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home » festivals » Download » Download Festival 2010

Download offers a few gems away from the main stage on Saturday

Download 2010 review

Friday 18th June 2010


Heavily sunburnt from the day before. It was clear that day two of this mammoth rock event was going to be in the blazing sun once again, so lots of suncream applied and off I trundled. It was hard to imagine anyone playing today being able to capture the same excitement as AC/DC from the night before.

Seeing as the only band that I really wanted to catch today was Rage Against The Machine, it allowed me the freedom to go and catch bands which maybe I just wouldn't have been bothered about normally.

One of the first bands on the Pepsi Max stage was a band called Godsized. They got the morning off to a start with their heavy groove laden material. Maybe a bit too heavy for people still nursing their hangovers, but a very good solid performance, which surely must secure them a slightly higher billing for next years Download.

Genitorturers were an interesting addition to the line-up bringing their brand of rock music intersected with semiclad females was an easy way to attract lots of male fans, however at times their stage theatrics seem to take the attention away from the fact that they are a talented band and would possibly do well without the stage theatrics, but if it ain't broke, why fix it?

One of my personal highlights of this years Download Festival were a band called Rock Sugar, who do cover versions but mash them up into other songs, one such example was their version of 'Detroit Rock City' by Kiss merging into Paula Abdul's 'Straight Up', these types of mash-ups shouldn’t work but Rock Sugar have a rare talent of making them flow smoothly into one another. Just like their version of 'Don't Stop Believing' and 'Enter Sandman'. The band themselves seemed to look like they were having a good time and that they genuinely wanted to be playing unlike some other bands. They never took themselves too seriously and were entertaining throughout.

I also managed to catch Megadeth, and I'm surprised that Dave Mustaine didn't attempt to say that this was going to be their last appearance as he always seems to do nowdays, sadly after seeing this set I wish he would call it a day. It was only towards the very end of the set that I spotted a flicker of life in the audience, songs like 'Symphony Of Destruction' and 'Sweating Bullets' and 'Peace Sells..But Whos Buying' all went down well, but it was clear that Dave Mustaine just want interested in being there, which is a shame because I've loved this band from their early days, and when it comes to playing live, when they are on form they are faultless, untouchable and in a league of their own, sadly when they aren't on form its just like watching a train wreck, and this time around that's what it felt like.

Then Deftones did a performance that can only be described as disappointing.

Rage Against The Machine opened their set with 'Testify' and wasted no time in turning the sea of people into one huge ball of energy, however during their third song 'People Of The Sun' the band had to stop half way through due to fans being injured due to the crowd trying to push up, vocalist Zack De La Rocha asked the crowd to take a few steps back and look after each other, they then restarted the track and showed Donington that they were worthy contenders for headliners.

around the festival site (1)

review by Luke Seagrave
photos by Danielle Millea


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