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Download Destruction Derby II - Or How To Ruin It For Yourself

So if Friday was full of carnage, the next day, waking up in a ripped sleeping bag - still wrecked - wasn’t funny.

So if Friday was full of carnage, the next day, waking up in a ripped sleeping bag - still wrecked - wasn’t funny. Tyson was covered in a massive weird rash from the Rapeseed and we were collectively £160 lighter due to the drinks. We could have cut out the middle man and pissed the notes against the wall, but how much fun would that be, eh? Saturday was full of the realisation that we’d ruined it for ourselves, Ms Tyson and myself could still hardly walk (and this was getting well into the afternoon…) Our partner in grime Welsh Dai had already confirmed the truth: ‘You look awful’ - trust us, we knew, but felt a lot worse than we looked.

Strange Download sights: Aside from the bloke wearing a tutu and no pants (yep, it was quite an eyeful – but not in the way he’d hoped), we spotted The Powder Room… Does anyone really want to pay £15 to borrow hair straightners? Apparently so… How metal is that? Also the abundance of God Botherers who were accosting “young Satanists” to show them the path to righteousness. What did they actually think was going on? Perhaps they thought we were all part of some occult gathering to bring the dark lord down to the earth… Or were worried that Judas Priest were up to their old tricks with the “backwards messages” and were here to save us… Did anyone actually get saved?

Throwdown er, threw down, Johnny Truant slayed and we were looking forward to Testament – but the whole world was watching these Bay Area legends thrash it out and you couldn’t get near… so we headed up for a spot of HIM (not the type the Jesus crew would have liked, though). But as I said, we ruined it for ourselves and by the time Ville Valo and crew were blasting their way through a Billy Idol number we’d had enough… Can you imagine going to bed at a festival at 11pm? Effin lightweights… And while we were sleeping (although you can hardly call 15 minutes here and there - waking up irate, punching the tent, booting the rock in your back, needing a piss at 4am, having a fight with the sleeping bag again - actually sleeping), there was a riot backstage… more on this later!