Saturday 10/06/06 Day 2 @ Download Festival, Donington Park

The organisers have kept up the “secret” set tradition since Metallica played the second stage in 2003, with this year’s band being Down, opening up the main stage on Saturday. Despite a solid array of tracks, Phil Anselmo and company managed to embarrass themselves even more than your gran doing karaoke after a few too many glasses of sherry at Christmas. Mr Anselmo’s love for himself is mildly amusing at best and downright annoying at worst. We hoped his demands for the crowd to “stop ****ing staring at me” would be taken literally with the whole arena walking away, but there were bigger fish to fry and so everyone laughed at what an idiot he was making of himself and concentrated on the few and far between, but damn good songs they played.

The rest of Saturday was the day for all-out metal fans to headbang their little hearts out. Bloodsimple, Alice In Chains, Stone Sour and Trivium all provided more metal then you can shake a stick at. Over on the Snickers stage Henry Rollins won the hearts of a small, but receptive audience with his life story. Amongst anecdotes recalling the time when the mighty Guns N Roses were just a puny little rock band were brutally honest and heartfelt political statements that would have been enough to get him locked up had Bush been in attendance. Statements such as “I’m expendable, like a US marine,” and “having no pre-frontal cortex, just like some president…” received rapturous applause and gave fans something to think about when they recover from sunstroke and dehydration a few days later.

Korn front man Jonathan Davis was ill in hospital so various guest singers joined the band for a 30 minute set to keep the fans happy. While Corey Taylor of Slipknot/Stone Sour fame and Devildriver/Coal Chamber front man Dez Fafara rose to the challenge admirably, others were less suited to the unique nu-metal style. But we got the impression more people watched because it was a bit different, than if Jonathan had been there to do the usual routine so it was a successful venture.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Master Of Puppets, Metallica played the entire album and more to a crowd that couldn’t have been more packed if it tried. Metallica. Nuff said. Alterbridge and Killing Joke still managed to draw reasonable crowds on the Snickers and MySpace/Gibson stages respectively, due to the organiser’s foresight to stagger the start and finish times on each stage.

Check out the photo gallery!