Live Review : Download Festival on June 10th 2023

When they say “Sold Out” they really do mean “Sold Out”. This is the busiest we’ve ever ever seen Download and all four stages start crowded and just accelerate from there. Our journey today begins with a four-band salvo on the second stage. Static Dress are quite simply a different band to the one that opened the third day of Download pilot two years ago. At the time they brimmed with potential but came across as incoherent and rather scattergun. Twenty-four months of tireless touring has resulted in an immaculately focused and really rather slick post-hardcore outfit. They now look collectively very comfortable in their own skins and have managed to hone a rather unique sound that blends aggression with blatant commerciality. There is a subtlety and nuance to their approach that makes them stand out from the usual bunch of angry young men. This is not heaviness or distortion for heaviness and distortion’s sake. The fearsome breakdowns play crucial roles in the sanctity of their entire sound.

 Stray From The Path are the connoisseur’s hardcore band. It is obvious how stoked Static Dress are to be proceeding them this early afternoon and they attract a selective but reverent audience. You can see where the opening act got a lot of their ideas from as Stray From The Path empathetically blend power with quivering emotion. Yes, they scream and rage, but it is grounded by a foundation of humanity and humility. They may be angry but that anger is channelled into utter positivity.

Municipal Waste are having a whale of a time “Looks it’s Airforce One, Made you stare” goads Tony Foresta as he banters with his sizable crowd. There is something wonderfully entertaining about dumb, idiotic unfiltered thrash. “We’ve only got forty minutes, so we have had to drastically reduce our set to just fifteen songs” Tony jests and in many ways captures the very essence of Municipal Waste. Nothing stays around for long and if one track doesn’t tickle your fancy, don’t worry there will be another around in a couple of minutes. It worked for The Ramones and it works for Municipal Waste. Nothing is taken seriously, and it is that unashamed frivolity that makes them so darn enjoyable. The circle pits swirl and the dust kicks up and the crowd reveals in the entire stupidity of the whole thing. Dumb Fun personified.

I have dragged the impartiality klaxon all the way to Donington Park as Carcass are my favourite band on earth and frankly, they could come on stage and fart the theme song from “Only Fools and Horses” and I would still be proclaiming it to be a piece of genius that is radically reforming metal as we know it. This afternoon they go for the heads down and head for the finishing post-school of stagecraft. Emulating Municipal Waste before them they rattle through a twelve-song set in forty minutes. It is essentially the equivalent of being dragged headlong through a high-paced potted history of the entire history of modern metal.

Carcass discovered that sweet spot between melody and primal aggression whilst its modern purveyors were still cavorting around in diapers. ‘This Mortal Coil’, ‘Death Certificate’, ‘Heartwork’ and ‘Buried Dreamsmay’ all be collectively thirty years old but they still sound like the last word in frantic, driving heaviness. Filled to the brim with pulsating riffs and then topped off by Jeff Walker’s trademark buzz saw vocals. Carcass make no attempt to draw breath and instead storm through the set with each track emerging from the last, in fact a number are joined at the hip like contorted metal monsters. When we reach the last grinding embers of ‘316L Grade Surgical Steel’, Jeff very simply remarks that they have been Carcass and leaves the stage. For a band known for controversial opinions, this afternoon the music has been left to do the talking and what it has said is that there is no band as important to metal’s ongoing evolution as Carcass.

The sun is shining, the beer is flowing, the good-time vibes are at maximum and the predicted thunderstorm seems to have got lost somewhere between exit and entry. The perfect time for a slice of guttural blues rock. Clutch have been doing this for longer than anyone cares to remember, however it is only in recent years that they have managed to pull away from the rest of the pack. Whilst there are plenty of identikit purveyors of chugging blues rock, Clutch have evolved into something really rather special indeed. Part of this is the effortless stagecraft of Neil Fallon. He manages to blend steely-eyed determination with an almost comic irreverence. He has an admirable arrogance that is only reserved for those who have total conviction about what they're doing. 

 The other ace up Clutch’s sleeves that has seen them slowly but surely traverse metal's greasy pole of success, is their ability to create complex but catchy numbers. They combine effortlessly the raw emotion of the blues with a heightened level of technicality. They long ago rejected the meat and potato approach of their peers but still manage to fashion songs that lodge in the brain for far longer than they have a right to. Today they provide the engaging and pulsating mid-afternoon set that we all need. They make being this good seem effortless and that is even after they have had to draft in short notice Brad Davis from Fu Manchu to fill in for absent bassist Dan Maines. Cool, inspiring and just what the weather calls for.

Either Download’s venerable bookers have seriously overestimated the draw of Alexisonfire or every bugger on site has decided on a whim to go and see Three Days Grace or Bob Vylan. The main stage is painfully empty, especially for a Saturday that everywhere else feels woefully oversold. Alexisonfire soldier on admirably, however audience reaction is at best muted and very much limited to the small bunch of fanboys and girls huddled up at the front of the stage. Their unique blend of emotive hardcore can usually reduce me to tears, but this afternoon it all feels a bit hollow and pointless. They really do try but their delicate melodic refrains are in the main drowned out by 10,000 people deciding just now is the perfect time to have a loud conversation with their respective mates. Battered and bruised by watching a band I love so much land so badly, I cut my losses and wander off in search of other riches.

On the dogtooth stage, Spirit Adrift are doing a damn fine impression of Mastodon the early years.. After the dreary un-connectedness of Alexisonfire (and remember before you start chucking things I adore Alexisonfire, they just seemed to be as popular as a porcupine at an orgy) it's refreshing to find a band and audience in perfect symmetry. It's doom metal but with a sprinkle of show business sparkle. Nate Garrett is a supernova of molten charisma. He just burns off the stage throwing rockstar poses left right and centre. Their material may be heavy and pounding but has a real pizzazz to it that lifts it well out of the ordinary. The clear driver here is fun and the grin on Nate's face as he exits the stage could well be seen from space.

Hats off to GWAR (and of course I'm talking about a big papier-mâché hat adorned with silver paint and a humongous spike) as they have pulled together a completely unique show, especially for their minuscule 25 minutes allotted time. King Charles III makes his download debut in order to warn us great unwashed about the reprobates from Georgia who caused his dear mummy's demise. He sets the full weight of the law (one customed extra) on the poor unsuspecting GWAR but is not long until the good old-fashioned British bobby has been flagellated, decapitated and well and truly buggered. It's GWAR so you know it's going to get messy, you know it's going to get puerile and you know it’s going to be gruesome.

The comic book castrations and dissections come thick and fast and before you know it the entire front rows are bathed in beetroot juice. It's nonsense, it's immature and it's just gloriously silly fun. The tunes play very much second fiddle to the onstage antics, and nobody really goes to a GWAR show for the songs. They come here for the shock, maim and for the mess, a hell of a lot of mess. GWAR bring their splatterfest bring their cartoon violence close to home when a crude facsimile of the beloved download dog is sliced apart during the finale. Complete nonsense but completely captivating nonsense, nevertheless.

As the security remove their now red-stained rain Macs the place begins to fill for Monuments. You can't help but feel sorry for them as previously to the announcement of Creeper playing a secret set, they were tonight’s headliners, but unceremoniously they have been bumped down the grid one place. Their relegation doesn't seem to bother them as they come bounding on stage like a tornado of six-week-old puppies. The acquisition of Andy Cizek on vocals has given the band are whole new lease of life. They now bounce where they are used to grind and the place is heaving with those in rapture to their hyperactive take on prog. Yes there is oodles of technical proficiency on show, but there is also a level of pulsating vitality that makes the whole thing feel invigorating and energising. A stunning reminder that they are still very relevant.

This is more than a secret set. This is Creeper’s audition the headline Download in the next couple of years. They have all the necessary ingredients: Anthems where their disciples know every word – check. A frontman with an ego the size of Cheshire – check. Stage presence that the average emo outfit would die for – check. If I was 14 years old, I would have by now hammered my colours to their mast and surreptitiously left home to follow them around the country. They are the band that every misfit antisocial teenager needs. They provide that sense of belonging, the sense of ownership, and that sense that someone, somewhere understands you.

For the uninitiated they are Goth-a-billy, if Jim Steinman had written an album for Glenn Danzig this is what it would have sounded like. Creeper are unrepentant in their ambition. They make no secret that they have the heart set on that large stage over the other side of the site. Their songs are designed especially to be screamed along with by tens of thousands of loyal apostles. Tonight, they are as wonderful as ever, even if there are a few production mishaps and the dreaded curfew gets in the way (God forbid anybody has the audacity to be playing at the same time as Metallica). But as I say tonight is just a dry run and no matter how wonderful and poignant Misery sounds this evening, it will sound even better with the full force of the Download choir behind it.

And on to Metallica part two. I'll be completely honest and say for the first hour my mind wanders between the field here in Derbyshire and another field in Turkey. My enjoyment is continually punctuated by text updates from home letting me know how close things are in the Champions League final. It's only when the final whistle blows in Istanbul that I'm finally able to relax and enjoy the set. Whilst the use of ‘Whiplash’ as an opener is an inspired left-field choice, there is much more of a feeling of inevitability about tonight’s Show. That is because we are essentially building our expectations based on what they didn't play on Thursday. Whilst we all sing along with gusto, the inclusion of ‘Sanatorium’, ‘Battery’, ‘One’, ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ and ‘Enter Sandman’ all feels remarkably predictable. 

I don't know whether it is because the elements of surprise have gone but tonight’s Show feels far safer and pedestrian than the one the other night. To carry on with the football analogy it is like Metallica know that the game is won and are simply keeping the ball by the corner flag to kill time. The inclusion of ‘Orion’ on Thursday night seemed expansive, expressive and risky. To then roll out its near sibling ‘The Call of Ktulu’ two nights later feels at best foreseeable and at worst lazy.

However I am beating Metallica with an unavoidable stick. There may well be a lack of anticipation, but there are still moments of brilliance. ‘The Unforgiven’ is a dark foreboding singalong and the aforementioned ‘One’ contains more pyrotechnics than the entire Rammstein performance. But in the end, my overall feeling is whether you can actually get too much of a good thing. I have adored Metallica since I first heard ‘Master of Puppets’ in 1986. I've seen them umpteen times over the years and it is that rarity and expectation that makes it so exciting. Having these two shows so close together means that by the fifth hour of this marathon, it all starts to border on familiarity. I may well be sent to the back of the class in disgrace but if I'm honest I think I would have preferred one singular lean, mean and awesome headliner set as opposed to a bloated two-night stand. As they say, and it’s true in this circumstance, less is definitely more.