Celebrating its twentieth anniversary, Download 2023 is a mammoth four-day event, bringing together a compelling mix of well-worn headliners and fast-rising stars. With the event sold out well in advance, it’s the largest Download yet, and the site has expanded once again, providing more space, more bars, more food, and a better arena layout that ensures much better access to the stages.
Welcome Home
Things get off to a bumpy start for some. With the airport demanding clear access for its passengers, parking remains troublesome, and substantial queues mar the Wednesday night with reports of fans waiting many hours before gaining entry. It’s an unfortunate set of circumstances – the result of 100,000 people descending upon a single point – and not helped by the small, single-lane roads that surround the site, but most of these problems have been overcome by Thursday morning, and we find our way into the carpark and on to the site with minimal fuss. Once parked, we make our way through the already-busy village to our campsite. Despite being larger in scope, everything feels better signposted this year, and helpful stewards dot the path as well, ensuring we find our way with ease. It’s good to shrug off a pack that seems to increase in weight with every step and, having set up our tent, it’s time to head to the arena to get this party started!
Download 2023
The first thing we notice is how much bigger the arena feels. Actually, it’s rather the case that the layout has been substantially tweaked to allow much more room. For a start, all the clothes stalls have sensibly been moved to the village, meaning that the entire central area is now ringed only by food outlets, with nothing blocking the view of the main stage. The stage itself is augmented by huge video towers, radiating far back into the crowd, allowing both for a better view and better sound. The viewing platform has also moved away from the middle, and it now has a dedicated path leading to it, which seems a huge improvement, although we have no direct experience. Elsewhere, the Avalanche tent is well-positioned to ensure it’s not impacted by sound from the main stage; the second stage now has a much nicer bar area; and the Dogtooth stage has, at long last, almost doubled in size, ensuring that fans no longer have to crowd at the tent flaps to catch sight of a popular act.
The choice of food, meanwhile, is also much improved, with a great range of options – a far cry from the over-priced burgers of the early years. There are supply issues with water at the bars, which run out of the brilliantly named Liquid Death early on, but water points are dotted throughout the site and, despite some comments, only the main stage water trough seems to regularly experience a significant queue. Toilets are in plentiful supply and are maintained as well as can be expected but, a note for future years, it is better for the gents to have urinals on one side and cubicles on the other. This year, the cubicles were arranged around the urinals, forcing the queues to merge, leading some to get confused and urinate against the fence. Seriously, no one needs to walk through a pee quagmire and, although this layout probably looked good on paper, it doesn’t work so well in practice. Still, the stewards do a good job of bringing in woodchip to soak up the mulch and, when things get too rough, directing people to a different entrance, and essentials like toilet paper are kept topped up. Most importantly, despite the fact that Download is packed this year, everyone seems to be in a great mood, queues are well managed, and the sound is typically excellent.
In other words, damn! It’s good to be home.
Thursday
Having grabbed a cider, and eager to kick off our festival experience, we head to the second stage for The Bronx. The perfect band for a sun-kissed afternoon, The Bronx waste no time in whipping a sizeable crowd into a frenzy. This is punk rock as it’s meant to be played, straight from the heart, and frontman Matt Caughthran comes across as one of the most down-to-earth masters of ceremonies out there. Not afraid to push the crowd to ever greater feats of exertion, you get the sense that he’s not asking for anything he wouldn’t give himself, as he ably demonstrates by wondering into the heart of the swirling mosh pit during a monstrous Knifeman. Celebrating twenty years as a band, The Bronx give they’re all, with highlights including a particularly bruising Shitty Future and a coruscating Heart Attack America. One hell of a way to start the festival, The Bronx set an incredibly high bar for Thursday’s acts, if not Download as a whole.
Over on the Avalanche stage, a reunited Fearless vampire killers whip up a similar storm with their varied sound leaning very much towards the pop-punk end of the spectrum. The bass-led churn of Brain Dead stands out, and the packed crowd bounce enthusiastically along, but it lacks the sheer panache of The Bronx’s stellar performance, and we decide to go off in search of something heavier.
Over on the Apex stage, Jinjer make an emotional return, bringing their fearsomely heavy, melodic metal to a huge crowd. The band are tight and proficient as they lead the audience through a short set that leans heavily on 2021’s Wallflower. Singer Tetiana Shmailyuk is in her element, switching deftly between death growl and lush clean tones, a juxtaposition best demonstrated on the charged closing number As I boil Ice. With the conflict in the Ukraine continuing to rage, this was always going to be a special show for a band surely torn between the desire to entertain and the need to keep the unfolding humanitarian crisis productively in the public eye. It’s a balancing act these musicians manage well, and it adds greater resonance to their appearance here today.
It’s back to the Opus stage to catch the reformed Hundred Reasons, who are no strangers to Donnington Park. Unfortunately, the band are somewhat trapped between their impressive, yet understated, new album (this year’s Glorious Sunset), a varied back catalogue, and the chart-hogging behemoth that was Ideas Above Our Station. Like all reformed acts, Hundred Reasons clearly want to progress as artists, but it’s inescapable that a large portion of the crowd want to hear material from the band’s stellar debut and the result is an uneasy compromise. It doesn’t help that Hundred Reasons open with the goth-infused title track of their new album, a fine song on record, but not a strong set opener, and it takes a back-to-back run through of I’ll Find You and Answers to really get things moving. A better ordered set would certainly have helped, but it’s nice to see Hundred Reasons back at Donnington after so long away.
With the sun beating down, it’s time to head to the nicely expanded Dogtooth stage for the atmospheric sounds of A.A Williams. Offering a neat contrast to the bouncy punk and metal found elsewhere today the band draw on the likes of Lush, Katatonia and the late, lamented Linoleum with their eerie, ambient, shoe-gaze-infused-post-rock, and the tent is packed with fans eager to witness their hypnotic, doomy sound. With a varied set, the bravest moment is surely a gorgeous Control, while Golden has a Mogwai vibe to it that seeks to hypnotise the crowd, and the band’s set is over far too soon. An understated highlight of the festival, A.A. Williams are well worth seeking out.
In stark contrast, the glossy hard rock of Halestorm, while incredibly popular with the main stage crowd, simply feels too commercial. While it’s hard to argue that the likes of Freak Like Me are tailor-made for an arena-sized festival crowd, it often feels more like a pastiche of what has gone before, and it’s just not for us. The pit is huge, though, so clearly, we’re a minority view.
For those looking for something artier, Puscifer bring their random-o-rock to the Opus Stage. We arrive to find the house PA playing awful pop music (Reach For The Stars is belting out as we wander over), and it’s tempting to suspect the intervention of the ever-contrary Maynard. Certainly, humour is to the fore, with the show seemingly a live re-enactment of Men in Black, but there’s nothing funny about the band’s excellent musicianship, and so fans are treated to an unusual, highly silly set, packed full of great songs.
It starts with ominously heavy bass and a somewhat random 3-minute countdown, before Maynard and Carina Round take to the stage sporting ridiculous wigs and a highly unusual, body-mounted mic-stand gadget. From there, we get the robo-rock-via-talking-heads of Fake Affront, and a brilliantly reworked Mama Sed, the latter maintaining its heartfelt charm, despite a darker, more industrial approach than on record. Meanwhile, despite the excellent music, aliens take the stage in various guises, while Maynard channels Johnny-Depp-circa-Charlie-and-the-Chocolate-Factory. A perfect example of how you can make amazing music without necessarily taking the stage presentation too seriously, Puscifer’s set is the highlight of the day.
For the more serious-minded, however, there’s always the excellent hard rock of Alter Bridge, who take to the main stage sounding super-excited to be back. Always a powerful live act, Alter Bridge mean business and Myles is on typically good form, belting out the vocals with passion and power. With the set list including Addicted to Pain and Cry Of Achilles, Alter Bridge are still working their way up to headliner status, and you can’t help but feel that, on this showing, they’re well on their way.
Back over on the Opus stage, and fresh from their support slot with the mighty Kiss, Skindred are another well-honed festival machine with headliner status in their sights. Certainly they’ve got the hits to back it up and, performing an expanded version of their Kiss support show, the band bust out the likes of That’s My Jam, Smile Please and Kill The Power. However, it’s tracks like Pressure and Nobody that really seal the deal, and everyone leaves gasping for air, following Benji’s incitement of a typically riotous pit and, of course, The Newport Helicopter. Skindred have long been festival favourites, and they’ve got great tunes, but it’s Benji’s endlessly engaging stage presence that really sets the pit alight.
And so to headliners Metallica, and the first of two sets played across the weekend. Making a bold choice, Metallica are playing almost entirely shorn of production, and the result is a two-hour journey through the band’s back catalogue, with numerous highlights, as well as various missteps, along the way.
It starts well. In a weekend given over to fire, high-end production values and spectacle, Metallica are defiantly old-school, as if to say: “this is how we started – what of it?” Certainly, the opening salvo of Creeping Death and Harvester of Sorrow benefit from this approach, even if we have become used to the band firing off pyro every thirty seconds or so, but Leper Messiah sounds less certain, and King Nothing, is sloppily executed. They sound most confident, strangely enough, on the new material, and tracks like Lux Aeterna and Screaming Suicide gain considerable power when allowed into a set that contains more dynamic than the parent album.
With Metallica delivering a potent set of predominantly old school thrash, things are looking good. However, the set starts to unravel a touch with a poorly paced mid-set selection, not helped by the cold descending upon a field unprepared for plummeting temperatures. From a somewhat underwhelming Fade to Black, which saw the vocals disappearing into the mix, through to a mangled Nothing Else Matters, the band seemed to be struggling on stage with sound, while the crowd struggle offstage with the elements. It’s not quite clear what happened during the latter track, but with Kirk’s guitar badly out of tune, things seemed to derail, and there’s a certain shuffling in the crowd, as people start to disconnect.
Of course, this is Metallica, baby, and the final third of the set sees the band shake it off and come through on the brutal promise of those opening numbers. It starts with a splenetic Sad but True and, from there, ‘Tallica give us heavy. The Day That Never Comes is represented as the Sergio Leone epic it always wanted to be, Blackened is delivered with bone-rattling force, Fuel condenses an entire set’s worth of pyro into a series of almighty explosions, before the band come back to give us Seek And Destroy and, as a face-melting finale, Master Of Puppets. It galvanises the audience, paving the way for their second set, and leaving the door open for an array of classics yet to be played.
Friday
We enter the arena, bleary-eyed but otherwise none the worse for wear on Friday morning to find the hotly tipped Nova Twins on stage. An energetic and forceful act, it’s easy to imagine the Twins continuing to shoot up the bill (especially given a high-profile guest spot with BMTH, who are vocal supporters), but the muddy sound does not help the band on this hot, sunny morning. The band are certainly popular in the pit, and you can’t doubt the twins’ commitment as they tear through tracks like Fire and Ice and Cleopatra with all the energy their highly charged videos have led us to expect, it’s just a shame that the sound wasn’t better for them.
There are no such issues over at the Avalanche stage, where Redhook deliver a melodic, yet heavy set. The band do not skimp on the pop elements, but there’s plenty of crunchy, metallic riffs to enjoy along the way and, with tracks like Jabberwocky, the crowd show themselves more than happy to sing along. The highlight is Dead Walk, which has some great riffs amidst it all, and the band finish with the short Bad Decisions, a track with a pop-punk flavour that leaves the fans at the front cheering loudly.
Passing the main stage, we catch Hot Milk delivering a similarly radio-friendly set of material, with the Avril Lavigne-esque Bloodstream clearly getting the young crowd engaged. It’s not really our thing, but the band’s delivery is impressive, and they make the most of their main stage slot, gaining a host of new followers in the process.
Fortunately for those with heavier things on their minds, over on the dogtooth stage, something evil stirs. Hailing from New York, Undeath unleash a potent, old school death groove to a packed tent. It may be hot, but no one cares as the band march on to the stage as if they’re headlining and then set about systematically decimating the pit. With ferocious blast beats and neck snapping riffs, the band are nothing short of awesome and they offer a refreshing antidote to the streamlined, pop-infused sounds that seem to be the order of the day elsewhere. By the time we get to Grave Osmosis, people are streaming from the heaving pit, stripped to the waist and drenched in sweat, and you can’t help but feel that that is exactly how undeath like it. Absolutely phenomenal.
Maintaining the pace, Ingested are up next, bringing their gnarly tech-death to the Dogtooth Stage. Swapping out the turbulent groove of undeath for a harder, more technical sound, unfortunately the mix all but obliterates the guitars on the opening song and it takes a while for things to settle. As with Undeath, it’s clear that the Dogtooth stage is the place to be for fans of extremity, and Ingested put in a powerful performance, with Jason Evans whipping the pit into a frenzy, it’s just a shame the sound didn’t do justice to the band’s face-melting ferocity.
Meanwhile, out in the sun, Welsh pop-punkers Neck Deep offer a very different sound, leaning heavily on the popular pop punk of the early 00s. Tracks like Lowlife have a certain dynamic thrust to them, while heavier tracks like STFUpunch the hardest, stirring up the heaving front rows in the process, but you can’t escape the sense of déjà vu in their music.
Over on the second stage, Asking Alexandria continue their ascent and, with an engaging presence, they bring anthems like opening number Alone Again to a sizeable crowd. Things get heavier from there, with The Final Episode bringing some frenzied screams, while Into the Fire neatly bridges the heavier sounds of The Final Episode with the more streamlined, radio-friendly hooks of Alone Again. It’s an impressive showing from a band who, like BMTH have been steadily refining their sound over the years but it’s a touch too polished for our tastes, so it’s off to the main stage.
An act that needs no introduction, the mighty Pendulum are back, and their splenetic drum ‘n’ bass sounds heavier than ever on the main stage. With the set decked out in blazing lights and perma-flickering screens, Pendulum know how to play a rock show and, despite a few digressions into more radio-friendly territory (including the slow-paced The Island Part I), the bulk of the set focuses on industrial-strength beats, from the opening gambit of Driver through the band’s insanely heavy remix of Voodoo People. The set reaches an incendiary peak as BFMV’s Matt Tuck takes to the stage for an absolutely crushing Halo, which has the entire arena absolutely heaving. A masterclass in bridging genres, Pendulum absolutely slay, and they sound utterly immense.
Bringing a touch of class to the second stage, Within temptation make an impressive entry with Our Solemn Hour, a well-worn opener that brings the fire and some impressively metallic riffs. The set takes a turn for the poppier with the likes of The Reckoning and Faster, but Sharon Del Adel’s voice remains a thing of wonder and, by the time the band touch on The Silent Force, with a glorious Stand My Ground, the entire field is united, punching the air in unison to an anthem that has lost none of its power. It’s an emotional return to Donnington for the band, and a most welcome one.
Over on the mainstage, Architects arrive to the searing avalanche of ferocious drums and deathly screams that is Nihilist and we’re off, the band taking the audience on a charged journey that covers a great deal of sonic ground. They follow their brutal opening number with the elastic riffing and melodic vocals of Black Lungs, paving the way for BMTH’s set, while Giving Blood, with its churning bass and dynamic shifts, is an early highlight that has the entire field united behind the band. Surely a future headliner, Architects just keep going from strength to strength, and their set is a masterclass in modern metal.
With their ongoing sonic evolution, Bring Me the Horizon have more than earned their place at the top of the bill. Even so, the level of planning that must have gone into the band’s immersive set is astonishing and the band grab the audience’s attention with impressive stagecraft and catchy songs.
Airing a mix of new material and older pieces, all woven into a Resident-Evil-style narrative, there is little evidence of BMTH’s brutal beginnings. Instead, they focus on the more streamlined sound that emerged on There Is A Hell…, with a few surprises along the way. Certainly AmEN! is one hell of a start, that sets the audience screaming at a pitch and intensity that few (if any) other bands achieve all weekend. From there, we get a blistering The House of Wolves, an epic MANTRA (one of Amo’s many highlights) and a brilliant guest spot from Nova Twins, who dominate the stage on 1X1.
Things kick up another gear as Amy Lee joins the fray for a shortened One Day the Only Butterflies Left Will Be in Your Chest as You March Towards Your Death, which gives way to a monstrous Nihilist Blues. One of the band’s more inventive pieces, it’s a set highlight. From there, it’s a race to the end, with a frantic Kingslayer leaving everyone’s ears ringing, and an acoustic Follow You offering a moment of calm before the encore. A more human moment amidst an immensely polished performance, Follow You allows us a rare glimpse of the band’s heart, before they return for the three-song honour lap of Drown, Throne and Can You Feel My Heart. It’s a strong finale and, although it’s a shame there wasn’t time for That’s The Spirit, Wonderful Life or Happy Song, it’s a measure of the band’s confidence that they focus so heavily on new material.
An impressive set from a band who have come a long way from their humble beginnings, for those seeking spectacles, BMTH put on one hell of a performance, and they have some great songs with which to engage an obviously passionate crowd. Modern metal for a modern audience, it lacks the raw spontaneity that bands like Metallica can bring to bear, but there’s no doubting the musicianship and stagecraft of BMTH’s epic show.
Saturday
With a much-deserved slot on the main stage, Fever 333 are every bit as exciting as their explosive debut album promised. With Jason Aalon Butler one of the most captivating frontmen out there, the show starts along RATM lines, with Jason standing alone on the stage, fist aloft, in defiance of any and every form of oppression. Joined by new bassist April Kae, who is every bit Jason’s equal when it comes to stage craft, Brandon Davis on guitar and Thomas Pridgen on drums, Jason launches explosively into Burn and we’re off for a short set that says more in thirty minutes than some bands manage in two hours. With a searing Made in America preceded by a speech decrying colonial oppression and One of Us dedicated to women, it’s an exciting and inclusive set that reminds us that, for Fever 333, the message is every bit as important as the music. More surprising is a raging cover of Blur’s Song 2 (interpolated with NWA), before the band bring things to a close with Bite Back and Haunting Season, setting a ludicrously high bar for the rest of the day.
Offering a very different vibe, thrash wastrels Municipal waste are here to fuck up the second stage, which (despite the intense heat) they surely do. Harking back to the golden era of thrash, Municipal Waste are excellent musicians, passionate about metal, who camouflage their ability with goofy, engaging humour. Whether it’s winding up the pit (“we see the circle pit on this side, where’s the one on that side? See? They fucking hate you!) or trolling the audience (“I know it’s hot, but we’ve only got 17 more songs for you), the band are pure entertainment, and songs like Demoralizer, Beer Pressure and Sadistic Magician are beyond awesome. Municipal Waste rule.
Darker and more serious, Carcass bring their anthems of destruction to the second stage next, and it’s a heavy outing that has the pit sweating buckets before the first song (Buried Dreams) has concluded. Tracks like Kelly’s Meat Emporium, Under The Scalpel Blade and Dance of Ixtab are heavy enough to suck the oxygen from a gasping field, and the band delight in being the day’s heaviest act by some margin. Always immense on stage, Carcass really a band for the night, where dark things squirm and multiply, but they turn in one hell of a mid-day show nevertheless, leaving the audience in a state of collapse by the time they conclude.
Back on the main stage, Clutch’s bone dry, arid riffing is perfect for a dusty field with apocalyptic clouds gathering in the middle distance. Hampered by the absence of bassist Dan Maines, Clutch are joined by Brad Davis from Fu Manchu, who flew out to make the show happened at all. Not that Clutch show any sign of having been inconvenienced and, by the time Neil Fallon leads us into an earth-shaking Earth Rocker, the audience are fully engaged, for all that the incessant sunshine is making it feel like hell has come to the arena. Highlights abound, from a wiry X Ray Vision to the bowel-threatening Profits of Doom, while set closer Pure Rock Fury serves to remind everyone present just how fucking awesome Clutch truly are.
Pushed back from Friday, evil aliens GWAR are laying waste to the Dogtooth stage and sounding surprisingly tight. As anyone who saw the sweet documentary, This is GWAR, will know, GWAR put on one of the most ludicrous, most entertaining shows in rock ‘n’ roll, and it’s only a shame that it’s difficult to see, given the downward slope of the stage. Let Us Slay and Ratcatcher are awesome, the zombie queen has her head severed, and fans stream out of the pit coated in various, exotically covered fluids. The all-too-short set concludes with Mother Fucking Liar and The Cutter, leaving the crowd to scream “we love GWAR” over and over, but to no avail. The alien invasion is over.
Not necessarily the first band you’d think of for Donnington, Placebo take to the second stage and remind us all why they’re so beloved. Drawing a massive crowd, the band sound harder and faster than ever, combining those churning guitars with a taut, disco-infused backdrop that perfectly fits the mood on this lovely, summer’s evening. Occasionally unwilling to play to the crowd, tonight Placebo offer up a thrilling set that takes in highlights from across their catalogue. With Bionic sounding more like sonic youth than ever, Twin Demons emphasising the disco beat, and Slave To The Wage’s airy guitars flooding across the field, the real surprise is a blazing Nancy Boy, which still sounds unique nearly thirty years after the fact. The band end with Infra-Red, a highlight from Meds, and their soaring cover of Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill, leaving the stage in a hail of feedback that threatens the front row with lasting tinnitus. It’s a hell of a showing and Placebo emerge as the wild card band of the weekend.
Where BMTH treated Download to a perfectly choreographed production, Metallica’s set strips all the artifice away. A far cry from the blood and thunder of the Through The Never staging, tonight we’re faced with the sight of Kirk chasing Rob around the stage during For Whom the Bell Tolls or Lars making a small child cry when he tries to bring them up on stage (“Oh Lars, Lars…” admonishes James).
For younger members of the crowd, it could be seen as a disappointment, but Metallica have done huge stage productions better than most and, here, it feels like the band are reconnecting with the music in a manner rarely seen from arena-sized acts.
The fault is ours. We have become so used to note-perfect, beat-matched, pitch-perfect recordings and performances that, when faced with something real, it somehow feels wrong. As such, Metallica remind us that, for all the video screens and fire, the elemental power of metal is in its ability to have 100,000 people stand in a field punching the air in unison to tracks like Ride The Lightning and Wherever I May Roam.
A better set in the wake of Thursday’s slightly awkward sequencing, tonight, the band start with Whiplash (for the first time this tour), For Whom The Bell Tolls and Ride The Lightening, which makes for an invigorating introduction and the crowd responds accordingly. There are missteps along the way. For all that Until It Sleeps is a cracking song, the band seem to have largely forgotten how to play it, and it’s a relief when they smash out a couple of belters from 72 Seasons back-to-back – the title track and If Darkness Had A Son, both sounding super-charged in this environment. Elsewhere, Call of Ktulu is a welcome surprise, while Moth into Flame sits surprisingly comfortably next to a blisteringBattery. Following a fairly ropey, if emotionally received, Whiskey in the Jar, the band conclude with an epic One and an almighty Enter Sandman, before fireworks light up the sky and the band take their leave one final time.
Metallica’s double showing at Download 2023 may have been divisive, but their performance was all the better for being a devastatingly honest, warts ‘n’ all metal show. Some may prefer a tightly controlled performance, but Metallica’s victory was to take to the stage free from all distractions and keep the audience hooked for the duration. Few bands in the world could achieve such a feat, and it is a testament to the band’s enduring appeal that they played for near four hours over the course of two nights and still didn’t play everything that everyone wanted to hear!
Sunday
It’s the final day and it’s hot. Even early on, when we emerge, blinking, from our tent, it’s hot; and there’s a feeling that it’s only going to get hotter. Nevertheless, this is Download and we’ve weathered worse so, armed with a hat, a shirt (to keep the worst off) and enough sun cream to coat a fair-skinned elephant, we head to the arena.
Bravely setting the main stage alight, Lorna shore offer up none-more-brutal deathcore tempered by airy synths. With blast beats and death grunts a go-go, the band’s visceral groove demands the biggest pit of day and the Sunday crowd respond bravely, raging to songs like Cursed To Die and To The Hellfire. For the band, it’s clearly a worthy effort, and Will Ramos does his best to push the perspiring masses to ever greater exertions as his band shake the very foundations of the stage behind him.
Next up, The Hu arrive on stage amidst a remarkable array of traditional Mongolian instruments, which they use to create an otherworldly sound, largely outside of traditional western sphere of experience. The band sound and look amazing and it’s a great example of glocalisation in action as western rock combines with local culture from a country that only embraced such influences in the wake of the Cold War. Songs like The Gereg, Tartar Warrior and Black Thunder are well-worn weapons in the band’s arsenal, while covering Sad But True at a festival headlined by Metallica is either an odd or a brave choice, depending on your perspective. The Highlight is arguably Wolf Totem, but the set sits at a fairly similar pace throughout and, in the day’s intense heat, it starts to become a tad hypnotic before it reaches its conclusion.
With the stage already having proved itself a diverse place, with bands from India and Mongolia entertaining the crowd, it’s Poland’s turn as Nergal leads Behemoth into action. Possessed of an unholy confidence, such is the manner of Nergal’s presentation, you’d think his band were headlining and, who knows, maybe that is where they’re headed. Either way, this is an assured performance from one of Poland’s biggest metal exports and Behemoth come damn close to carrying the day with a varied set list that takes in a solid mix of ferocious death metal (Conquer All), epic anthems (Ov Fire and the Void) and exploratory pieces (Bartzabel), highlighting just how impressive Behemoth are musically. With Nergal a perverse master of ceremonies, at one point aping Catholic ceremony as he swings incense around with manic glee, Behemoth know how to put on a show and, like Slipknot, they seem to be attracting increasingly sizable crowds despite their extremity.
Over at the Dogtooth stage, a strange sight awaits. At the front, Soul Glo have successfully conjured up a mosh pit, with their feedback-strewn punk rock cutting through the humid air. At the back of the tent lie the bodies of hundreds of festival goers, apathetic in the heat and simply trying to escape the sun. It’s a strange scene, somewhat apocalyptic, but it seems to fit Soul Glo’s explosive and all-too-short performance.
Back at the mainstage, fast-rising metallers I prevail play to a decent crowd, but there’s something very generic about their sound, and while a cover of System of a Down’s Chop Suey! Mixes things up a bit, it’s strange to note that for all the band’s superficial eclecticism, the overall performance feels pretty one-note. Still, they go over well with the crowd.
Australia’s favourite sons, Parkway Drive, while ostensibly a metalcore band, are similarly diverse and make a strong bid for headliner status with a set that touches a lot of bases and makes a lot of new fans in the process. From the moment the band take to the stage, with torches held aloft, to launch into a ferocious Glitch, they have the crowd heaving. It’s a confident performance, yet singer Winston McCall comes across as genuinely humbled to receive such a reaction, and it is his stage presence, as much as the band’s performance, that elevates the show. Highlights include the melodeath of The Void, and a crunchy Soul Bleach, the latter reminiscent of Burning Red-era Machine Head. Meanwhile, the band’s sense of humour asserts itself (“you know it’s a good gig when you can taste the dirt from the stage”), and Winston causes a remarkable scene as he enters the crowd for Idols and Anchors, the pit racing around him, much to the consternation of the sound guys, who spend the song eying the trailing mic cable with trepidation. Taking things down a notch, the addition of a string section for Shadow Boxing is a bold move, but less effective is the Morricone-esque Darker Still, which seems to sit slightly uncomfortably at the bottom of Winston’s vocal range. However, the band soon hit back with a ferocious Crushed, which sees fire pretty much everywhere – and Wild Eyes (“a song about human connection”), which proves a fitting conclusion to a powerful performance.
And so, to the final act of Download 2023 and the almighty Slipknot. While the shock departure of Craig Jones might have dented the confidence of some acts, the return of Clown ensures that the band remain as utterly committed to the moment as ever and, Slipknot demonstrate once again why they are simply one of the best headline acts out there. Bridging the raw power of Metallica and the carefully constructed artistry of BMTH, Slipknot remain earth shaking and, with the setlist roaming across their catalogue, tonight forces a realisation as to just how many Slipknot songs have edged their way into classic territory.
Opening with one of Vol. 3’s many highlights, The Blister Exists, Slipknot set the pit alight and, despite the fact that Corey barely speaks (he tells us later that he’s suffering from a sore throat), the crowd goes nuts. Tracks like The Dying Song already fit in like old favourites, but a mid-set blow out of Psychosocial, The Devil in I, The Heretic Anthem, Eyeless and Left Behind offers the sort of breathless rush of which most bands can only dream. More surprisingly, the band also give us the eerie Yen and, despite Corey’s scratchy vocals, a bruised and beautiful Snuff, which has the whole field singing along.
With the main set concluding with a devastating Surfacing, the band find the energy to return for an encore that features Duality, Custer and, of course, Spit It Out, concluding a marathon Download on an absolute high and once again cementing the festival as Slipknot’s spiritual home.
Round Up
With amazing weather, amazing acts and impressive organisation for an event of this magnitude, Download 2023 was a huge success. The rearranged arena, revamped village and stellar mix of established acts and up-and-coming artists made for a wonderful atmosphere, and it was something of a bump to return to the real world. While there are certain issues to address, especially first-day arrivals, on the whole it was clear that much thought had gone into making the event as hassle free as possible and, for many, it was simply wonderful to be home at Castle Donnington once again. Roll on Download 2024!!!
That awesome line up in full:
In 2024, Download Festival will return to Donington from Friday 14 June – Sunday 16 June. Limited Early Bird tickets are on sale at 12 noon Monday 12 June from www.downloadfestival.co.uk.
Words: Phil Stiles; Jola Stiles
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