Day 1: Friday, June 12th
Waking up to the sound of zippers zipping, I
check the time to find that it is 7am - I tend to
wake up early at festivals. I grab my towel and
go for a shower, a hot shower - nice! On my way
back to my tent, I stop off to get a cup of tea
from the dedicated snack van, at this point I am
reminded what extortion tastes like.
09:30 - I gathered my things ready for a busy day;
together with the rest of team RAM, I headed
over to the press area. After more tea, and feeling fully juiced, I went out into the main arena
to top up my dog-tag - Download were operating a cashless purchasing system this year; I put
twenty quid on, ahead of leaving, thinking that
would suffice - oh, how naive of me. I got to the
queue, which, at this point, consists of just me
and a very tall goth - we’ll call him Gorgoroth,
although I think his name may have been something like Daniel… - and we discovered that
the system was ‘down’, much to the frustration of
the festival goers and staff alike. Technology, eh!
I decided to try another time.
12:55 - I wandered over to the main stage, positioning myself to get
the best from the sound
ready for my first band
of the festival, ALL THAT
REMAINS. They jumped
straight in, bang on 1pm
and we got a taste of
how good the sound is
on the main stage. The
band were tight and,
without going berserk,
they used the stage well;
at one point Labonte got
involved with a bit of
drumming. They certainly
got us off to a good start.
13:45 - I arrived at the Zippo Encore stage to
watch new grave outfit, FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS. During their theatrical entrance, the bass
drum kicked in and I just couldn’t help but tap
my foot - yeah, I’m one of those people. There
were a good number of people getting involved
and singing along with encouragement from
front man Laurence Beveridge. Sadly, the vocals
were lost in the mix at times and for a while, the
toms were not coming through at all. The sound
issues were resolved mid-set and in time for a
crowd pleasing rendition of Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Holding Out For A Hero’ - an interesting choice but it
went down surprisingly well!
15:30 - The main arena was starting to get much
busier and, unsurprisingly, there was a hefty
crowd for LACUNA COIL. T