Fri 30 Jul – Sonisphere Festival 2010 - Artists I saw all or most of:
Friday
First up were
Bigelf, who laid down some seriously chunky sabbath-esque grooves with lashings of extra organ. Retro to the point of slightly silly, but still an awesome opener.
Gary Numan seemed to surprise half the crowd he played to, purely by being good. I saw him in 2001 so already knew he was good. Numan's knowing smirk during
Cars was quite amusing, and his onstage presence certainly proved that he had exerted more than a purely musical influence on the likes of Trent Reznor. The set was a great mix of newer and older material played with intensity and passion befitting the original industrial rock icon.
Chrome Hoof get better every time I see them, and this was no exception. With their utterly infectious dirty basslines, the Hoof come over like a freakish funk orchestra of doom, a giant disco ball with lots of legs and big metal teeth. Highlights were the giant chrome robot which came walking through the crowd, the epic bassoon walk along the side of the stage, and dancing my buttocks off for the entire set...again.
Saturday
Fear Factory were in fine form, and apart from the odd missed cue from Dino and a sound glitch, as machine-like as ever thanks to the addition of the
Strapping Young Lad rhythm section. Gene Hoglan was incredible as expected, such an effortless performance.
Tim Minchin is rightly becoming a bit of a legend these days, and worked a couple of digs about
Good Charlotte (playing at the same time) into his material, to rapturous applause. The new stuff was pretty damn good but the setting was just crying out for a rendition of 'so rock', and that song with the ludicrous upwards fan action...can't remember exactly but might have been the one about taking your canvas bags to the supermarket :)
Skunk Anansie were just incredible, and again I think more than a few people were surprised by this. I wasn't because I saw them waaaaay back in '99. Skin's vocals were as spine-tingling as ever, still one of the best female vocalists I've ever seen live. Sadly I missed the start and my favourite track
Charlie Big Potato, either that or they didn't play it.
earthtone9 are a strange band for me because the only time I saw them (the Lost Weekend in '99, same as Skunk Anansie), I didn't know any of their stuff and was too knackered after
Kill II This to appreciate them properly. I then got into them quite heavily after they split up. So I was close to tears hearing Karl rip into
Tat Twam Asi, it was utterly devastating. The rest of the set didn't evoke such a strong reaction but it didn't matter as it was all fantastic stuff and soooo good to have them back. NEW ALBUM PLEASE!
After running to the other side of the field after ET9 finished because I knew it would be totally rammed (haha),
Rammstein didn't disappoint. Well, actually they did a little bit, because the recent gig in Manchester was longer and better. Eschewing the awesome entrance where band members break and cut through the set background to get to the stage, this time the 'stein opted for a simpler but no less ostentatious opening - ploughing into
Rammleid from behind a gigantic German flag that wrapped around the entire stage. Most of the set was actually from the new album, and they cut the 'greatest hits' stuff towards the end slightly (in Manchester we got two encores, and
Engel, complete with Till wearing gigantic flaming angel wings). Flake's dinghy excursion didn't work too well either, with the crowd sending him the wrong way a couple of times; first it looked like he was going back to the stage prematurely, then it was taking ages for him to get anywhere, and then some guy climbed in with him. It was Rammstein though; they tore through their material like a well-oiled German industrial machine, burnt everything they could find and of course Till covered the front few rows (sadly I wasn't close enough...this time) in his foamy fluid. JOB DONE.
Sunday
Rollins had some good stories, interesting leftie views and was pretty damn funny. Especially his assertation that
Slayer are essentially musical perfection - now
that's comedy.
The Cult surprised a lot of people by playing a lot of songs that people knew, but didn't know they were by The Cult. That included me this time, as I'd never seen them before. Great stage presence, good songs, had a good jump around.
Sadly I had to cut The Cult slightly short to see
Converge, who were typically intense although not quite as engaging as I'd seen them in the past - could have been a sound thing. Still great stuff.
I didn't see all or even most of
Iggy And The Stooges, but I thought I'd mention how large Iggy Pop's head is compared to the rest of his body. Also, he didn't mention car insurance during or between the couple of tracks I saw. The music wasn't really my thing.
Possibly the unexpected pinnacle of the festival for me, I've seen
Kylesa two or three times before and I always think they're great. This time, they were absolutely incredible. Maybe my familiarity with the new album helped somewhat but the sound was perfect, both drummers totally in the zone, the riffs divine and I was in psychedelic sludge heaven for the entire set.
Other Highlights
My non-musical highlights were clearly discovering the joys of cup-collecting (being paid £8 for walking back from Rammstein - THANKS SONISPHERE), rediscovering the joys of Sean's driving (no less scary in a big van than in a yellow mini), the awesomely laid-back 'Smoky tentacles' shisha bar, meeting randoms whilst listening to great music in the Bohemia bar, the bizarre trapezists, the bonkers dutch band doing acoustic covers of famous rock songs, almost failing to buy a box of cider in Asda, getting into a wheelbarrow for a particularly stupid photo, and last but not least, barbequeing anything we could find (Space Raiders, Wheat Crunchies, foam strawberry and banana sweets).
Unfortunately it’s dead in the water until RYM get around to responding to my pleas for unbanning my web server IP address (too many requests apparently). I’ll see if I can get it working locally.