Category Gig/Festival Reviews

Download festival 2010 – Day 2

Day 2 – Saturday

Sybreed
I was told by a friend to go and see them, so I took my only trip to the Pepsi tent. They excused themselves for their accent caused by their Swiss-French origin. The industrial rock that they played reminded me at times of Meshuggah maybe, with a lot of mixtures of black and death metal, but with a lot of electro/synth stuff that were a turn off for me and made me leave before the end of their show. I still remember the massiveness of their bassist whose last name is, ironically, Grand, and who made me think of a character from some SF series, and was doing some really cool bass tapping.

Flyleaf
I wanted to see Atreyu on the main stage, but they switched places with the Americans from Flyleaf. They are a female fronted band, with a mean looking bassist...

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Download festival 2010 – Day 1

DAY 1 — Friday

Anathema
The first concert I got to see (and I wanted to see) on Friday after I collected my wristband (by the way, it was a really huge queue for the weekend tickets) was Anathema, on the second stage. I always managed to miss them live and each time I heard they were so good, so I finally got to experience the quality of their music live. And, even if the show only lasted 30 minutes, I was delighted by it as they only got to play their biggest hits and got the crowd to clap most of the time. The female voice was astonishing and they dedicated their “A natural disaster” to Dio.

36 Crazyfists
I watched them from rather far away, as my main concern was to get acquainted with the area...

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Download festival 2010 – General overview

A bit about the festival

Held usually during the 2nd week of June at the Donington Park motor circuit, close to Nottingam and Derby, UK’s Download Festival is a continuation of the Monsters of Rock festivals organised in the same place until 1996. It started as a two day event and expanded to 3 in 2005. The name comes from the idea of rock music being a rebellious genre, thus being against the music industry pressure who claimed the festival would destroy the industry. Along the years, the festival managed to always offer quite an impressive line-up, with big names split all over the stages, sometimes leaving one no chance of breathing between two concerts. The festival’s history can be read here.

The 2010 edition celebrated 30 years of rock festivals at Donington park; apart from this, th...

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