BenG92

Is there a shop near the hive that sells crates or is it just a trip to Leuven?

We found that several times in The Barn yeah, it's so strange. We arrived a little late for Cigarettes and there was a pile of people outside trying to get out of the rain, then it really came down and everyone broke into a run to the Barn 😁

Amazing first day despite some rain - us Brits should be used to that by now! Saw almost everyone we wanted to see but Klub was full for Cigarettes so we watched First Aid Kit who were great. Pearl Jam absolutely tore the roof off and I doubt anything else will come close for us. Roll on the rest of the weekend in the sun shine! This festival puts all others we've been to to shame in terms of how easy and available everything is, going to spoil us on others!

En route to Rock Werchter and there were literally 3x as many free water taps while waiting for the shuttle to the grounds than there were at Primavera itself 🤣

Taken us two hours and we still haven't left the airport 😅

Long non EU queue at Brussels - thanks Brexshit - but the weather is lovely for now and my Mrs saw the grounds from her window seat, all feels very real!

2:30am on the motorway for a 6am flight, who's idea was this?! Gonna be a long Thursday 😅

Yeah indeed. I've been saying Deftones too for a while but honestly hearing feedback from their recent lives shows, maybe not. Sounds like they're suited to a dark indoors. Not seen them myself since Koi No Yokan. Agree on Biffy who get an incredibly unfair wrap because of fucking X Factor of all things. So many people I mention Biffy too and their immediate reaction is "what, when we collide? not interested". Meanwhile at Leeds they look like Slayer next to most of the bill.

You might as well put Nirvana in there at this point, why not.

Let's hope so. I don't even mind them but GVF being given more time to headline is the worst possible outcome, no way they can pad that show out with their current catalogue. They're already being given 15 minutes less than 2019. Frankly as a weekend ticket holder I'll be a bit pissed off if we don't get something back from Metallica not playing. That's an enormous blow to the ticket value on top of FNM, QOTSA and Fender already having not really been given appropriate replacements. Even if it's just some free bar tokens it's better than nothing. As you say, no way they can find a decent replacement in time.

Yeah I don't disagree with you on the undercard, I just think we can't ignore the headliner situation either. We can all name tons of suitable ones but year after year they are never on the bill, that's the issue for me. I don't even care about them being as big as the current pile as long as they were fresh. Machine Head (who I can see for less than Biffy) doing the huge free rein set that they want to see is so much more interesting than Iron Maiden yet again. Interestingly on the undercard, 2022's three main stage subs were statistically the 3 most common undercard bands to play Download. '22 was the "safest" year they've ever done by that metric. Not to mention Korn should 110% be headliners by now.

Still well over £1000 for tickets, flights and a hotel for two of us for just the main festival days so no way I can justify jumping in without an insane lineup like 22 had If I lived in BCN it would be a no brainer every year probably though

Yeah I think we focus on headliners so much because Download do, and we know they will continue to I'd go for a FFDP / Parkway / Ghost trio in 2024 if it had a good undercard but it would probably simply not shift the tickets needed. The reality is more likely to be something like Ghost / SOAD / GNR or whatever

Thing is headliners are always gonna be what a lot of people make their decisions on. Every year I look at a Download with the same rotated shit it completely puts me off because I know that's where a lot of my ticket money is going and I'm just not interested, and they're often so reluctant to put anyone opposite on 2nd properly that I know it's likely either that headliner or my tent. If I saw like, Machine Head and NIN at the top I'd actually be excited for once But yeah you're absolutely right on the rest, as I said above Copping named 5 bands who he sees as potential future headliners and then tucked 4 of them on other stages. Ridiculous.