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Countdown To Sonisphere, Part Two: When Saturday Comes

We all know Rammstein are going to be somewhere near 'ludicrous', but what about the other delights hidden further down the bill?

Click here for the Friday preview, including a top-notch Spotify playlist and videos from the likes of Alice Cooper, Deaf Havana, Gary Numan, ASIWYFA and more.

Saturday means fire, tight clothes and more fire: Rammstein, then. There’s no doubting it’ll be ‘a show’…

Guess the organisers are banking on all the ‘stein fans loving the ridiculousness of the show and everyone else checking them out to see what the fuss is about.

Should you feel sorry for the plucky Polar Bear Club, as they’re the only band in the entire festival playing the same time as Rammstein? To be honest it could be the best thing that’s ever happened to them because if everyone who doesn’t want to be set on fire by a bunch of greased-up Germans gets involved in their delightful punk rock singalongs they could end up playing to a quite colossal crowd. Plus, as one of the hardest-working – and best – bands around they deserve a shot in the arm.

If, on Sunday morning, you keep hearing “Hey, did you watch Rammstein blow shit up last night?” “Hell no, I was singing my heart out to PBC!” around the site, you can’t say we didn’t warn you.

Before that, though, there’s Placebo, who are treated like gods on the continent but who seems to be perennially underrated over here despite having a colossal fanbase. Fingers crossed the leave out all the difficult stuff, stick to the hits and crank out this little beauty when the time is right…

Good Charlotte and Papa Roach will be interesting in a Limp-Bizkit-at-last-year’s-Download kinda way – if they bring the fun and don’t take themselves too seriously they could be a great couple of sets to sit and have a beer to; if they take the opportunity to ram whatever new material down our throats, well, you can always go and watch Rinoa instead. Having said that, there’s a school of thought that dictates you should go and see a fine, hard-working UK band with more new, good ideas in one song than two tired US giants doing the festival rounds for a chunky pay-day… but that’s probably only half true.

You can’t really not see Anthrax this weekend, because it’s going to be something of a homecoming for the thrash kings. Yeah, Europe had the entirety of the Big Four but the thing about Anthrax is they’re fucking Anthrax.

And the trouble with writing a preview for a festival as big as this is that there are simply too… many… bands. Corey Taylor’s solo show will definitely be a talking point, as will the unbearably brilliant Therapy? tearing through the classic ‘Troublegum’ as a whole, but can we realistically miss out on earthtone9? Or the festival debut of Young Legionnaire? Or some grizzled dudes by the name of Sick Of It All who are hear to tear shit up NYC-style? One of the more interesting sets will be Renegades aka Feeder, who have returned from the mainstream wilderness with a punchy new album and a wilful disregard for the last eight years of their career. In short, go and see them and they might play ‘Descend.’ What’s not to like?


Fear Factory are going to transport us all the way back to 1999 – in a good way: when they play ‘Lynchpin’ it’s going to go nuts - and Skunk Anansie will probably do similar but in a more emotional sense. I’m sure some people are stoked on seeing Motley Crue but I for one will be as far away from those grizzled ballsacs as is possible. Dreadful misogynism masquerading as rock ‘n’ roll myth, anyone? Fuck that, go and see a proper band: Gallows.

Ben Patashnik