Download Festival 2010

[New Damage]

Official Homepage

Line-up now stands as:

Headliners:

AC/DC, Rage Against The Machine & Aerosmith

Wave 1

Them Crooked Vultures, Deftones, Stone Temple Pilots, Megadeth, Bullet For My Valentine, Motörhead, Wolfmother and Volbeat

Wave 2

Thirty Seconds To Mars, Stone Sour, Billy Idol, Lamb of God and Five Finger Death Punch.

http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/lineup/index.aspx

From the festivals POV, it's a pretty strong line-up. Personally, in terms of the bands, meh. I don't even know who Volbeat are. Is it Jason Newstead's band? Pretty sure that begins with V. Or am I getting them confused with something else.

Lack of Soundgarden disappoints me. , Suppose they could be announced at a later date or even be there for Sonisphere.

Edited February 16, 2010 by TheModernWay

[METALMAN]

AC/DC is playing! All other bands are irrelevant.

And stone temple pilots phoned Soundgarden and said "don't worry Soundgarden, we are filling the role of reunited-group-trying-in-vain-to-relive-past-glories at this festival". So no Soundgarden.

[Skummy]

Motorhead are at least ten times better than any other band on that line-up, but even then, they're much better in a smaller, sweatier, more indoors venue than at a festival anyway. Not that I expected to be impressed by the Download line-up ever again, but that is a spectacularly lacklustre line-up.

Thus far Hellfest is looking to be by far the best of the metal festivals this year; Sigh, Candlemass, Crowbar, Dying Fetus, Finntroll, GWAR, My Dying Bride and Weedeater...nice.

[Adam]

Immensely looking forward to this already-worth it just for AC/DC and Motorhead. STP will be good too, only band I don't like of the 9 is Bullet For My Valentine.

Volbeat are Danish by the way.

[Guest Jacob]

AC/DC, Motorhead and TCV make this festival worth going to already.

[Cactus Drags]

Somewhat underwhelming, although I would love to see AC/DC.

[DFF]

AC/DC are a great announcement. Megadeth will bring the goods. Motorhead will be fun but I really hope they stick them in a tent as Lemmy was straining like hell in 08 on the main stage. Them Crooked Vultures are one of those bands that you wouldn't necessarily consider a deal breaker, but do have a little intrigue attached to them.

I couldn't care less about Stone Temple Pilots of the Deftones - talk about dull.

Wolfmother were great in 07, and I'd expect more of the same from them again. I quite like BFMV, but with them being a second stage headliner, I'm guessing I'll miss their set.

[Bobfoc]

This was a solid announcement for PA purposes, with a nice mix of different genres on offer. While I don't care much for Wolfmother and Bullet for my Valentine, I am excited at the prospect of seeing AC/DC, Motorhead and Megadeth. The likes of Deftones, Stone Temple Pilots and Them Crooked Vultures aren't my favourites, but they could end up winning me over out of intrigue. With any luck, most of the other rumours, such as Alice in Chains, Metallica and Van Halen, will come true in due course.

[Skummy]

I consider myself a fan of heavy metal, and I regularly DJ heavy metal nights, but I will never understand the legions of metal fans in the world. The majority of fans of this music seem to value longevity over quality or creativity, so the only bands conceivable as the headliners apart from the odd big thing du jour are always either bands that have reformed, or bands that have been around for twenty or thirty years - and how many of the people going to see Motorhead are going to give a toss about anything post-Ace Of Spades? Are there going to be people desperate to hear AC/DC's new material?

Is metal really that stagnant a genre that nobody has recorded anything worthwhile in the past twenty years? No, of course it bloody isn't. Are heavy metal fans really too bloody stubborn to listen to anything that differs from their recommended daily dosage? Apparently so.

Oh, for fuck's sake. I take back anything bad I said about Download being backwards - RATT have just been confirmed for Hellfest.

Edited January 26, 2010 by Skummy

[Cactus Drags]

I consider myself a fan of heavy metal, and I regularly DJ heavy metal nights, but I will never understand the legions of metal fans in the world. The majority of fans of this music seem to value longevity over quality or creativity, so the only bands conceivable as the headliners apart from the odd big thing du jour are always either bands that have reformed, or bands that have been around for twenty or thirty years - and how many of the people going to see Motorhead are going to give a toss about anything post-Ace Of Spades? Are there going to be people desperate to hear AC/DC's new material?

Is metal really that stagnant a genre that nobody has recorded anything worthwhile in the past twenty years? No, of course it bloody isn't. Are heavy metal fans really too bloody stubborn to listen to anything that differs from their recommended daily dosage? Apparently so.

Oh, for fuck's sake. I take back anything bad I said about Download being backwards - RATT have just been confirmed for Hellfest.

I think this is why I've been a lott less enthusastic about Download th last couple of years. When I first started going it was very much a case of "we should do this every year!" and now I wait for at least the third or fourth set of announcements before deciding. I've seen Slayer three times (and really, once you've seen them once, you don't need to see them again), Motorhead twice, Slipknot three times. They keep bringing back the same "name" bands and it gets old. Having said that, I have enjoyed seeing the likes of System of a Down, Lamb of God and Mastodon, but there's not a lot of metal acts I've bothered to see the alst couple of years, I've been more interested in the odd screamo/post-hardcore, punkier stuff.

EDIT: These last couple of posts have made me realise I really haven't listend to much metal lately, is there any good stuff actually out there?

Edited January 26, 2010 by Dragpool

[Adam]

Are there going to be people desperate to hear AC/DC's new material?

I personally thought their last album Black Ice was great, had some top tracks on it. I love heavy metal, and although top bands like AC/DC and Maiden's more recent stuff isn't exactly like the classics, it's still damn good.

[DFF]

It always amazes me when people complain about a festival line-up after less than 10% of the bands have been announced. If last year's anything to go by, we'll have loads more acts to be named.

For example, 2009 had something like 127 bands across the four stages (26 main, 31 on 2nd, 36 on 3rd and 34 on 4th). We've only had 9 bands announced thus far for 2010 - how can you judge the quality of the line-up as a whole from that? Of those 100+ bands last year, there was plenty of diversity across both age of the bands and genres covered.

Also, its not like all the bands announced so far are limited to one sub-genre, or one age demographic.

EDIT: Out of interest, Skummy, who would you book to headline Download (knowing it's size and target audience)?

[YI]

I'm 100% with Skummy here (brought it up in my blog ¬_¬) about how Download/the 'mainstream metal scene' seems ridiculously stagnant. And the whole "out of interest who would you book" is a stupid argument, because the point is, there is nobody else you could book besides the 'classics', because fans just don't seem to take to bands for whatever reason.

In all honesty, I don't know why Download don't try and pillage the punk-rock scene, they had some good smaller UK bands on the bill last year like Pulled Apart By Horses, Don Broco, The Auteur and Attack! Attack! but really, outside of a couple of bands every year (and appears to be getting fewer) they just never go for any. It'd bring something fresh to the line-up, hell with 4-stages now, just doing a Lock-Up like stage would be fucking awesome. Hell there are people who go to Reading/Leeds solely for the Lock-Up, and for the most part, would probably be more at home at Download than Leeds/Reading. Hell, introduce more 'scene' bands or something (some are canny good; Dance Gavin Dance, Emarosa, I Set My Friends On Fire etc.), they're just so shit fucking scared of rocking the boat a bit, it's borderline the same line-up every year.

And the point of judging a festival on the first announced bands. Okay, yeah, I know it's a little shitty, but it's always going to happen. But at the end of the day, it isn't because of bands like Pulled Apart By Horses, Don Broco, General Fiasco, Attack! Attack! or Architects why people want to go to festivals. You can catch them locally for about £5-7 in a damn better venue putting on a better show, good smaller bands are really just the 'cherry on top' of a festival. People want to go because of the big bands, so of course people are going to bitch when the 'big guns' announcement is a bit rubbish and has motherfucking Volbeat in it (and I like Volbeat).

Edited January 27, 2010 by YI

[Skummy]

As for who I'd book...I doubt I could answer that, as I don't have a strong enough knowledge of the modern metal scene; I don't read any heavy metal magazines, don't watch any of the metal music channels, or anything like that. But like YI said, the problem goes deeper than that - metal fans don't seem able to accept a band as a viable headliner without that longevity, which is kind of the opposite of all other genres, in the pop idiom, obviously in jazz and classical you'd look to a veteran performer over a newcomer, but those aren't genres marketed almost exclusively at teenagers, and sold almost exclusively as music for the young and rebellious. It's a little ridiculous when a genre that does big business on kids and young adults has a festival all to itself, the main bands playing are going to be two or three times their age.

I know Download isn't marketed at me, I only keep a vague interest in it because plenty of my friends go every year, I'll probably never go myself, but when I was a young teenager and into my classic rock and mainstream metal, I doubt I'd have been tempted by this kind of a line-up, because when I was into classic rock I was well aware that its defining feature was that it happened decades ago. I doubt I'd be too excited about the prospect of seeing it played by senior citizens.

Like YI said - people are going to judge a festival on the first couple of announcements, because they're the bands that most people are going to be paying to see, and because it's usually an indication of the direction the festival's taking this year.

And, to be fair, it's not just metal. The last few years have seen a ridiculous rise in nostalgia acts at festivals in general, but metal has been the worst offender for the longest amount of time - and Download the worst of the "big" metal festivals in the last couple of years. You can blame it on a lot of things - the fall of the music press and rise of the internet meaning that there's a lot more choice, and no real taste-leader or trendsetter to tell you what's cool, and as such the newer bands don't have the mass appeal that they might have done ten or twenty years ago - but with metal it's amplified by the ironic hipster "cool" awarded to the shite kind of rock and metal that people were glad to see the back of that's suddenly making a comeback - Journey, RATT, Anvil, WASP, etc.

But as I was saying, nostalgia acts and the like aren't just exclusive to metal - for the last three years I've been attending the All Tomorrow's Parties festivals, which are supposed to be dedicated to the alternative and to the underground, yet in the past two years I've seen The Damned and The Buzzcocks there, this year I'll be seeing Iggy & The Stooges, and every year I go I see at least one band performing their "classic album" in its entirety.

[METALMAN]

I don't think older bands are that big a problem. I've gone to see Bob Dylan, Morrissey, Edwyn Collins, Van Morrison and quite a few other past it old bastards. It was all good fun, despite them being well past their best, and it was really special to hear Dylan sing "Like A Rolling Stone" and Morrissey singing "Panic".

What I think is the real problem is that too many old acts, just like too much of anything else, is boring. What I think would be the best system would be to have one headliner out of three be a "legend", much like Glastonbury have done in recent years with headlining bills of Arctic Monkeys/Killers/Who, Paul McCartney/Oasis/Muse.

I personally don't have a problem with older bands playing old songs - in quite a lot of cases they are better than the younger bands. It's just when it's overdone, like it so clearly has been at Download, that it becomes a problem.

[Cactus Drags]

It always amazes me when people complain about a festival line-up after less than 10% of the bands have been announced. If last year's anything to go by, we'll have loads more acts to be named.

For example, 2009 had something like 127 bands across the four stages (26 main, 31 on 2nd, 36 on 3rd and 34 on 4th). We've only had 9 bands announced thus far for 2010 - how can you judge the quality of the line-up as a whole from that? Of those 100+ bands last year, there was plenty of diversity across both age of the bands and genres covered.

Also, its not like all the bands announced so far are limited to one sub-genre, or one age demographic.

EDIT: Out of interest, Skummy, who would you book to headline Download (knowing it's size and target audience)?

I have no problem criticising a line-up this early. I'm potentially spending a lot of money to live in a field listening to music for a weekend. I don't want to be spending that money if half the acts are retreads or tired reunions. Obviously there's still time to announce a stellar undercard, but I don't want to go to a festival and go back to my tent at 5pm because the headliners are all wank.

[New Damage]

Via the Facebook fan page, they're gonna announce more bands on Monday.

If Soundgarden do get announced, I'm actually considering going to that day, especially as I can kind of imagine some sort of "grunge" day, what with Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam releasing new albums last year, and Stone Temple Pilots are already there too. As will Dave Grohl, albeit with Them Crooked Vultures.

I'll just have to find people to go with, and you know one of them... job... things.

[Bobfoc]

It seems there's a fair chance that Rage Against The Machine could be one of the headliners. Their free gig will take place at Finsbury Park on 6th June, just a week before Download, and it's being promoted by Andy Copping, the Download promoter/booker. Guns 'N' Roses are also a possibility now that they have been confirmed to play the Sweden Rock Festival during the Download weekend, but my gut feeling is that they won't end up making an appearance.

[DFF]

They've since update the announcement to say that there will be two announcements - one at around 8pm, and the other around half past midnight.

What do we reckon?

I think we might get a solid headliner and the other five bands at the earlier time, and the bigger headliner at the latter.

[YI]

So your headliners are AC/DC, Rage Against The Machine and Aerosmith...according to the worlds blackest white man/whitest black man, Zane Lowe.

Edited February 15, 2010 by YI