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Download Festival 2011: Saturday Rolling Review

The first review of Download's second day featuring System Of A Down's return to the UK, Funeral For A Friend, Avenged Sevenfold, letlive. and more.

Well, we did it. We survived Friday - and it only rained a little bit. Click here for the full review of Day One of Download Festival, featuring Bring Me The Horizon, Korn, DRUGS, Young Guns and more.

We hit the ground running on Day Two at Donington, read on to see what we thought of System Of A Down, letlive, Your Demise, Avenged Sevenfold and loads more.

As the dawn broke over the Download festival site, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA’s unacceptably early slot on the Main Stage fell fairly flat on a hanging audience. It’s to their credit they stumbled through their set with an unmatched amount of energy, but energy alone does not a good set make. (AR)



Fortunately yesterday’s second stage sound issues seemed to have resolved themselves by the time RISE TO REMAIN came out en force some time just after lunch. Some late morning fretboard fuckery was just what the doctor ordered and it’s exactly what these boys delivered. Frontman Austin Dickinson is a real stage pacer and lead his troupe through a relentless mosh-centric frenzy; it was an exciting display that wiped the hangovers off many a weary-faced revellers. (AR)



Back over on the main stage, ESCAPE THE FATE delivered a similarly excellent performance, wasting little time with between-song banter and focusing entirely on delivering chaos in heavy dosage. Quite how many people were there to partake in the Las Vegas foursome’s noise and sporadic melodies was a surprise to even us and they have improved immeasurably since the last time we caught them. Loud, energetic and impressive. (AR)

It’s still a bit early to be invoking Elizabeth Bathory and indulging in elaborate occultish ritual but, hey, it’s the weekend. Hidden behind hooded cloaks and masks and led into prayer by a zombie pope, no-one knows who the members of GHOST are. It only adds to the magic as ‘Satan’s Prayer’, ‘Prime Mover’ and ‘Elizabeth’ bring Download some much needed Scooby Doo fright-night atmosphere, and send us all to hell. The congregation’s big and getting bigger, and Down's Phil Anselmo has been preaching that he's converted.(JH)

On the Red Bull Bedroom Jam stage, BLITZ KIDS struggled to make much of an impression on a large but overwhelmingly lethargic crowd forced into the tent by the inclement weather. As slick, tight and lively as they were, their decision to plough an increasingly melodic furrow unfortunately highlighted the fact that they were packing very few stand-out tunes. Engaging front-man Joe James might have been careening about the place with maximum enthusiasm, trailing that piece of dead badger which seems permanently attached to his arse, but this did little to elicit more than a polite murmur from anyone beyond the gaggle of excitable teens on the barrier. Hmm. (PW)

Home Counties crushers HEIGHTS, on the other hand, failed to make the impact we might have expected through no fault of their own. Facing a sound man who was clearly lacking in the ears department, furiously intense vocalist Thomas Debaere found it near impossible to make himself heard, and with the guitars cutting in and out like nobody's business, the band's carefully paced, glacial post-hardcore lacked the nuances necessary to demonstrate the true power of churning slabs of rage like the stunningly apoplectic 'Eye For An Eye'. Maybe next time. (PW)



When it comes to bringing the boogie to the party, CLUTCH are peerless. No other band can touch the Maryland quartet when it comes to lubing up guitars with festival burger grease and frying together some loose-meat shuffling blues-rock grooves. It’s a Saturday afternoon festival set: no messing, no jamming, just the hits, just about that time when you start slamming those beers down faster as Neil Fallon’s inspired lyrics get to work putting smiles on faces.(JH)



Jesus Christ, LETLIVE. With a live show that intense, the band's challenge was to channel their blistering energy across an outdoor stage setup and typical festival sound. And starting your set off in the crowd is a great idea to drum up an atmosphere - but as the festival security staff are very good at their jobs, it's an uphill struggle for vocalist Jason Butler to actually get on stage to start singing. Once he's up and running, though, their set might as well be one of their club shows, with instruments and microphones flung around the stage without compromising a single note of their songs. Unbelievable. (AB)





Their set is a good measure of what’s to come, with YOUR DEMISE sharing a similar energy, plus enough of a loyalty to catchy choruses and breakdowns to pull in bored punters (they have a little help from their friends, too, with Jason from LETLIVE providing a few guest vocals) – and subsequently, the tent is packed to the rafters with old and new fans. Having chosen a set that's heavier on their new material, the title track from 2010's ‘The Kids We Used To Be’ is a fitting way to sum things up; this is the kind of festival where people's only real goal is to have as good a time to music as humanly possible, and the level of rocking out in the pit matches the band's ethos perfectly. (AB)



Propped up on bar stools on the Jagermeister stage and clad in the timeless rock star combo of leather jackets and jet black shades, Sweden's ROYAL REPUBLIC took a very different approach to drawing in the wandering mid-afternoon punters. With an arsenal of infectious tunes totally reworked for this acoustic set, the band elected to travel a predominantly country rock path, as well as injecting a hilarious 'gangster rap' interlude into 'Full Steam Space Machine' and seguing into an even funnier boy band parody in the form of 'Cry Baby'. Topping this off with a gold-plated line in self-depreciating between song banter was an inspired decision, reminding us exactly what rock 'n' roll used to be all about: fun. (PW)



“No fucking stage manager is going to tell me what to do,” says TRASH TALK singer Lee Spielman from somewhere within the crowd, after spending the entirety of their half-hour set on the barrier. For someone watching from the back of the tent, that's not so visually appealing, but the band's attitude is simultaneously what’s great about their set – it’s not like their short, jarring bursts of hardcore fit the traditional ‘rock band’ mould anyway, so why should their live show? And when the guitarist and bassist are there to compensate by relentlessly pacing the stage and scaling their amps, there’s nothing to be mad at here whatsoever. (AB)

THE DANGEROUS SUMMER were struggling with indifference from the off. To be fair, their dense, slow-burning alt-rock wasn't best suiting to this setting, given the lack of immediate hooks to pull in the unfamiliar, but even their punchy, passionate performance couldn't shake the static throng into action. Accomplished as their music undoubtedly is, and as immersive as they have the potential to be in a club environment, today was clearly a case of wrong band, wrong time. (PW)



Given that they’d come all the way from Australia to play to an embarrassingly sparse gaggle of flagging last afternoon punters, grubby rock ‘n’ rollers DANGEROUS! could have been forgiven for feeling a little deflated on their first UK festival appearance. Admirably, however, they rose to the challenge with aplomb, tearing through a performance which one might usually expect from veteran headliners with a devoted horde in the palms of their hands. Plying an admittedly unoriginal brand of highly melodic arena rock, they nevertheless impressed with their cheerful, balls-out attitude alone, imploring anyone within earshot to “raise the fucking roof” throughout. Dangerous? No. Entertaining? Hell yes. (PW)

AVENGED SEVENFOLD marked their return with fire, brimstone and a whole catalogue full of guitar solo extravagance, but it was all just a bit underwhelming, really. Sure, the hits were there and to M. Shadows credit his voice sounded positively gigantic, but their set felt like it was very much a case of a band churning through the motions. Ultimately there was no sense of theatre or entertainment and it just lacked that extra something to make it feel like A7X were worthy of their billing. Disappointing.(AR)





Across the festival site, however, THE KING BLUES have no problem justifying their presence at a predominantly heavy rock and metal festival. Nor do they have any problem winning over punters, whatever their taste – whether it’s the ska-influenced ‘Mr Music Man’ or pop punk classic ‘I Got Love,’ the appreciation from the crowd can be heard from way outside their packed-out tent. Their show also captures what’s probably the most diverse crowd of the festival, all of whom enjoy a set that captures the unified, positive vibe of the festival marvellously. (AB)



The Pepsi Max stage is rounded off with a set from FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND, who are in high spirits, given that this festival coincides with their 10th anniversary – “10 years of being Welsh as fuck,” as singer Matthew Davies-Kreye puts it – and it shows in the stellar set they turn out tonight. With the running order of songs offering more of a retrospective than a simple plug of their latest material, it’s a treat to watch, and easy to see how they’ve lasted so long – for the most part, they look more like a group of friends jamming than a headlining band (in a really good, really Welsh way). (AB)



He’s so old his school photos are in black and white. So what, ALICE COOPER is immortal. Having admitted that today’s audiences are un-shockable, Alice just sets out to entertain us instead. It’s an unmistakable sight; him on stage with a face like a melting Hallowe’en cake and a succession of top hats. All his parlour tricks are on show tonight: his beheading, the pick of the bunch. But it’s nights like tonight that remind you that his catalogue is not just ‘80s / ‘90s rock compilation gold. ‘School’s Out’, with its Pink Floyd ‘The Wall’ mid-section, and the showstopping ticker-tape anthem, ‘I Wanna Be Elected’ are some of classic rock’s most untouchable standards. Alice is untouchable, too. Vote Alice, we have.(JH)



Saturday night at the main stage saw SYSTEM OF A DOWN return; reunited and ready rock. If any band this weekend has run the risk of being described as 'CD perfect', it is SOAD which works as much as a negative criticism as it does a positive. Sonically brilliant (and we mean brilliant), the likes of 'Prison Song', 'BYOB' and the inevitable 'Chop Suey' were suitably raucous and demanded a rapturous crowd response, but as far a live experience goes, there is little to be said. It was an awkward performance to watch, with next to no interaction between crowd and band and even less between band member and band member, while Serj Tankian appeared a far cry from the enigmatic frontman many will remember from their glory days. Overall, it was a business-like approach to a headline slot from System Of A Down. (AR)


To read our review of Download Festival's final day click right here.