Live Review: Download Festival 2019 (Pt. 3 - Sunday)

Still recovering from the effects of Slipknot’s set the night before (on top of a decent hangover), the mile-long muddy trek to the arena on Sunday morning feels more like a pilgrimage across three continents. It means I miss the majority of Cane Hill’s main-stage-opening set, but the two songs I did see were pretty good – though not quite enough to pull me out of my stupor.

So who better to shake off the cobwebs than Dinosaur Pile-Up (8.5/10)? Fresh from the release of the best album of their career, Celebrity Mansions, the three-piece take to the Zippo Encore stage with something to prove. As a relatively small band, being given a midday slot on a huge outdoor stage on the last day of a metal festival (in the rain, no less) might seem a hugely daunting situation, but armed with songs like 'Pouring Gasoline' and 'Round The Bend', DPU make it look easy. This new material was made to be played on massive stages, hence why it takes up the majority of the band's setlist; skyscraper choruses, bouncy riffs, and pure joy reign supreme. It's clear that Matt Bigland and co. are enjoying themselves immensely, and by the end of the set the crowd seem to share their enthusiasm, having pretty unanimously come around to the band if they hadn't heard of them before. How could they not, when ending on 'Thrash Metal Cassette' and 'Back Foot' is so outrageously good?

Underoath (6/10) taking a main stage slot sandwiched between I Prevail and Godsmack feels pretty strange, and their crowd proves why. I personally have a whole lot of love for the band, but they’ve never been that big in the UK, and their comeback album from last year (Erase Me) didn’t seem to even make a dent. Still, their energy and individual performances are brilliant. Solid-gold metalcore classics 'Writing On The Walls', 'Breathing In A New Mentality', and 'It's Dangerous Business Walking Out Your Front Door', all sound great and go down well, but the remaining six or seven songs on the setlist are new. Underoath choose to rely on new material far too much here, and it's clearly to their detriment. That's not to say that the songs are bad, necessarily - choice cuts like 'Hold Your Breath' and 'On My Teeth' stand out amongst the others - but the decision still isn't a good one. Admirably, though, the band stick to their guns and play like they're headlining the festival. It's a good showing with an underwhelming soundtrack.

Heart Of A Coward (7/10) are the first band in the Avalanche tent I see all day, and they seem to pull a pretty respectable crowd for such an early slot. Musically, they don't offer anything too original or mind-blowing, but they've perfected the brand of metal that they trade on down to a T; it's brutal, it's breakdown heaven, and it's littered with huge, singalong moments. A huge pit down the front spurs the band on (orchestrated, of course, by the Pit Troll™) as they crash through a set consisting of heavy metalcore stompers such as 'Hollow', 'Shade', and 2018's 'Collapse'. There's not too much to report here; just a solid band putting on an entertaining show.

I’ve seen Black Peaks (10/10) eight times now. The first was at Takedown Festival in 2015, a year prior to the release of their brilliant first record, Statues. Since then, they’ve not only become a consistently excellent live band, but also one of the UK’s best bands full-stop, and their set on the Avalanche stage at Download feels like the biggest moment of their career thus far. It's also the best show I've ever seen them put on. Now with added pyro and a fantastic sophomore album to revolve the setlist around, every element of what makes Black Peaks great is present in full force. Will's vocals are exceptional (easily one of the best technical performances of the weekend), and the instrumentation is just as noteworthy; Mastodon-esque guitarwork, complex drumming, and staggering basslines coalescing into a beautiful musical storm. Tracks from All That Divides take centre stage for the most part, before fan favourites 'Say You Will' and 'Glass Built Castles' round off the set in glorious fashion. Everyone knows every word to the final song, and it's joyous to see a band who have deserved so much for so long finally getting some proper recognition. It feels like just the beginning, though; Black Peaks are future Download headliners. 

In a fairly emotional state, I head back over to the main stage, thinking that the idea of following up a set as phenomenal as that is far from enviable. To make an impression, you’d need to have massive flaming stage props, or Vikings battling to the death, or dragons… oh wait. It’s Amon Amarth (7.5/10). To the hulking soundtrack of their melodic death metal, the Swedes take their main stage slot as an opportunity to transform Donington into Valhalla for fifty minutes. With rowing in the mosh pits and fans raising their (very impractical) drinking horns in a toast to metal, it's easy to get swept up in the whole thing, especially with songs as gargantuan as 'Guardians of Asgaard' and 'Shield Wall' to back up the spectacle. Amon Amarth are the ideal band for this sunny Sunday afternoon.

Lamb Of God (6/10) take to the main stage next, and at first I'm blown away by the sheer power of their performance. Having never seen them before (or really even heard that much of their music), I'm loving it when frontman Randy Blythe bounces about the stage, looking like he's ready to kill a man to the sound of mighty, Pantera-inspired riffage. There's a raucous reception down the front of the crowd for the band to feed off, and it's all going pretty great. But then, for the next hour that they're on stage, nothing actually seems to change. There's only so many times you can play a song that sounds exactly the same as its predecessor and have it not get a little dull, so the energy dwindles a little by the middle of the set and doesn't seem to pick back up. As solid as it all sounds, Lamb Of God leave me feeling like I would've got a better experience if they'd have just played a half-hour long greatest-hits set.

At Download last year, my set of the weekend was the very first UK performance from Fever 333 (7.5/10). At the time, I was foaming at the mouth to catch a glimpse of Stephen Harrison and Jason Butler (ex-The Chariot and ex-Letlive respectively), and the band really felt like a tangible movement; an explosion of politically-charged rage and simplistic, no-fucks-given musicianship. Now, one year later, Fever put on a fairly different set. There's a much bigger crowd response for the upstarts this time around, with the Avalanche tent full all the way to the back. In response, the three-piece are their usual wild, energetic selves (with Jason at one point even attempting to crowdsurf inside a bin). The charismatic frontman is also as much of a political speaker as a vocalist, taking the breaks in between each song to bring attention to a range of issues (from gentrification, to racism, to an appraisal of LGBT+ pride) in a far better, more articulate way than anyone else does over the weekend. The biggest difference to Fever 333's set compared to last year is the music, and the fact that it's now unfortunately more readily fueled by backing tracks. The hooks are still brilliant and the help of a track makes it all feel bigger, but also takes away a lot of the edge that they had beforehand. Still, a massively enjoyable performance, and one which will assuredly take the revolutionaries to the main stage in the near future.

Often, at a festival, you just need balls-to-the-wall, utterly inebriated, unapologetic fun – and Municipal Waste (8/10) specialise in just that. Offering nothing but pure, greeby thrash metal antics for the length of their set, the Richmond partiers are the perfect festival band for that point in the evening when everybody is just starting to get properly wasted. There's no shortage of banter from frontman Tony Foresta (at one point urging the crowd to give the band some weed after their set) in between shout-along ragers like 'Headbanger Face Rip' and 'Unleash The Bastards'. Instrumentally, it's as tight as crazy thrash can be, and killer riff after killer riff fills the Dogtooth tent until the crowd are all circle-pitted out (including one guy in a wheelchair, who is - impressively - pushed round the pit for pretty much every song). It's a wonderful time had by all, and everybody leaves the tent knowing one thing for sure: Municipal Waste are gonna fuck you up.

Now, this is where I completely obliterate any remaining metal cred I once had by confessing that I didn’t stick around to see Slayer’s final UK show ever. Instead, I made my way to the Avalanche stage to once again see one of the world’s greatest live bands in the form of Enter Shikari (9/10), and I don’t regret it one bit. This being the ninth time I've seen the Hatfield genre-smashers, I'm not necessarily surprised by how good they are... but I am left amazed at how hugely I still enjoy their shows after seeing them so many times. Whether it's through a new "quickfire round" mix, unexpected setlist choices (they played 'Quelle Surprise'!!!), or changes in stage production, Shikari always find something new to have me grinning like an idiot by the time they close the set. With so many absolute barnstormers - from 'Mothership' to '...Meltdown' to 'Slipshod' - they should honestly be headlining the second stage at Download at this point in their career. The musicianship is as tight as ever, and each member's stage presence is, as always, utterly undeniable. Enter Shikari end their performance through a flurry of blue confetti with 'Live Outside', and I'm left wondering how anybody could not love this band with all their heart. 

The final headliner of the weekend, Tool (10/10), aren’t a band whose material I’m too familiar with. Of course, I've heard the big hitters - 'Stinkfist', 'Schism', 'Ænema', all that - but (to my shame) I've never really gone in on them properly. That being said, with the amount of hype around their return to the UK after such a lengthy absence, I was expecting something incredible... and that's just what I got.

Tool aren't your typical headline act. There's no pyrotechnics display. There's no pandering showmanship. There aren't even cameras filming the band to be displayed on the screens either side of the stage. There's just Maynard James Keenan, Danny Carey, Adam Jones, Justin Chancellor, and some trippy, disturbing, immersive visuals to back them up. Keenan, as the vocalist, chooses to lurk at the back of the stage in shadow for the majority of the performance, only talking to the crowd twice; once to yell "Download", and once to ask who in the audience is under the age of 27. As a cheer goes up, he quips "This song was written before you were sperm". The show is so atypical and unique that it sucks you in from the get-go, and doesn't relinquish its grasp for the full ninety minutes. The aforementioned visuals mainly draw from the original music videos from each song the band play, and each one still holds up (at least in terms of impact) even twenty-odd years on.

The music itself is brilliant, of course. Carey's drumming in particular has me absolutely entranced, as the man flits through a multitude of complex time signatures within a single song like it's nothing. Maynard's voice is at once sultry, powerful, and totally unique, and the guitar and bass work is similarly untouchable. At the mid-point of their set, in the midst of the bigger, more well-known songs mentioned earlier (which go down a storm), Tool launch into two new tracks; sprawling prog epics which seem to last eons, but are over all too soon. I've never experienced a headline set like this, and very much doubt I ever will again - it's a hypnotising display of what it means for a band to act as a true artistic statement in a world of sycophantic crowd-pleasers and self-absorbed rockstars. Tool are transcendent, and it's the perfect way to end an amazing weekend.