Credit: Dave Mustaine rips it up

Oh it’s come round again…if weekends had dress sense, this one would be wearing nothing but black and have some studded leather in there somewhere. While the Isle of Wight Festival is heralding the true start of festival season 180 miles south for those who like their sounds wipe-clean and disposable, Donington Park is once again chocked with the black-clad metal hordes, as Download 2007 detonates for the fifth time.

It must be quite galling for Buckcherry. Eight years ago they were opening the main stage at Reading….and now they’re barely higher up the bill at Download. Their tired set feels lumbered in the worst clichés of copycat glam-metal, only lacking the joie de vivre that those they seek to imitate imbue so easily. Only ‘Crazy Bitch’ dares to take it beyond average. Perhaps the sheer averageness of the rest of the early line-up can explain why the second stage (this year re-named the Dimebag Darrell Stage in tribute to the late great six-string legend) is heaving for Ill Nino. Taking the riffs that Sepultura and Soulfly let slide, they make no attempt to disguise where their formulaic nu-metal survivor sounds come from.

Thankfully they’re followed by Turbonegro, a band so fun that anyone who doesn’t like them should be thrown into frontman Hank Von Helvete’s basement and used as one of his sex toys. With only a handful of new songs thrown in, the nobody-quits-till-someone-is-dead Norwegians’ set is chock full of party death-punk firecrackers. Bursting open with ‘All My Friends Are Dead’, and not letting up till closing with ‘The Age Of Pamparius’, now Download really feels like it’s up and running.

Back on the main stage, and Megadeth have quite literally come back from the edge. Dave Mustaine’s near career-killing hand injury has been conquered and now they’re back to demonstrate to all the new pretenders just what proper thrash is. ‘Peace Sells’ and the rest of their back catalogue are still stunning, but they’re let down by a lack of onstage imagination. This should’ve been a glorious comeback – instead it degenerated into a rather staid exhibition by one of the true Lords of Thrash.