King101

It’s not 100% comparable because they removed all logos from last years poster but 4th on main was given the “big bold font” treatment last year, rather than being lumped into the alphabetical lists. On the Saturday 5th on main even got that billing due to Creeper being a surprise. Sometimes it’s just about looking good on a poster.

People with a track record of getting these things correct have said it’s the case

Metallica are playing 2 night in Canada over the Reading/Leeds weekend next year, so they can be ruled out

How about Metallica / Disturbed / Alexisonfire / Coheed / Ice Nine Kills on main Placebo / Clutch / Three Days Grace on second?

Based on the full line-up from last year (and assuming maybe 5 bands per stage on the Thursday) there are 15-20 bands left to announce. Saturday subheadliner feels like the biggest missing slot but Thursday and Sunday are also probably short 1 decent size band each.

Pendulum are a difficult one to place because it’s been so long since they actually toured so it’s a guessing game what the demand is. However, in a year where Alter Bridge, Ghost, Parkway, Evanescence, FFDP, Pantera, Prodigy, Nightwish, Limp Bizkit, Incubus, Tenacious D, QOTSA, MGK etc are all on the festival circuit Pendulum being booked as 3rd down doesn’t seem impossible

That’s not how it works though, KoRn have been getting bigger crowds than headliners for two decades and yet have never made a jump to headliner because those people who fill the field at Download don’t show up to KoRn tours or buy their albums. If even 25% of the people who watched KoRn at Download bought their new album they would probably be a headliner but the people in that field only care about KoRn 1 weekend a year

Placebo are playing Hurricane and Southside festivals the week after Download so festival maths puts them in the conversation

This is such a dishonest characterisation of the BMTH situation. They headlined Reading and Leeds, there’s no inverted commas about it. R&L has 2, equally sized and equally promoted, main stages and all 6 acts are billed as headliners. You make it sound like they played the old NME tent but lobbied to get a bigger logo on the poster.

ADTR was the sub but AFI were 3rd, a slot they were nowhere near big enough for. Plus the likes of Sikth, Hacktivist and Of Mice & Men were on main, it was a jumbled mess of a line up then too. This isn’t exclusive to Biffy, it’s a consistent trend going back to MCR in 2007. Book a slightly left field headliner, make no attempt to cater to their fanbase, stack a “Download favourite” against them on second stage and then shrug and say “well we gave them a shot” when it doesn’t work. If they can cater entire main stage days for classic rock acts they can do the same for mainstream rock acts, or pop punk acts or any other genre, they just choose not to.

Something like A Day To Remember, Frank Carter, Funeral For a Friend, Creeper, Boston Manor, Wargasm would have made for a much more compelling undercard for a Biffy day and you can’t say it’s “not Download” when literally every one of those bands was already on the bill

When you add in Trivium, Gojira, Bullet and Alter Bridge all having tours with Halestorm supporting AB, While She Sleeps supporting Parkway and Architects supporting Biffy it’s realistic that all of the subs and 3rd place bands are blocked from being announced right now

They’ve reached a point where album quality is irrelevant, just like Foo Fighters and Green Day. Green Day just did a hugely successful stadium tour and didn’t play a single song from their last 5 albums. People don’t go to see bands if that level to hear new material.

I think it would be really interesting to see how Download would look today if the indie day experiment has gone well in 2005. I believe Blink were originally booked as the headliner and then dropped out. If they played and went down well would we have seen Green Day, Paramore, Panic, Fall Out Boy etc headline by now? If they would have got someone like Muse or Foo Fighters instead of Feeder (latching onto those bands before they hit stadium level) would Download be more accepting of someone like Biffy in 2022? Could we have seen Pearl Jam headline by now?

BMTH, MCR and Muse all in one year would possibly be seen as too big of a departure from the usual but I’d be well up for a line up like that

They’ve tried that before with Muse and Biffy and it hasn’t really paid off because they make no attempt to make it worthwhile to fans of those acts. You can bet if QOTSA headlined they would fill the main stage with Classic Rock and Metalcore bands and then stick someone like Judas Priest up against them on 2nd stage. They need a more substantial shift, if they book a crossover act as a headliner then book a complimentary main stage that day and maybe a similar leaning 2nd stage the next day.

The main riff in that song is probably heavier than anything Kiss have ever done but nobody every debates if they’re too pop to headline.

Since winning Eurovision they’ve had 3 different songs in the UK charts, the last 2 both in the top 10. They also currently have the 4th most streamed song in the world on Spotify (and the 15th). Id say the majority of the Reading and Leeds audience would be fully aware of them at this point.