Day 2 of Sonisphere started as any good festival day should start with a brandy coffee to get me going at about 10AM and a look at the weather that left us not too happy as it wasn't looking too positive.
Which with one of the less inspiring festival line-ups ahead of us wasn't great. However, by 11am we were more than ready for the first band of the day and decided to go to the Jagermeister stage to see SONS OF ICARUS as Jet was claiming to have heard of them and that was good enough reason. They turned out to be a young band who played some very 70's hard rock with leanings towards Led Zeppelin and Gillan. They were good fun and could certainly play. If they get the right breaks we will see them climbing higher up the billing in years to come.
From there we wandered to the Red Bull Bedroom Jam stage to catch THE SUZUKIS who seemed to be highly conflicted as the singer was often singing what sounded like a completely different song to the music. He was all britpop while they were all Joy Division meets the Fall and not in a good way. They were bad but we had nothing better to watch so continued to see how bad they could get as an already pretty empty tent failed to fill up.
We wandered over to the Apollo stage suffering the final strains of Richard Cheese on the Saturn stage in time for the "hotly Tipped" ARCHITECTS to fall down flat on our ears. Firstly, they sound nothing like as crafted as the name suggests and instead play fairly bland hardcore metal. While the singer fancies himself he failed to take much of the crowd along with him and I had trouble seperating the songs as they all merged into one and certainly feel no need to see them again. By the time they were two thirds of the way through their set we were already walking down the other end of the field ready to see GALLOWS.
Now this was more like it. Our favourite wee ginger gobshite and his comrades ready to blast us all away. They opened with Misery and a huge pit opened up and was more than ready for Leeches that followed on, even if Frank's white T-shirt with Pure Love on it seemed incongrous. It didn't stop him getting everyone going by changing London Is The Reason into Knebworth Is The Reason. Gallows were on blistering form and then Frank announced that he is leaving the band but they are carrying on! What what what...??? Its unthinkable! He is such a huge part of what makes Gallows what they are. Shocking. But could it be just a good way to introduce Abandon Ship and tell us about their in-fighting on Black eyes? Apparently not, sadly.
Still Gold Dust was ferocious and they went all out for a huge pit for In the Belly Of The Shark wherein Frank was shocked that instead of one circle we managed two and it was too weird so a second attempt was made to get the one huge pit around the sound desk and of course they made it. It was the sort of mayhem that could only be followed by a huge wall of death for the closing Orchestra Of Wolves. That was totally insane and brilliant at the same time like most of the shows we have seen Gallows play. It is still hard to grasp how they can replace Frank or what his new act will sound like, but either way they went out blazing and adding to the already legendary shows of the past 6 years.
Then it was straight down the other end of the field for CAVALERA CONSPIRACY which is Max's group with his kids. They are miles better than Soulfly were last year, throwing out crushing riffs and grooves and Max growling away. There was no sanctuary from the enormous noise they were making and he pleased the crowd by playing Refuse Resist back to back with Territory. That got a good sized pit going even if it could never equal Gallows.
Max seemed to be much more at home with this band than with Soulfly and I really liked his version of the Nailbombs' Cockroaches, plus a great Killing Inside before making everyone smile with a great closing version of Roots Bloody Roots. It must have been better than last year as we watched the whole set this time.
The black clouds were circling as we went to see KIDS IN GLASS HOUSES who seemed uneasy to be involved in this line-up to such an extent that they described themselves as the Gayest band on the bill!! By this I think they meant the wimpiest or most poppy, but either way songs like Young Blood and For Better or Hearse seemed ok but nothing special and they did seem like they were at the wrong festival. They have a future if they can be put on the right bill.
Back down the other end it was time for BAD RELIGION who really had to fight against the weather as during their set it went from bright sunshine to dark clouds to heavy rain to drizzle to strong winds and back again: often all within the time it took them to play one song. So while Social Suicide still sounds great and 21st Century Digital Boy was as relevant as ever, they suffered in the rain on LA Is Burning as nothing could have burnt in this weather!
Also, they seem to be more like journeymen rockers than street punks these days. Although we may have been in the New Dark Ages of weird weather with not enough feel good sounds to make us happy. Still, American Jesus was a highlight towards the end of a patchy set that didn't live up to the band's legendary status, while the closing Fuck Armageddon This is Hell was an accurate description of how we felt shivering in the rain and cold before them.
They were the last main stage act we saw and it was only 3.45 by the time they finished and we walked off for lunch and to find something we wanted to see more than Sum 41. We found it on the Jagermeister stage in the very sexy format of the singer for SIX HOURS SUNDOW who for this male-dominated festival shockingly had a woman onstage. They are a good pop metal act who have only been together for 4 months so have time to hone their act and grow a following. Judging by the reaction this set got, that won't take too long. They could easily sit well on a bill with say Lacuna Coil or similar acts.
With the rain coming down the thought of going into a tent was more attractive and we went and saw the last half of PAULLED APART BY HORSES' set in the Bohemia tent, which is the largest tent here, holding about 8-10,000 people. PABH had the crowd going with their spiky punk metal with lots of feedback and noises like they could be a Pavement meets Mudhoney cross during songs we caught. I think Get Off My Ghost Train and The Crapsons were the highlights, but they got a big cheer when they finshed with I Punched A Lion In The Throat. I'd like to see them play a full set somewhere like the Camden Underworld as I'm sure I'd enjoy the show.
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Next on were PERIPHERY, a band I have struggled to listen to having been given a CD and single of theirs and they cleared us and many others out of the tent very quickly indeed. We didn't last more than a song and a half as I just didn't get it, they sound just as awful as Pendulum or Bring me the Horizon. I'm of the wrong generation.
Well after a rest in the bar avoiding the rain we went back into the Bohemia tent in time for GINGER WILDHEART'S second gig back as a solo artiste since leaving the Michael Monroe band a month or two ago and ahead of him touring for most of the rest of the year. It has to be said he played one of the sets of the festival opening with I Wanna Go Where The People go and having on face paint that was almost Kiss-like. They went straight into Vanilla Radio and the packed out tent went radio rental at this most crowd pleasing of sets. He even commented that he was surprised to fill the tent now the rain had stopped!!
My Baby Is A Headfuck sounded great and Sonic Shake certainly got the tent shaking and not with cold this time. Sucker Punch was well punchy and his current band (who feature several members of previous Ginger bands) played like they were a well hoiled machine. They closed the set by bringing on Leila Khan from Sonic Boom Six to help out on the vocals to 29 times the Pain. That got the whole pace bouncing along with them. At the end of the set there was a mass exodus outside as most of the Ginger fans seemed to want to avoid being mistaken for Gujons or whatever Gojira fans are known as.
After our break it was soon time to queue up to let the Gujons out so we could get back into the Bohemia tent for the rest of the evening and for PARADISE LOST who were next on. It has to be said this was the poorest set I've seen Paradise Lost play; they were not on top form sounding kind of jaded. Pity The Sadness stood out as a real mope and the crowd didn't really get going till I Remain and As I Die. They were still better than many other bands we'd seen that day but not up to normal standards and moaning about being in a tent didn't exactly help them either. Still they closed strongly with a fairly impassioned version of Say Just Words and the closing The Enemy. It was good but some way from classic.
Then it seemed like the stage crew took an eternity to set up for Sisters Of Mercy, a difficulty not helped by the fact the band had to have extra lighting rigs set up and then spent longer on a light check than they did on the soundcheck which meant by the time they came on in a haze of smoke and lights they sounded muffled and muddy on the opening Afterhours and Ribbons.
It didn't improve much on Train/ Det Boulevard but at least Andrew Eldritch's voice had finally got loud enough to be heard even if he couldn't quite be seen. Amphetamine Logic was the first song that sounded good throughout which was a surprise as I'm more used to them being crap throughout. It was interesting to see them almost raising their game until they got to Dominion and cut the song about in half; almost like they only played it because they felt they had to. A shame to hear a great song tossed away like that.
By this point there was a steady stream of people leaving to be replaced by the folks waiting outside to get in and a perfunctory take on More certainly wasn't helping the cause. Nonetheless, it was great to hear the first half of Alice: yes another song that was cut short and neutured just as it was getting going. Lucretia was as close to spot on as they came all night and it was followed by a good Vision Thing and the oddest cover of the festival when they did an all over the place run through Pipeline. It's a song I love, but they managed to play an even more ramshackle version than Johnny Thunders did at his most out there!! They closed the set by playing the first half of Temple of Love like it was a radio edit where as soon as you reach the quiet middle bit the dj fades it out. Quite what the point of that was escaped me.
They left the stage to underwhelming applause that died the minute they disappeared, yet a couple of minutes later they were back to encore with Something Fast and a convincing version of First & Last & Always that sounded nothing like it should for the first minute or so and then kicked in and was pretty decent. They then closed with a truncated, tossed off go at This Corrosion a song that should have been a brilliant finale but squibbed out spectacularly. Still, all that said it was still one of the better sets I've seen them do over the last 26 or is it 7 years since I first saw them?
All we had energy for after that was one more drink and time to crash and freeze all night in our tent. Brrr!!
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