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Well, I'm back after a few days of metalling it out over at Donnington park with the Download Festival '06 and it freaking ruled (Although the toilets were very medieval not to mention rank as hell) Didn't get much sleep though, shouting random names and TV programs, TIMMMAHHH and sing the Spongebob theme tune with the campsite until the early hours of the morning didn't help And of course Metallica ruled the roost, they were Amazing with 4 encores, instead of playing for 2 1/4 hours they did almost 3.

Bands I saw;
Friday;
Wicked Wisdom- Will Smiths wife was the lead singer, so well guess who made a guest appearance? (They were awesome, never thought his wife was in a metal band)
Soil - Awesome show, crowd was mental, including myself
SoulFly - With their Brazillian flag on the stage I am suprised they didn't mention the World Cup, they were awesome, the mosh pit was amazing, and I got a neck ache the next morning because of the head banging
Tool - As a headliner act they weren't very socialable with the crowd, it was sort of chilling out time to us really.

Saturday-
Opeth- They played really well, so glad I saw them, except the crowd was too mellow
Devil Driver Heavy and really good, except they didn't sound too much like they did on CD, but did an awesome show. They also had the biggest cirlce pit in Download, that was about the width of the snickers stage tent.
Henry Rollins- As hated in America, he was welcomed by us and he was absolutely hilarious and well worth seeing.
Metallica-Love it, I was up pretty close to the band and in the mosh pit, it was an awesome mosh, got crushed a bit, they celebrated the 20th year of their most popular album Master of Puppets and played it all back to back in respect to Cliff Burton, I think James Hetfield loved our mosh pit, he kept running to our side of the stage (And I got a good picture of him then)

Sunday:
Breed 77 - Heard some of their new album, it was pretty kewl, they performed quite well, although on for a short time
Hatebreed-- They were pretty awesome, they managed to get the crowd to open up two circle pits (I was right next to one) but I didn't join in with the pits there, I wanted to get out in one piece
Dragonforce- It depended where you were on this one, those at the front found them better, those at the back didn't, probaly bad set up, me, I was at the front and thought they did pretty awesome, you gotta love how the chinese guy shreds his guitar.
36 Crazyfists- I'm not much of a 36CF listener, but they put on an awesome show
In Flames- As one of my favourites, I had to see them, and did, they were awesome, they tried to tease us by saying Sweeden will kick our arses in the world cup, then decided after Saturday's performance that Sweeden sucks compared to us.
Lordi- Has to see those Orcs that won the Eurovision, the perfomance was of the same quality as they did on the eurovision.
Guns and Rose- It was Axel Rose's comeback after so many years with a new band, although booed by a few people, but I think his new band did a pretty sweet job of it, although they couldn't compare to the original set, Axel Rose looked effed up a bit, as though he just came out of Rehab or something.

I got a few good pictures, I will upload some of them, but not now, I'll post them ASAP, I think we got pictures of all bands except Guns and Roses (because my sister nicked my camera and she was watching Sick of it All)

I did love the bottle fight in the front crowds, got hit by a fair few, and hit my fair few too, during In Flames I got soaked by a cup of beer in the fight, so the smell stuck However the weather was intense, I got dehydrated pretty quick and got sunburnt on my neck, hands and nose, my nose blistered on Saturday and the first layer peeled off that night, I pretended to put it in Toms hair and got elbowed in the balls. Oh and we picked up an awesome tune on the way back from Guns and Roses and went;


When we weren't seeing bands we were back at the campsite doing random shoutings with the rest of our campsite, like shouting TIMMMAHHHH or naming stupid things like Willian Shatner or Charlie Simpson is a [C-Word] or names of TV programs and movies like Teletubbies, whilst others in our group of people were getting stoned (effing druggies )

Well thats my essay of a post out of the way

Anyone else go? Would be interesting to hear your experiences, if you were what campsite (if any) where you at? I was on Green

Damn, I'm jealous but I'm glad you enjoyed it. What stuff did In Flames do? Anything off Colony/The Jester Race, or stuff from their newer albums?

Dragonforce and Opeth must've been amazing too. I'm not surprised the crowd was mellow for Opeth though. They've got alot of acoustic in their songs. Plus they all last at least 9 minutes. That's a long time to be moshing. I think the only band you didn't see that I would have is Arch Enemy, but I suppose you can't see everything.

Metallica sound awesome too. I've no idea what they're like live, but if Master of Puppets is anything to go by, I'd expect it was insane.

I've never heard of Tool. What are they like?

They didn't show it on TV like they did last year. They chose the Isle of Wight Festival instead. *Throws up*


[edit]

Although, I just realised they need to edit the footage. Maybe they'll show it in a couple of weeks.

awesome.

Im so glad metallica played the good stuff, you got your moneys worth XD.

sounds like you had a good time, im going to warped tour in a few weeks as well.

They did, it was pretty damn amazing, they played (crawls into the memory space in my head) Unforgiven, One, Nothing Else Matters, Enter Sandman, Seek and Destroy (Last Encore), The whole album (as I said) and few others I can't remember now .


Definately, it was a birthday present, so it was free But £150 is worth the amount of bands that I went to see, its awesome value (I guess the shop prices made up for that...£2 for a small Ice Cream cone? Rip off! A coke and a small burger £5, eff off)




They are really good, ever heard of progressive metal? That's their style, other Prog Metal bands are like Symphony X, Dreamtheater, Threshold. Opeth etc.



They did last year, twas on like 11pm on Channel 4 a week or 2 after, but most things were cut out from last year, they didn't even show Black Sabbath.


They were awesome live, and it was insane, I loved the most pit, just shoving people around and getting crushed


I would have seen them, but I also wanted to see Trivium (My brother saw them and said they were crap, so missing them was justified) I really wanted to see Fightstar so I could pee in a water balloon and try to hit Charlie Simpson.



They were, the riffs in Dragonforce were insane, but the set up wasn't very good, the people at the back found it sounded quite crap, and to be honest at the beggining I wasn't impressed until they really got into it.


A few off of Soundtrack to your escape some off some of their first albums, and some from the latest, a lot of people crowd surfed during In Flames and came out on the barriers and got taken somewhere by security.

The rock, plain and simple. They have been around since the mid 90's with their first album Undertow (iirc). The lead singer/songwriter Maynard also formed another wicked band, in paralell with Tool - that band is A Perfect Circle.

all of these guys, especially Maynard, drips talent.

EDIT: Wasn't AIC supposed to play at this or am I confusing two different things?

They are awesome, but particulary weird live. When I saw them in '99 at Coachella they had naked people hanging from the ceiling the entire time--- lifeless. Finally toward the end they started moving and squirming-- very weird.

Tool does a crazy cool live show, atleast I think.

Opeth is always mellow for the crowds, always.

This time round they were just mainly psychadellic (spelling?) with all these weird 3D animated images on the screen, but then I did sit down after a while, so they may have done something I missed.



Next year's ticket are on sale friday(?) At this year's prices, from what I've heard this year was more awesome than last year, Although last year they had Sabbath and SOAD, but Metallica was one heck of a performance with fireworks on the stage, same for GNR, except GNR used flames as well and well James Hetfield can run a live show to excite people, which from what I've understood exciting the crowds is what made this year better, and from the looks of things ever since the start each year has gotten bigger and better (Not to mention more expensive) So although missing this year, you can get a nice chance for next year which will likely be better.



A perfect circle rule, not to mention they took on Twiggy soon after Marilyn Manson sacked him, what a great loss for Marilyn Manson, sacking the major song writer of his band not to mention a cool bassist, no wonder his new stuff is crap, Twiggy is in APC while Manson sings about a bunch of meaningless boll**ks and stealing songs that were never good in the first place.

I never liked APC, so I'm glad they broke up.

I Hate metal (yes, that's a capital "H"), but Tool is decent, and pretty groundbreaking in the genre. "Learn to Swim" is probably my favorite song from them. Otherwise, I can't stand the genre, so I'm not the best person to be offering his opinion lol.

Guns N' Roses got back together? Or is it just a new band pretending to be Guns n' Roses? Did they keep that guy with the big hat, the guitarist? Slit or Slash or Slay or whatever he called himself?

The new Guns 'n Roses are essencially Axel Rose, and ummm....no body else in particular. I havn't heard them but I'm not convinced. Slash plays in Velvet Revolver. They're ok, but I can't stand their singer. Pretentious prat.

Hey, after sacking Slash and that lot it looks like (From how he looked on stage) Axel drunk himself miserable of the old GnR days and hired a new band, they're no where near as good, but you can't deny that they're not good musicians and can play the songs quite well, I didn't think much about their new song though, which I can see the reason for the 'Shove your guns and roses up your a*se' song. But I think Axel Rose is a [p-word] how could you sack the band that well made Guns n Roses, surely he didn't think we all loved GnR for his voice? Mind you the new lot where a lot better than I expected (I expected something similar to the Manson sacks Twiggy scenario)

*slap* its Aenima =)

I hope they have a DL festival around where I live in California... if so I'll definitely be there. Theres only maybe 4 bands out of the list that I actually like, but it wouldn't be bad to check out the live performances of other bands as well (can't stand Hatebreed though, I can just imagine that it's a lot of "EXPLICIT YOU!!!!" to the crowd that just payed a paycheck to go see them).


How true. He sits right with Geddy Lee on my list.

I know they do one in Boston and San Francisco;

http://www.downloadfestival.com

It erm...doesn't look quite the same though

Well at least they got the Dropkick Murpheys in Boston, I guess I feel sorry for America then really, I'm sure there are other festivals, I mean we also get Reading, Isle of Wight, Glastonbury...

My sister has uploaded half of our pictures, I'll post more ASAP, she seems to have stopped uploading them, so I'm just taking some off of her photobucket album for now.

LORDI




IN FLAMES


HENRY ROLLINS

HATEBREED


DRAGONFORCE



DOWN

DEVILDRIVER (Okay we didn't get any good DD ones)

BREED 77



36 Crazyfists


PEOPLE PICS
Holly's Back saying secks

Myself looking rather revolting

Tom (AKA Siggorny Weaver)

CROWDS

Looks awesome. *drools over DragonForces' drum kit*