancer Bats track, you can see where they get their inspiration. They won the ‘wild card’ in this years Red Bull Bedroom Jam competition, and we can see why the judges chose them. The punk rock-sounding band are currently on a European tour, catch them back in the UK at Heavy Fest 2012.

In a recent interview with NME festival promoter Andy Coping said he has already booked one of the headliners for Download Festival 2013.  RAM certainly looks forward to hearing the predictions.

You can pre-buy Download 2012 tickets now at http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/