Sonisphere 2011.

Has anyone ever threatened to force you into a pair of Daisy Dukes? No? Well you’re not missing much I can tell you. A few days before I has due to be in a muddy field at Knebworth house I got a message that read something like ‘For your initiation, you’re going to have to wear a pair of Daisy Dukes for a day, because you’ve got hairy legs’.
I think I replied with something along the lines of ‘Well I wear a 32, so make sure they fit yeah?’.

The short short shorts were forgotten (thankfully, for the world’s collective sanity) but I did end up in the muddy field and somehow managed to see a shed load of sweet bands. It went something like this…

Friday started with thrash inspiring, British metal legends Diamond Head. Being the only non-American band on the main stage they were something to be proud of. A short set of classic metal riffs and surprisingly still top notch vocals ending in the anthemic ‘Am I Evil?’ got everything rolling for the weekend nicely. Next was a dash over to the Last FM Bohemia tent to see Lower Than Atlantis. Now disregarding the whole ‘they’re sell outs and a bunch of miserably fucks’ that seems to be the stock reply when you ask anyone their opinion on the band, I’m actually a big fan. The older ‘Far Q’ material such as ‘I’m Not Bulimic…’ was as good as you’d expect while the cuts from this years ‘World Record’ were catchy enough to even have the haters singing along. The only issue was the amount of idiots in the crowd/pit but I guess that’s par for the course.

The rest of my day was spent, after another sprint across the arena, at the main stage. The advantage of only having five bands booked for the Friday meant that they all played much longer sets than you’d expect at a largest festival like Reading. It was just as well really, because each of the next acts could have headlined any stage in Europe and owned it.

Anthrax brought back the classic trash vibes and Megadeth were the heaviest act the stage had seen so far by a long way. However, both were overshadowed by the final two bands on the bill. The first of those was Slayer. Loud, angry and full of riff, even the missing guitarist or fact that Tom Araya is now too old/crippled to headbang even slightly didn’t hold the performance back one bit. A few circle pits and mass crowd surf to ‘Raining Blood’ later and everyone was ready for the final act of the day.




Not trying to sound like a pompous twat, but the two hours of Metallica that closed the day’s music may well have changed my life. Sure, I’ve always been a fan but I’d never quite realised how much I love the band until, a few minutes post-set, what I’d seen sank in. Pyro, fireworks and an epileptic light show were only the start. In fact the band even managed to pull off the in-between song jam/solo thing that so often back fires and makes everyone on stage look a bit stupid. Not of course that the improvisation was at all preferable to the songs themselves. ‘One’, ‘Sad But True’, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’, ‘Master Of Puppets’…the list goes on and on, it was pretty much like the Metallica fan club had sat down and written the setlist, nothing missing, nothing you didn’t want to see. Then again, the whole event went one step further when, at encore time, the entire ‘Big 4’ plus Diamond Head’s Brian Tatler to perform ‘Am I Evil?’. And yeah, with that combination it was better the second time round…



With that sort of act to follow, you had to feel sorry for Saturday. I mean after all, how could Biffy Clyro ever hope to headline a stage the day after Metallica, with the whole place still smelling of the gunpowder of the night before? Things certainly didn’t start well. Sylosis were distinctly samey on the main stage and Richard Chesse was funny for about two songs then decidedly boring over on the second stage. Cavalera Conspiracy were and improvement, certainly they were musically much more impressive that the previous two, but it wasn’t until Gallows hit the second stage that things really heated up.

With news of the imminent departure of vocalist, the scary ginger demon Frank Carter, filtering across the site there was a pretty large gathering by the time the middle of the day set kicked off. As with Reading last year the band seemed to have brought enough energy to run a small city and the crowd responded. New and old tracks got an outing in equal measure and the circle pit during ‘I Dread The Night’ was something very special to behold, stretching right round the sound desk. Closing (as ever) on ‘Orchestra of Wolves’ the amount of broken people and sweat was pretty staggering and I can tell you it was well worth the boot in the face and lack of top I had by the end of the song. The Frank Carter er Gallows will be missed for sure.



From that I ended up watching Bad Religion on the main stage who gave a master class in how punk bands should play massive stages. It also proved wrong the old cliché that punk bands can’t age and still be good without selling out. Of course, then trying to follow up the last two bands with Kids In Glass Houses and You Me At Six left me more than a little disappointed. The former played hardly any of the (good) old material and were hampered by the rain and lead singer Aled Phillips seemingly being a bit too plastered for his own good. You Me At Six on the other hand were funny but nothing else. I’m not a fan (and never have been) and the only reason I ended up watching there set in the first place was for purely ‘ironic’ reasons (because I’m cool like that). The results were dire.

Sum 41 fared a little better. They suffered from having a pretty poor crowd (where I was standing a least) despite it looking like everyone in the festival had turned up. Oldies such as ‘Fat Lip’ shone through but the new songs were pretty poor. You could even say they’d ‘gone a bit Green Day’…

In the end it took Weezer to drag me out of the haze of annoyingly sub-standard pop-punk that had suddenly appeared all over Knebworth. Sure the performance wasn’t quite as insane as the last time I saw them, but the American emo legends still owned the stage in style. Covers aside (‘Teenage Dirtbag’ and ‘Paranoid Android’ if you were wondering) they played a set full of hits and nothing else. Sure the rumour that they were only going to play Blue Album and Pinkerton era songs didn’t hold true, but when you’re got songs like ‘Hash Pipe’, ‘Perfect Situation’ and ‘Pork and Beans’ sitting alongside the oldies you can’t really go wrong.

After that, with no desire to see Biffy Clyro, I ended up wandering around the campsite and a crate of beer later I was over at the Jaeger stage trying to get into the tent to see Swedish black metal band Watain. It was sound surprising but I actually have a real soft spot for Black Metal (no, really…) and despite the fact that we weren’t allowed into the tent the whole experience was a real treat. It was worth it for the flaming inverted crosses on-stage alone.

The final day then, would it live up to expectations? So much pre-festival nerd excitement had been dedicated to the headliners that it was almost as if everyone had forgotten there was a days’ worth of bands beforehand. That being said it didn’t start very well with a pretty flat performance from Volbeat and then the discovery that Black Tide have lost the plot completely. Not the best of starts. Still, Arch Enemy with their terrifying Swedish frontwoman and Death Metal brilliance saved the morning with a fiery (in a non-pyrotechnic sense) performance that finally woke me up. You really have to appreciate a band that manages to match their music’s high shred content with an equally large amount of windmilling.

Next up was the novelty of House Of Pain, for which the entire festival seemed to have turned up for no other reason that a desire to ‘Jump Around’ and pretend to be into hip-hop for half an hour. It was after that that the big boys came out to play.

First off, Parkway Drive, a band I have repeatedly been told can’t play a live show to save their lives. Well if that’s the case then people have ridiculously high expectations. There was energy, technical precision and sense of fun as wide as the grin on frontman Winston McCall. They looked like they were all loving it (even with a wheelchair bound guitarist) and everyone out beyond the barriers certainly were too.

Then it was the two Ms, Mastodon and Motorhead. Of the two I preferred the latter, although Mastodon still put on an ace show. But for me Motorhead were one of the bands of the festival. A lot of people will quite happily tell you they’re a band with only ‘one song’ (probably referring to ‘Ace Of Spades’) which doesn’t do them any justice at all. Sure you know what to expect from their music, chugging, growling classic metal; but the point is that Motorhead do it better than almost any other band out there. Add fire breathing women (lacking in much clothing) and the on stage presence that is Lemmy to the songs themselves and you have, no doubts, a purely brilliant live show.

Limp Bizkit then, you could argue, had a lot to follow. But considering the pretty terrifying loyalty they inspire in their fans, the numbers of fans present and the quality back catalogue (not to mention the new album material) the band had to offer there was never much to worry about. Being a music elitist I really shouldn’t like Fred Durst and co. but then again, ‘Rollin’’ remains the only song to have got me to pop out song specific dance moves since I was at a Year 8 school disco so maybe they aren’t so bad. The point is, fan or not, you can’t deny that live they’re pretty dam tight and can work a crowd.



Of course the heavens would chose the end of Sunday to open (yet again) and you could say that it was fitting that rain was falling as Slipknot started what was possibly their last ever European show. All the Paul Grey memorial t-shirts and two minutes silence may have worn a bit thin but the pure and simple fact was that when the band walked on stage (with Mr Grey’s suit, mask and bass resting onstage) the whole world went apeshit and for the next hour and three quarters no one seemed to care about rain, mud or flying piss bottles. There was a lot for screaming and a few tears and quite a bit of blood (respect to the mosh warrior with a split eyebrow). Material from the bands self-titled debut and its follow up ‘Iowa’ dominated with the likes of ‘(sic)’, ‘Wait And Bleed’, ‘Spit It Out’ (the happiest I’ve ever been to sit down in a muddy field) and ‘People = Shit’ just the tip of the iceberg. There isn’t really much more to say except the whole thing was very very good and ever so slightly terrifying. Perfect end to the weekend then you might say, see you next year.