One of the most anticipated metal and rock events of the year - Download 2004 has now finished with Metallica playing to a crowd of 60,000 fans – lighters raised in the air. But how was the festival for you? If you didn’t manage to go then we’ve talked to a few festival go-ers to find out what they thought of the festival and how it all began.
“I arrived at the festival about 12:00 on the Friday morning – thinking I would be early in to the campsite as the gates were only just due to open. Little did I realise how long it would actually take me to get in!”
“We queued for over 2 hours and eventually got in – and were given the wrong wristbands. The tents went up and the boozing started until about 2am where we passed out in the campsite.”
“The next morning we tried to get in early – with another queue that took about an hour to get in to the arena. The rest of the weekend was absolutely wicked though with some amazing bands that played – although it did suck that Metallica couldn’t do their whole set. Joey really filled in well for Lars though so it was a good night overall”.
In case you haven’t been keeping up to speed with the Download news, it has been a weekend of changes. Static-X had to pull out to getting lost on a motorway. SOiL got stuck in traffic and ended up playing only 1 song and a duet with Drowning Pool a day late. Lars from Metallica was taken ill – cutting back their set and resulted in other drummers filling in. At the same time Slayer got swapped to the second stage and everything was running behind. Put all that aside and everything went pretty well.
The weekend rounded up with HIM playing their nu-goth stylings to a packed second stage whilst The Suicide Girls took the third stage. Their “set” finished with chocolate sauce and cream a plenty – the front two rows of the crowd ending up remarkably like a chocolate sundae. All of this as Metallica only just start their set.
Did you go to Download? If so we want to hear from you – the best festival experiences will be put up on the site. We know we’ve met a few of you this weekend that went there – so we hope all of our readers had a fantastic weekend either at Download or stuck at home listening to their CD collection.
We’ve got more reviews to put up than you can shake a stick at – so expect to see them over the coming week. Download 2004. Scream for me Donnington!