Sonisphere review

[MM Punk]

This was the first time I’d been to Knebworth thanks to free VIP tickets via girlfriend, so seeing some great bands for virtually nothing just can’t be turned down!

SKINDRED:

Have always wanted to see them after hearing they were good live. Pretty standard metal to be honest, but they were good enough, just nothing really special.

TAKING BACK SUNDAY:

They’ve always been a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine because they are quite emo and everyone I know thinks they are shit. But the fact is they have some good songs and Adam Lazzara is a different kind of front man and pretty interesting to watch.

Not sure of the exact setlist but they played ‘A Decade Under The Influence’, ‘MakeDamnSure’ and ‘What It Feels Like To Be A Ghost’ which pleased me anyway.

Second time I’ve seen them at a festival now, and the sound was better here than it was last time at Reading and an overall good performance.

BJORN AGAIN:

Pretty surreal to see an Abba tribute band on a very metal bill, but it made a nice change I suppose. Even more surreal was their cover of ‘Enter Sandman’.

Everyone seemed to like them and there was no bottling. I think they would get bottled at Reading like many bands do, but I don’t know why it’s different with the Reading crowd. I guess it just shows that a crowd full mainly of metal fans aren’t as dumb as the indie student types who go to Reading in their droves!

They were good, but after a few songs it sank in that it was just an Abba tribute band, so became a bit karaoke. Maybe it would have been better if they were on a bit later.

THE USED:

It was just before they came on that I made friends with two muscular white racist gay South Africans. I posed the question “over here the general impression we have of white South African’s is that they are racist…”, and they basically said “yes we are!”. Which was pretty amazing and odd at the same time.

Then one of them started going on about white girls being gangraped by black men, so I got a bit nervous then and eventually moved elsewhere. They may have been trying to make some kind of hint towards a good looking man like me. I didn’t shit all weekend, the last thing I wanted was to be anally raped by two South Africans.

Anyway, The Used were OK. They’re impossible to get too excited about but ‘The Taste Of Ink’ and ‘Maybe Memories’ are great songs so it was good to hear them live again.

* After this I missed Heaven And Hell due to unforeseen circumstances.

LINKIN PARK:

Setlist:

Session

Given Up

From The Inside

Somewhere I Belong

No More Sorrow

Lying From You

Points Of Authority

What I’ve Done

Leave Out All The Rest

Numb

Breaking The Habit

Shadow Of The Day

Hands Held High

Crawling

In The End

Bleed It Out

Fire

Crawl Back In

My Suffering

New Divide

Faint

One Step Closer

This was one of my favourite performances of the weekend. There is a school of thought that you can’t be good if you’re nu-metal, but if you still think that genre exists, then Linkin Park are bloody good at it.

Chester Bennington’s vocals were amazing and the mass singalong to ‘In The End’ was one of the festival highlights.

It’s amazing how many great songs they actually have. The only downside was Bennington shilling his new band, Dead By Sunrise, and playing THREE of their songs for the first encore. Just made no sense whatsoever as I think it’s hard to truly take in and absorb a new song the first time you hear it, especially when it’s live.

It’s a minor moan tho as the rest of the setlist was spot on and allround truly a festival highlight.

KILLING JOKE:

Setlist:

Requiem

Wardance

Love Like Blood

Eighties

The Wait

Pssyche

Ok, 30 minutes for a truly fantastic band like Killing Joke is madness, but despite who they have influenced, they just wouldn’t be fully appreciated at this kind of festival. Almost everyone I spoke to had never even heard of them, so you can’t really blame the organizers for putting them in this slot.

Regardless of that, it was a great performance as usual. There is something spellbinding about the band and this was the fifth time I’ve seen them live.

‘Eighties’ was the highlight for me. Jaz Coleman dedicated it to “Dave Grohl and the surviving members of Nirvana“.

For those who don’t know, the Nirvana song ‘Come As You Are’ basically stole it’s main riff from ‘Eighties’, which even resulted in Killing Joke sueing Nirvana.

So yeah, as usual brilliant, just a shame it was over so soon, altho I don’t think most of the crowd really appreciated them that much.

LAMB OF GOD:

Setlist:

The Passing

In Your Words

Set To Fail

Walk With Me In Hell

Now You’ve Got Something To Die For

Dead Seeds

Laid To Rest

Redneck

Black Label

First them I’ve seen these live, but one of the best metal bands around in my opinion.

Just pure dirty metal. Nothing ‘nu’ about it, more like Pantera. A band whose moshpit I don’t want to be anywhere near!

I was hoping they would play the final two songs, so I wasn’t disappointed.

Great performance.

* At this point I realised that my stomach turned when I thought about so many great bands having to share a stage with poncey, cock rock shite like Buckcherry. Truly appalling band.

MASTODON:

Setlist:

Oblivion

Megalodon

Blood And Thunder

The Czar

Crack The Skye

Iron Tust

March Of The Fire Ants

Can’t really go wrong with this band. Heavy, technically brilliant heavy metal throughout the whole show as always.

Any idiot who has said metal musicians are not talented should be point towards this band for a start.

A great set, but an absolute travesty they played beneath Feeder.

I’ve heard some people say they find Mastodon boring, but if you like music then I just cannot understand that view at all.

LIMP BIZKIT:

Setlist:

My Generation

Livin’ It Up

Show Me What You Got

Hot Dog

Eat You Alive

Rollin’

Break Stuff

My Way

Nookie

Faith

Take A Look Around

I’ve never been a huge fan of Limp Bizkit, and Fred Durst has always been a complete w*nker, but they have always had four or five superb songs.

I’d heard about them being something special live, and this lived up to it. Like them or not, Durst and Wes Borland onstage together just add something which is hard to explain.

Even the songs which I’m not so keen on (‘Rollin’ , ‘Faith’ , ‘My Generation’) sounded great live.

‘Cambodia’, ‘Boiler’ and ‘Counterfeit’ are my favourite songs of the band and they were not played, but I didn’t even feel that gutted about that because it was such a good performance.

It’s hard to take your eyes off of Borland and this whole set just flew by. Brilliant.

NINE INCH NAILS:

Setlist:

The Way Out Is Through

Wish

I Do Not Want This

Something I Can Never Have

Gone, Still

The Frail

The Wretched

Non-Entity

Lights In The Sky

The Downward Spiral

Hurt

Really quite an odd set to be honest, especially for what could well be the band’s last UK show for a long time.

But the fact they played ‘Something I Can Never Have’ made up for any songs you might have wanted to hear. It’s rare they play this song and it’s one of the best in my opinion, so was amazing to hear it.

Trent seemed a bit more unhappy than usual. Well he’s never happy, but something seemed weird with him. I think it was either because they were on beneath Avenged Sevenfold or because he’s getting fat.

I preferred their recent show at the London O2 but this was still very good and the fact that it could be their last UK show adds something to it. Odd setlist or not.

AVENGED SEVENFOLD:

I don’t have a setlist for this but they played the usual songs you would expect, altho I was slightly disappointed with them.

I loved them when I saw them a couple of years ago and I do like their music, but for whatever reason I just really couldn’t get into this performance.

I think possibly because the band look and behave like rockstar clichés, rockstar posers, and to anyone with an ounce of sense that is a bit annoying and boring. It’s a shame really because they are a talented band, particularly lead guitarist Synyster Gates.

So for me the biggest letdown of the festival. Maybe my mood wasn’t right or they weren’t right, I don’t know.

METALLICA:

Setlist:

Blackened

Creeping Death

Fuel

Of Wolf And Man

Fade To Black

Broken, Beat And Scarred

Cyanide

Sad But True

One

All Nightmare Long

The Day That Never Comes

Master Of Puppets

Dyers Eve

Nothing Else Matters

Enter Sandman

Stone Cold Crazy

Hit The Lights

Seek And Destroy

Basically the perfect festival headliners, and one of the best bands in the world. Not really much more you can say than that.

A few new songs mixed in with some of their many, many classics. Impossible to be disappointed by this band live.

Too many highlights in the set to mention, but for me this was the perfect end to the festival.

OVERALL:

I probably saw more bands at this festival in a two day period than ever before. I had no intention of going originally, so I have to thank my girlfriend for offering me the ticket and putting up with me for 3 days.

Really enjoyed most of the bands I saw and apart from the “Metallica were f**king sick” girl camped next to us, I never actually disliked anyone new I met or was around. Which is quite some going for me, because I’m quite easily irritated!

Hopefully the festival will happen again in 2010. The atmosphere was very good and all seemed quite well organized.

[Lithium05]

I'm gonna keep my review short and just rate the bands I saw out of 5 and add a brief comment.

Saturday

Alien Ant Farm - 2/5 - seemed to just be going through the motions

Skindred - 4/5 - Not enough from Babylon for my liking, but there aren't many better life bands

Taking Back Sunday - 3/5 - Didn't move from the spot I was in for Skindred so I was just listening to them, but seemed a solid set.

Bjorn Again - 4/5 - Purely for the surreal experience of being knocked off my feet in a mosh pit for "Dancing Queen"

Airbourne 5/5 - Awesome as usual. Not to mention completely insane.

A cup of tea and some biscuits in the sheltered tea shop while it pissed down with rain - 6/5 -

Bullet For My Valentine - 3/5 - Decent set, but they seem to have a guy in the back playing with a dial that switches Matt Tuck's accent between Welsh and American!

Linkin Park - 3/5 - I've seen Linkin Park 5 or 6 times now and the always seem a bit too polished, the sound quality seems a bit too good and I often suspect that they're miming.... for the best way to describe this set I have to quote NOFX: "How were the band?, they were ok, not great, but pretty good, they played the songs I knew they would, some old, some new, the same formula stays true, we can concure - it's mediocre". Also the DBS set was a cheeky way to flesh out their set, and one of their songs was QOTSA's "Little Sister" with different words.

Sunday

Machine Head - 3/5 - Solid, but I couldn't help but be torn by their "we won't play before Limp Bizkit... ok we will" attitude

Corey Taylor - 4/5 - Technical difficulties aside he was awesome. Highlights were the epic singalongs to "Through Glass" and "Bother"

Limp Bizkit - 5/5 - If Fred Durst is the twat everyone thinks he is, then he hides it well, on stage he comes accross as humble, funny, and just genuinely pleased to be there. The set was similar to the Download one, with a bit of shuffling, but it was overall a lot of fun.

The Defiled - 4/5 - Check them out, debut album in October, quality band that I only watched originally because I know the drummer.

Alice in Chains 4/5 - missed the start of the set but what I heard was great, hopefully the new album will be too.

NIN - 3/5 - What they played was a strange choice, but they played it very well

Zebrahead - 4/5 - brilliant as per usual, set was too short at 30 mins though

Metallica - 5/5 - left during Enter Sandman to beat the traffic (friends had work the next morning) but quality set and the new stuff integrates well with the older stuff

[edgar]

i'm gonna do a review too.

oceansize - amazing, band of the festival and one of the best live performances i've ever seen.

nine inch nails - also amazing, had a lump in my throat and goosebumps for most of the set, i'd probably have sex with trent reznor if he asked me.

rolo tomassi - pretty much amazing too, i'd not paid them much attention before, but they put on a brilliant show. also i now have regular filthy thoughts about eva spence. what a gal.

sylosis - the best 'proper' metal band i saw all weekend. i left feeling ashamed that i'd not seen them before, seeing as they're from just down the road.

metallica - brilliant as expected, but they were never gonna be anything less than very good.

everyone else - pretty much average. i thought the sound quality on the main stage was poor, sometimes verging on terrible.

[thegremlin_1999]

my review of the first day can be found here

any comments are appreciated!! about any of the articles on that blog!

[jackass]

Metallica live is just a damn fine experience It never gets boring even after the seventh time when extacy of gold kicks in and the goosebumps...Golden. they were f**kin mint in manchester on thurs night

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