THURSDAY
With more than 100,000 metal fans set to descend upon Castle Donington for Download Festival’s four-day, 20th anniversary celebration, it was inevitable there would be some level of upheaval. Horror stories of motorists being stuck in six hours’ worth of traffic getting on site are not uncommon. But, as Saxon once famously declared of the same grounds, the bands played on, starting in earnest with CANCER BATS. Even with strong winds diluting their sound on the second Opus Stage to a skeletal racket, the ferocity of their riffs – like a wild beast tearing meat off bone – is more than enough to churn the crowd into an animalistic frenzy. Sadly, however, they do get rudely shut off on the final song. Making his Download debut, MAMMOTH WVH, aka Wolfgang Van Halen, opens the main Apex Stage with Foo Fighters-like alt rock. He may only be two albums into his solo career, but Wolf’s adept crowd control and the melodies of Don’t Back Down paint a promising picture.
Menacing and moody, rising nu gen star MIMI BARKS spits out rapid-fire lines from the Dogtooth Stage with all the savvy of an alt Eminem, before hijacking the drums and beating out some punishing rhythms. Back on the Opus Stage, criminally underrated LA punks THE BRONX prove as gloriously chaotic and unpolished as they were when they first took our breath away two decades ago.
debut 2019 Download performance saw them play the smallest tent. So, today’s huge crowd and Apex Stage billing reflect just how much the Ukrainians’ monstrous tech-groove metal has exploded over the last few years, with vocalist Tatiana Shmayluk proving a particularly mesmerising force of nature. Suitably hidden from the sun in a shadowland of her own – the Dogtooth Stage – conjures a quiet storm, her songs brooding,
