Credit: Found On Internet

Donnington Park
Friday 9 June

While those who went to bed at a reasonable hour on Thursday night crowded down to catch Sintuition break open the Snickers Bowl, those of us representing the true rock spirit got our first taste of Download 2006 when Amplifier took to the stage at 1pm.

And good luck to them – as they need all the help they can get in getting a crowd. Overly long instrumentals, the band looking like every song was the last from the encore at the end, and a crowd more interested in waving to the camera on the flying gib. Frontman Sel Balamir is a great guitarist, and a passable singer, but he has no talent for combining the two together, resulting in a humourless, charisma-free performance that leaves the main stage at the UK’s premier metal festival seeming clinical and lifeless.

Over to the Myspace / Gibson stage, and Art of Dying (aptly enough, it could almost be a myspace username for a slit-your-wrists teenager, so they’re in the right stage) are just walking on stage. They’re as excited as a bunch of 12 year olds, and when they’re not thanking the crowd for turning up, they’re gushing over their first visit to the UK from their Canadian homeland. And unsurprisingly, they belt out songs like “You Don’t Know Me”, that are exactly the kind of half-arsed emo-grunge-lite that those same myspace kids love so much.

Strapping Young Lad provide an altogether beefier Canadian prospect. Main man Devin Townsend is one of the few true originals in metal today, and while contemporaries like Mike Patton have been fêted for their experiementalism with record sales, Townsend and his multitude of projects have largely slipped under the mainstream radar.

Hopefully this main stage performance will do much to change this. Whether blowing out the dystopic nightmare of “All Hail The New Flesh” or “Devour”, SYL stole the prize for Most Extreme Band On The Main Stage early on the first day. And unleashing new songs like “You Suck” (defining line “You and your band, you fucking suck, hell yeah, you fucking suck, I don’t give a fuck, you fucking fuck”), it’s clear that SYL are there to make threats and noise, not friends. The one thing they do make are a lot of new fans.