Frankly Mr Shankly

I was considering a Saturday day ticket but I’ll pass now that Creeper, Mastodon & Deftones all clash. The stage times really highlight how poor the lineup is this year.

Yep this would be an instant ticket for me. Great line up & exactly the direction the festival should be going in.

Friday: Main: Ghost, Alice Cooper, Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes Second: Lamb of God Saturday: Main: Metallica, Judas Priest, Greta Van Fleet Second: Offspring Sunday: Main: Rammstein, Gojira, Disturbed Second: Motley Crue

He already played the second stage in 2017… agree he probably wouldn’t be well received in the higher slots he’d command now though.

I agree it’s a metal & classic rock festival, but I don’t know that I agree entirely with rest of this logic… Dave Grohl has played before, loves classic rock/metal & Foos play plenty of ‘heavy’ festivals in Europe. Green Day & Blink have both played Download Paris, Pearl Jam were booked to play Download in 2013. Most bands of that size probably aren’t even involved in booking their own shows, they’ll play where the agents negotiate the best deals. It’s probably Copping’s unwillingness to shell out for the above names when he can book Def Leppard again for cheaper that’s the issue.

They could loosen up more on the restrictions around big bands playing other dates around Download. For example Green Day could have headlined as part of their stadium tour instead of it being an either/or situation. Download have always maintained that strict booking structure & I think that’s the main reason why bands like Foos, Green Day, Pearl Jam, RHCP etc have alluded them so far.

I would have been shocked if it was Liam since he’s playing Rock in Rio. how big are Ornatos Violeta in Portugal? I know nothing about them but they seem to be the same size font as Chemical Brothers and Kraftwerk… could they be the third headliner?

Interesting that they’ve got Chemical Brothers & Kraftwerk on the same day, that would suggest another headliner is due for this, hopefully not Liam Gallagher though. edit: Liam is playing rock in Rio Lisbon - hopefully that rules him out.

Had my eye on this since it was announced… for a new festival their social media is awfully quiet, almost worryingly so. You’d think they’d want to make a big deal of it & get the rest of the lineup out asap

It was never going to, most of this years is a carry over from 2020 & was always going to be. Next year will be the true test to see if the pilot influenced any change in booking strategy. While ever Copping is involved, unfortunately I don’t see it.

Sounds like a pretty accurate Freddie to me then. controversial music opinion: Queen (especially Freddie) are the most overrated & cringe band of all time

If that was the line up I’d structure it more like this: Friday: Bring Me The Horizon, Architects, While She Sleeps Saturday: Metallica, Gojira, Mastodon Sunday: System of a Down, Faith No More Maybe throw Disturbed on under Faith No More. An older band headlining second against BMTH would probably be wise too, maybe Motley Crue or Judas Priest.

I’d go. Some odd placings though assuming that’s the MainStage? Why have Mastodon suddenly jumped from subbing second this year to subbing main? sandwiched between BMTH & Architects is an odd place to put them too. Architects should sub next time they play, Powerwolf and Meshuggah are a few slots too high.

They have the luxury of scaling to about 150,000 punters if needs be, so no they don’t tend to sell out.

If AEG are looking to put on something to rival Download then next year is the time to do it. Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold, Metallica, Aerosmith, Judas Priest, Five Finger Death Punch, NIN, Limp Bizkit just to name a few are all around and not doing Download/any uk fests. The problem is, as Sonisphere showed, it's not sustainable to have two large heavy/metal festivals in the UK.