It’s hard to believe that a year has passed since Download 2017 blew our collective socks off and yet here we are, lining up once more for one of the UK’s biggest rock parties. Anticipation for Download 2018 has been high, not least because it boasts two genuine legends in the headline slot – Guns ‘n’ Roses and Ozzy Osbourne, the latter headlining download solo for the first time – not to mention Avenged Sevenfold, whose headline status was assured after the gazillion-selling album ‘the stage’.
With security still a priority after last year’s incident at Rock Am Ring, the Download organisers opt to search cars entering the West car park rather than increase the queuing time on foot and this is amazingly successful. Despite a security man passing us carrying an angle grinder (nothing like a festival campsite to start trying your hand at advance DIY), the checks are conducted quickly and professionally and it’s not long before we’re heading to the camp site, laden down with beer and other essential supplies. As we’ve come to expect from the Download Security Staff, the atmosphere is kept professional, yet friendly, and they deserve a lot of credit for the smooth movement between car park, campsite and arena with queues kept to a minimum despite the massive influx of people on the Saturday.
One element that was touted this year was the development of Download’s Green credentials. For many years, festivals resembled vast tips with a remarkable array of rubbish littering every available surface. Attempts were made to limit the mess, with financial incentives offered to those who cared to wander the site, picking up used beer cups, but it remained the case that Sunday night at any given festival more or less represented a gig in a vast rubbish dump. This year, however, the organizers at Download have made a concerted effort to limit the scale of the mess, and it is a huge success. In years of festival going, I have seen few arenas look cleaner at the end of a three-day binge than download and the team behind the green-campaign should be commended for their hard work and initiative. Along with Bearded Theory, it seems that Download’s planners have really taken on the board the need for a more environmentally-friendly approach to festival-going and they have set a standard for which others should certainly aim. At the heart of the policy, reusable plastic cups (£2.00 added to your first purchase) keep the drink-related mess to a minimum. Although some might grumble at an additional £2.00, it’s fully refundable and, providing you don’t lose your cup, you only have to pay the fee once. The site is also well supplied with refuse points, many of which are labelled specifically for recycling, and these are monitored to make sure they don’t overflow for too long. Finally, incentives remain in place for those willing to pick up the (relatively small number of) cups that do make their way to the floor, and the arena floor remains remarkably free from debris throughout the whole festival. It makes for a much more pleasant environment all round and it’s hard to imagine going back to the detritus-strewn fields of previous years.
Another element where Download has made leaps and bounds is in the food. Whilst the alcohol may remain refreshingly expensive (although there is a fairly decent real ale tent this year), the choice and prices of food this year are better than ever with a variety of outlets selling everything from gourmet burgers to ravioli. In the past it’s been the case that food at festivals has been both expensive and poor – a most frustrating combination – but it seems that Download has made a real effort to get better companies, offering a much wider range of foods involved and this, along with the green elements and improved security serves to make the overall festival experience much more pleasant.
So, on to the music…
Friday
Opening up the main stage, the bouncy Boston Manor (6) get an enthusiastic crowd going early with tracks like ‘burn you up’. It’s reminiscent of much of the pop-punk movement that gained such traction in the early 00s and it’s not really our thing, but there clearly are plenty of people who disagree and you can’t argue with the band’s presence on stage. However, we’re really waiting for the mighty Avatar (7), the Swedish masters of melodic metal. Always guaranteed to put on a good show, the band comprises five distinct personalities and, rather than place all the emphasis on vocalist Johannes Eckerstrom, it is guitarist Jonas Jarlsby who is hoisted aloft at the start of ‘a statue of the king’ to be praised by an adoring audience. From then on, Avatar put on a headline-worthy show which would see them emerge as stars of the day if it weren’t for some disappointingly muddy sound. As a result, on tracks like ‘The eagle has landed’, the guitars just don’t seem to have the bite you’d expect. Nonetheless, you can feel the adrenalin flow as the mosh pit opens up for the immense anthem ‘Hail the Apocalypse’, and there’s no question that Avatar’s star continues to ascend. Expect them to be much higher up the bill next time round.
Surprisingly, sound issues continue to dog the main stage for Dragonforce (7) who, being consummate professionals, keep the show going regardless, even breaking into an impromptu cover of ‘another one bites the dust’ at one point. Songs like ‘judgement day’ are blasted out with power and precision, but we’re after something a little tougher and soon find our way to the Avalanche Stage for the American Politicised metalcore band Stray from the path (8). Touring on the back of the brutal ‘only death is real’, the band put on a charged show, with songs like ‘the house always wins’ sounding even more pissed-off in the flesh than on record. It certainly stirs up the audience who are packed into the tent and the band’s anthems of rebellion not only sound explosive, but they also pack an impressively coherent message.
In the normal run of things, we’d catch Savage Messiah, but the band, lodged in the tiny Dogtooth stage, are so popular that the crowd is spilling way out of the doors. With thrash in short supply this year, it feels like anyone with even a passing interest in the genre has crammed themselves into the tent and you have to wonder, at this point, if Savage Messiah shouldn’t be on a much larger stage. Still, not wishing to play human sardines, we head off to Andrew W.K. (5) who is amusing if nothing else. Checking out the white-clad loon on the second stage, it’s almost as if we’ve gone back in time 15 years, but whilst Andrew is still an energetic performer, he lacks memorable songs. Tracks like ‘she is beautiful’ and ‘we want fun’ are delivered with typically abrasive energy but they all sound so similar and the majority of the crowd is only waiting for one thing, the unlikely hit ‘party hard’, which Andrew drops after an agonising, 60 second audience count down. It turns the mosh pit into a heaving mass of bodies for a few glorious minutes, but most of the audience would be hard pressed to name any other songs that were played.
A highlight of Friday’s line up, Canadian punk brutalists Cancer Bats (8) are out celebrating the tenth anniversary of sophomore album ‘Hail Destroyer’, dropping a number of tracks from the album (including the title track, ‘sorceress’ and ‘Lucifer’s rocking chair’) into a set that bristles with aggression. With crushing sound and an anarchic performance, Cancer Bats easily turn in one of the day’s most stunningly ferocious performances and it sees the packed-out Avalanche tent heaving throughout.
Perhaps the day’s biggest wildcard is Korn main-man Jonathan Davis (9), whose recent album, ‘black labyrinth’, comes across as a mix between the cure-esque metal of ‘untouchables’, the world instrumentation of the ‘Unplugged album’ and the dark, electronic soundscapes of Jonathan’s own Queen of the Damned soundtrack. Looking fit and happy, Jonathan leads a band of diverse musicians (including the monstrous talents of Korn drummer Ray Luzier, not to mention a violinist and cellist), to deliver a surprisingly varied set. With tracks like ‘underneath my skin’ and ‘final days’ from the ‘Black Labyrinth album sounding refreshingly inspired, Jonathan also drops in a couple of tracks from the underrated Queen of the damned soundtrack including ‘forsaken’ and ‘slept so long’, whilst the ending ‘walk on by’ caps things off nicely. It’s an impressive showing and it brings the diverse soundscapes of the album to life.
It’s hard to imagine that there’s more to be written about grind institution Napalm Death (9). It’s surprising that the band are packed into the Dogtooth stage and, as the temperature in an already hot tent soars towards the stifling, we start to wonder if we’ll not come out considerably thinner than we went in. Taking to a stage lit with ominous, blood-red light, Barney and his troops slam headfirst into ‘Multinational corporations’ before dropping an icy ‘instinct of survival’, the tracks pummelling a reeling audience with unyielding force. Taking a brief moment to pointedly welcome “everyone” to their show (Napalm Death have little time for the current political climate of segregation), Napalm unleash ‘standardization’ with laser-guided precision before tipping a nod to their debut album, hurling out ‘you suffer’ with all the attitude of a band stepping out on stage for the first time. Politically charged and consistently egalitarian, Napalm Death’s none-more-brutal form of social commentary is more necessary than ever in these fractured times.
I’m not going to dispute the wisdom of Avenged Sevenfold (7) headlining Donnington – they are a huge band and they certainly put on one hell of a show. It’s just that they’re not for me. There’s something too calculated, too clean and too superficial about their sleek riffs and taut harmonies to ever get the adrenalin kick you do with the bands they cite as influences. Songs like opening number ‘The stage’ are delivered flawlessly and, with huge bursts of pyro and a multi-screen backdrop, the band offer up a slick, professional performance, dishing out tracks like ‘Afterlife’ and ‘Hail to the king’ to a widely adoring audience who lap up every carefully-contemplated move. It’s a massively over the top performance and, by the time we reach a rather bland cover of ‘wish you were here’, it’s all too much, although ‘bat country’ packs a fearsome punch. However, for every doubter in the field, there’s at least two Avenged Sevenfold fans and it’s clear that, for many, Avenged Sevenfold show precisely what the new blood can do.
However, for those not so keen on Avenged Sevenfold’s slick metal, the over-stuffed Dogtooth stage plays host to British prog-metallers Tesseract (9), whose recent album, ‘sonder’, is something of a masterpiece. With tracks like ‘Luminary’, Tesseract temper the tough riffing of James Monteith and Acle Kahney with Daniel Tompkins’ soaring vocals and, even with the tent bursting at the seams, it sounds sublime. At the heart of the set are a number of pieces from 2010’s awesome ‘concealing fate’ including ‘part 2: Deception’ and ‘part 3: The impossible’. It’s a magical performance and it’s hard to fathom why the band weren’t allowed one of the larger stages (given that they’re both silent for A7X’s set), but perhaps the organisers underestimated quite the esteem in which the band are held. They offer a dark, slightly ethereal conclusion to the festival’s first night, but it’s pleasing to note that Tesseract are considerably heavier on stage than on record.
Saturday
Saturday morning gets off to a cracking start with Powerflo (8) over on the Zippo Stage. Coming across like a cross between Biohazard and Rage Against Machine (hardly surprising given the band features members of Cypress Hill, Biohazard and Fear Factory), the band dish out punishing riffs and blistering, hip-hop-inspired vocals with a potency that leaves the tired and hung over crowd reeling at the ungodly hour of eleven in the morning. It doesn’t take long for band’s evil groove to punch through the brain fog, however, and, by the time the all-too-short set reaches its conclusion, the Download crowd are ready for action once more.
One of the highlights of the whole weekend, it’s an absolute pleasure to see Von Hertzen Brothers (9) get the respect they deserve. The band’s amazing blend of progressive guitar work and lush vocal harmonies has been quietly gaining traction over the last few years and it seems that last year’s stunning ‘war is gone’ has finally bought the band to wider attention. Taking to the Zippo Stage, the band win over the crowd with songs such as ‘War is over’ (sounding even bigger on stage than it does on record), ‘flowers and rust’ and ‘new day rising’. It’s a short, pretty-much perfect set and hearing the band’s massed harmonies and exquisite musicianship is enough to cause shivers down the spine.
Over on the main stage, Canadian groove merchants Monster Truck (8) turn out to give a lesson in the thunderous power of the riff. Tracks like ‘Don’t tell me how to live’ and, better still, ‘she’s a witch’ get the crowd moving, but the real treat is a pair of numbers from the as-yet-unreleased ‘true rocker in the form of ‘evolution’ and the title track itself. It’s an epic showing and, as befitting the band’s name, monster truck have a monster sound that carries nicely over the sun-dappled field.
It’s back to the Zippo Stage next for Corrosion of Conformity (8) With a cracking new album to their name, CoC are on amazing form, delivering monstrous, riff-heavy workouts that show the youngsters how it’s done. It all coalesces perfectly on ‘Clean my wounds’, which is extended into an epic stoner jam complete with tripped-out dub section. It’s a shame that the band’s set is so short, but in a mere thirty minutes, CoC manage to give the entire crowd a woozy contact high before departing in a cloud of smoke and dense, herbal-infused riffing. The band are back soon, however, touring with UK riff lords Orange Goblin. We suggest you go.
One of the bands of the weekend, the mighty L7 (9) take to the stage with Adam Ant drummer Jola as their own drummer, Demetra Plakas, managed to break her wrist two days previous. She’s still on stage though, bouncing away, with a microphone in her hand, which says much of the band’s unity and energy. It’s a short, pretty much perfect show and it feels as if the band reached into my overloaded brain to pluck out my dream set list, opening with a ferocious ‘Andre’ (the opening track from ‘Hungry for stink’) before throwing a pair of tracks from ‘bricks are heavy’ into the mix in the form of ‘everglade’ and ‘shit list’, the latter now forever linked with the opening scene of Natural Born Killers thanks to a certain Mr Reznor. The set concludes with the one-two punch of ‘fuel my fire’ (memorably covered by Prodigy) and ‘pretend that we’re dead’ and, despite a number of irritating sound issues, the band put on a raw, punky performance that is nothing short of awesome. The epitome of cool, L7 own the Zippo Stage today.
After a short break it’s time for the increasingly ubiquitous Baby Metal (2). Now I’ve tried, I really have, but every time I catch the band I get an image of a record label exec gathering together elements to make the perfect novelty band. Perhaps I am doing Baby Metal a disservice as there seem to be a lot of people who revel in the glorious foolishness of it all, but there’s simply nothing about their performance that is musically appealing.
Back over on the mainstage, it’s time for Black Stone Cherry (8) to bring their soulful, bluesy groove and it says much of the band’s confidence and power that they take to the stage with all the attitude and energy of a headliner, rather than main support. Tracks like ‘Burnin’’ are aptly named, but it’s the hits like ‘me and Mary Jane’ that roll over the field like thunder. ‘Like I roll’ gives way to a blistering ‘Foxy Lady’ whilst ‘Blame it on the boom boom’ and ‘white trash millionaire’ sound as gloriously sleazy as ever before an epic ‘bad habit’ brings it all home. Black Stone Cherry are definitely on the way to a headline slot and, given the strength of their recent run of albums, it’s entirely deserved.
However, the aura of anticipation that descends on the arena, despite BSC’s exceptional set, is very much for one band and one band alone. It’s hard to conceive that, after all the hype, Guns ‘n’ Roses (9) could deliver and yet the crowd just keep on coming to the extent that it’s hard to remember a time when Donnington felt so packed. A slight edge of nervousness predominates. The band are scheduled for a three-hour show, but whether they’ll take to the stage on time (or at all) is something that cannot be taken for granted (despite reports that the band have been remarkably on point over the course of the ‘not in this lifetime’ tour). At ten past seven the screens flanking the stage light up to show a short animation of a G’n’R branded tank blasting its way through Europe, eliciting cheers from the tense crowd, and you can feel your heart leap into your throat. The stage is remarkably bare, with little in the way of the glitz and glitter that typified the over-sized band that trawled the world throughout the 00s and, when they finally saunter on stage, Slash with his ubiquitous top hat and Duff McKagan still looking like the coolest man in rock, the cheers from the crowd ripple through air, growing in power as the band slam into an opening double hitter of ‘it’s so easy’ and ‘Mr Brownstone’. Axl is in surprisingly good voice and although he truncates the screams of yore, he nails the vocals with confidence and power, setting the stage for a wild ride through the G’n’R back catalogue. Perhaps the most surprising thing is how of a showman Axl isn’t, preferring to let the simple, stripped-back power of his six-piece band do the talking, and his slightly subdued presence allows the music to shine free from artifice.
Dispatched early in the set, ‘Chinese democracy’ remains a most underrated track and the guitar interplay between Richard Fortus and Slash is refreshing, whilst the echoing intro to ‘welcome to the jungle’ is met by a cheer that can surely be heard inside the airplanes landing behind us. ‘Double talkin’ jive’ is full of power; ‘better’ gains a Slash solo that really brings it alive and ‘estranged’ sounds as good as ever, Slash’s magical leads and Dizzy Reed’s piano still proving the centrepiece of one of Axl’s most compelling ballads. It wouldn’t be a G’n’R show without ‘live and let die’ but it’s the tribute to Slash and Duff’s fallen band mate Scott Weiland, in the form of ‘slither’, that shows just how far these so-recently-estranged rockers have come. In truth, Axl struggles with the vocal, unsure whether to let rip in his own inimitable style or stick close to Weiland’s delivery, the end result an uneasy compromise, but it’s great to hear, although the cheers double as we head then it’s back to the classics with a sleazy ‘rocket queen’ giving way to a rampant ‘you could be mine’ that rocks the field to its core.
For someone bought up on the ‘use your illusion’ video sets, it’s great to see Duff take to the microphone for a punk-as-fuck rendition of Misfits belter ‘attitude’ but the follow up, ‘this I love’ is a rare misstep. A powerful song, full of emotion, it’s an incredibly tough vocal to nail live and Axl just can’t seem to hit (or hold) the note. Overly ambitious, it is a low point in an otherwise full-on show, but the band soon get back on point with a blistering ‘shadow of your love’. ‘Civil war’ is a surprise highlight, before we get an instrumental showcase from Slash that paves the way for an emotional ‘sweet child o’ mine’ and, fuck me, ‘coma’ – a ten minute epic that I never thought I’d see live. With Slash’s grinding riff and Duff’s evil-sounding bass, ‘coma’ reduces a number of grown men to tears and still there’s more to come.
The end of the set sees ‘November rain’ give way to a decent cover of ‘black hole sun’, another tribute to a fallen great, before an extended ‘knockin’ on heaven’s door’ points us towards an encore of ‘night train’ ‘patience’ ‘the seeker’ and, of course, ‘paradise city’ – the weekend’s biggest singalong. It says much that the band’s epic, three hour set feels too short at the conclusion, rather than too long and the crowd hang around hopefully for some time, just in case the band are tempted to offer up another encore. An epic set delivered by a band who never seemed likely to share a stage a gain, Guns ‘n’ Roses were as close to perfection as they were ever likely to get.
Sunday
Despite being a black metal institution, Cradle of Filth (9) can be patchy, particularly on a festival stage where sound levels are often adjusted on the fly. For whatever reason, the band are particularly on form this time out and, with a vastly reduced stage set, they simply set about demolishing an early download crowd with a stunningly violent take on ‘gilded cunt’, Nymphetamine’s unhinged opener. With only a cursory nod to recent material Cradle of Filth stick to the classics unleashing ‘dusk and her embrace’ on a still-reeling audience and, via Dani’s dodgy dad-jokes, ‘born in a burial gown’. Lindsay Schoolcraft demonstrates just what a boon she is to the band with her rendition of ‘nymphetamine (fix)’ whilst the band end their set all too soon with Midian highlight ‘her ghost in the fog’. An impressive showing from Cradle of Filth, the only mystery is why the band are so low down the bill.
A near-perfect festival band, Turbonegro (8) are totally and utterly insane, whipping up the Sunday morning crowd of the Zippo stage with their crazed mix of punk, metal, glam rock and… whatever else they feel like throwing into the mix. Tracks like ‘hurry up and die’ and ‘special education’ get a great reception but seriously, where else but Download would you hear an entire field singing ‘I got erection’ at one o’clock on a Sunday afternoon?
Any opportunity to see Mike Patton is to be clutched at, but, as part of Dead Cross (9), he simply slots into the band, reigning in his eccentric stage raps and letting the music do the talking. With a solid line in blistering, angular punk, Dead Cross benefit greatly from Mike’s versatility behind the mic, and instrumentally they come off as a cross between the Sex Pistols and Fantomas, their scarifying riffs streaking across the field to hit home with real force. Playing the majority of their awesome debut, tracks like ‘seizure and desist’ and ‘idiopathic’ are even more unhinged on stage than they are on record, but if one song typifies the band’s defiant spirit, it’s a rampant cover of ‘Nazi Punks Fuck Off’ that really makes the set.
Unbelievably, it’s Kreator’s (8) first time at Download, and the band were never going to let such an opportunity pass them by. With gargantuan flame blasts and glitter explosions, the band use their short time on stage to deliver such classic thrash anthems as ‘phantom antichrist’, ‘enemy of god’, ‘satan is real’ and, of course, the monstrous ‘pleasure to kill’. Never ones to disappoint, the masters of Teutonic thrash leave a slew of bodies in their wake, the mosh pit a heaving mess from the very first notes to the final savage beats, and we can only hope they return, and to a longer slot, soon.
Although Body Count’s (7) last album was immense, their set at Download does not fully represent the band at their best. They open well, with a blistering cover of Slayer’s ‘raining blood/post mortem’ but, as we head into ‘manslaughter’, the set feels a little unfocused. Things pick up with a brutal ‘no lives matter’, the politically-charged highlight of the recent album, but tracks like ‘talk shit, get shot’ just feel too lyrically undercooked in comparison and, as a result, the set never truly takes off in the way that it should.
The same cannot be said of the god-like Meshuggah (9), for whom ever set is an event no matter how short their slot is. With the temperature soaring, a flagging crowd nonetheless manage to summon their last remaining reserves of energy as the band unleash such polyrhythmic monsters as ‘Rational gaze’ and ‘straws pulled at random’. Admittedly, Meshuggah are better suited to a night-time headline performance than the sun-drenched second stage, but there’s no debating the power of their performance.
It’s hard to believe that I’m heading to see A (7) who, like Andrew W.K. just feel like they’re beamed in from another era altogether. Tracks like ‘bad idea’ and ‘Monkey Kong’ were always great festival set-pieces (and the band frequently used them to demolish Reading Festival back when it actually was a rock festival), although the streamlined strains of ‘something’s going on’, as catchy as it is, simply can’t compete with show highlight ‘nothing’, which still sounds cool some sixteen years down the line.
Always a risky proposition, you never know what you’re going to get with Marilyn Manson (9) who, despite the pair of fantastic albums under his scabrous wing, can be remarkably patchy on stage. Things don’t initially look good, with Marilyn appearing somewhat tired between songs, but his delivery is top-notch and the set-list immense. Drawing heavily on breakthrough album ‘Antichrist superstar’, we get both ‘Irresponsible hate anthem’ and ‘angel with the scabbed wings’, before Marilyn drops a stunning ‘deep six’ into the mix. The hits are well-represented too, with ‘this is the new shit’, ‘disposable teens’ and ‘mOBSCENE’ dropped with casual disdain before the dark, uncompromising ‘Kill4me’ shows where Marilyn’s heart is at musically. From there on in it’s hit after hit with ‘rock is dead’, ‘the dope show’ and ‘sweet dreams’ all played with considerable energy. It’s the demonic ‘say 10’ that stands as the set’s highlight, however, no matter how impressive Marilyn’s back catalogue, and the dark, filmic track gives way to a thrilling ‘antichrist superstar’. Dani Filth appears to lend an all-too-brief hand for ‘the beautiful people’ before Marilyn returns, unexpectedly, for a cover of ‘cry little sister’ (theme from the Lost Boys). It’s a really good set, although it also hghlights the juxtaposition of Marilyn Manson the artist, who clearly wants to foreground the brooding soundscapes of his most recent work, and Marilyn Manson the entertainer who knows that a festival audience wants to hear the hits.
Another band who found fame in the early 00s, it’s good to see The Hives (8) once again, as they deliver their good-time punk to the Avalanche stage. ‘Walk idiot walk’ has lost none of its charm and tracks like ‘main offender’ are fun, but the real energy is saved for mega-hit ‘hate to say I told you so’, a track that seemed to be everywhere upon its release back in 2000. A fine showing, the band are definitely a good choice for a festival and they keep the audience moving throughout.
And so, seemingly in the blink of an eye, we reach the final act of the festival. After a somewhat weak showing with Black Sabbath in 2016, it’s hard to know what to expect from Ozzy Osbourne (7) but, in the end, he delivers an impressive, if somewhat pedestrian performance. It opens promisingly, with Ozzy sounding strong on ‘bark at the moon’ and ‘Mr Crowley’. The audience go nuts for ‘I don’t know’ and Sabbath get a nod with ‘Fairies wear boots’. However, it’s around ‘suicide solution’ that things start to go a little awry and Ozzy’s voice starts to slip. An energetic ‘no more tears’ gets things back on track but an energy-sapping ‘road to nowhere’ very nearly hammers a nail into the sets coffin. It’s a shame, because Ozzy has more than enough great material to go around, but the emphasis on his eighties and nineties period not only does a disservice to his more recent material, but also feels somewhat ballad-heavy.
However, Ozzy hasn’t endured for years without knowing a thing or two and, with the audience flagging, he unleashes ‘war pigs’ at exactly the right moment, bring the crowd back on side for the final stretch although we could all probably have done without an instrumental medley followed by a drum Solo. The closing numbers include ‘shot in the dark’, a massively overegged ‘Crazy train’ and a powerful ‘mama I’m coming home’, the latter a highlight from ‘Ozzmosis’. However, Ozzy really seals the deal with his encore of ‘paranoid’, he and his band belting out the song with enough energy to close the festival on a high, the audience buzzing as they leave the arena under a shower of brightly coloured fireworks.
Heading home…
Download 2018 saw the festival pull together a remarkably eclectic line up. With blues, rock, punk, metal and more all jostling together, the diversity meant that there really was something for pretty much all tastes across the rock spectrum and we rarely had a moment where there wasn’t something to see. With improved green credentials, decent food and friendly, well-trained security keeping the festival running smoothly, it was a hugely enjoyable festival and the atmosphere in the arena was friendly and positive throughout (something helped by the atypically fine weather). Objectively, the bands (and particularly the headliners) performed brilliantly, and even among our friends we could not reach a consensus on who played the best set of the weekend. However, for us, it was Guns ‘n’ Roses who ruled the festival – their three-hour performance mixing up deep cuts, hits and covers in a manner that was consistently surprising. Axl came through brilliantly, and if his voice does not have the sustained power of yore, he still gave a compelling performance, appearing relaxed and at ease with band mates who were, until recently, his direst enemies. Proof, perhaps, of the redemptive power of rock ‘n’ roll, Guns ‘n’ roses were awesome.
Overall, whether you loved Baby metal or hated Ozzy; whether you adored Guns ‘n’ Roses or lost your mind to Dead Cross, Download 2018 was a huge success. Gleaner, cleaner, louder and better than ever, roll on Download 2019!
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