Credit: Found On Internet

Download Festival
Donington Race Track.
Saturday 10th June

The most enjoyable band of the weekend, big straight square Metallica.
It’s like watching a container port: A reliable heavy metal box of a band. James Hetfield comes on looking surprisingly like Tom Waits proclaims “Well here we are for the 100th Time”. James is a simple man with simple sentences at his command, he must of asked “everyone having a good time” between almost every track and yes, we are all having the greatest of all times, Metallica are a splendid band, this is a brilliant set with an amazing show like all the other 100 times except for that St Anger tour.

The crowd is capacity as all the other stages come to a close and fifty thousand thumping fists pound the air like what I imagine a neo Nazi rally might look like, if they ever were allowed fifty thousand of them in the same place. The songs are a heavy dollop of nostalgia, and Metallica barely break the black album before Hetfield announces “having a good time, we are here to ruin it with a new song, it’s called new song”, giant monster riffs carry on but the singing and fist pounding doesn’t follow. The new tracks always lack something, is it soul?

Now to reward the crowd of their patience, then an Englishman starts barking on about how James & Lars met in a gloryhole bar in Christinia, Copenhagen way back in 1985. Suddenly these alpha males made the landmark album that arguably gave birth to thrash, and in turn the metal scene we have today.

The entire of Master of Puppets being played, yes! This is their finest work, and I start to wonder about the nature of these songs. On the surface they are big crunchy rifftastic rock, then a thought creeps in that the songs are about War and the terrible pain that is the suffering of violence. Images of a military style cemeteries run infinitely on the screens behind ‘Master of Puppets’, could they be a political statement or just about more drugs? ‘Disposable Heroes’ certainly has massive anti-war overtones. ‘Welcome Home Sanatorium’ it might be? The insane agony of war bringing on the madness that follows. Then ‘The thing that should not be’ and  'Orion’ is introduced with a massive bass solo, and the realisation? Nah they are just songs to accompany Warhammer 40k?