Firstly may I thank www.setlist.fm, The Heartland and W&H'S Christopher Nosbinor for their help with setlists and song titles for these reviews.
Well we set off early enough from home and had an easy journey to Stevenage and then when we got out of the station, we were pointed to the queue for the free bus service to the festival site. It turned out to be very badly organised and over an hour later we got onto a bus for the 10 minute journey! Getting into the site was easy and we soon found somewhere to pitch our tent.
The new tent was not easy to pitch and after some help from the gentle Belgians and the drunken Scotsmen, it was finally pitched looking not totally right but good enough that it lasted the weekend, even if it was less than waterproof. Oh well. Still, time was marching on so we went and joined the scrum to get into the main arena hearing the end of DIAMOND HEAD'S set softly in the distance. We just about had enough time to get a pint and head down to the main Apollo stage in time for the start of the big 4.
Yes this had been billed as the first ever UK show by the big 4, yet somehow for me they were nowhere near as big a deal as the big 4 I saw Down at the hop farm the week before.
Still right on 4pm on came ANTHRAX with the same backdrop as last year, lanunching into Caught in a Mosh which has the place almost going. There was something a little flat about them, no Scott Ian wasn't having an off day, it was just with the wind whipping across the field the sound was all over the place. They also played an almost identical set to last year and Anti Social and the Indians were again the highpoints even if at times they seemed a bit tired. Overall, it was still a good opening set and they finished with a good and angry version of I am The Law. Job done.
Next on were MEGADETH, the only one of the big 4 that I hadn't seen previously, partially due to the hysterical stories I had heard about them from a groupie I used to know about how Mr Mustaine liked walking around backstage in a dressing gown and carpet slippers after a gig. That was the point at which she went after the support act apparently, but enough tittle tattle on with the Rawk or in Megadeth's case on with the sludge.
The opening 4 songs were mired in sludge, making discerning who was playing what difficult and even as Dave mumbled on about Waking Up Dead this didn't seem too good. It wasn't lloking good, but suddenly someone must have got through to the sound desk or the wind changed and they came into focus on Swearing Bullets and Poison Was The Cure. Dave was also bucking the trend of people wondering how he could play on this bill after what Metallica did to him. Well he was gracious between songs and happy to be yelling the praises of the big 4 so that Head Crusher and Public Enemy No 1 clearly weren't about James and Lars.
Obvious high spot was A T'out Le Monde followed by Symphony of Destruction that got their biggest pit going and kept it sweltering for Peace Sells, all of which rescued the set from the sludgy mire it had started in. Respect.
Next up was the current line up of SLAYER with Gary Holt of Exodus on lead guitar instead of Jeff Hanneman who is currently off sick with a proper Heavy Metal illness, as he unfortunately has Flesh eating necrotizing fascitis currently eating away at him. We wish him a full recovery. Without him Slayer managed something they don't usually do, to keep Jet awake for the whole set. Yes finally we saw a Slayer set that didn't make her fall asleep!
|
Again, like Anthrax, this was a similar set to last year, early highlights being a crushing War Ensemble followed by Hate Worldwide. Gary Holt's guitar was slashing away like a good un on Deadskin mask and battling it out with Kerry King on Seasons In The Abyss, while Tom Araya did his best demonic growling during Mandatory Suicide and a brilliant fast paced run through Chemical Warfare. They may have sung about it Raining Blood but it was raining and not very warm by the time they closed with Angel of Death.
By the time MTALLICA came on the place was packed out with the fully sold out 80,000 plus crowd hoping they would get the right sort of set from them. wELL, from the moment they came on to their customary intro of Ennio Morricone's Ecstasy of Gold and launched into Hit The Lights it was plain they would be playing almost totally a greatest hits set.
Master Of Puppets sounded huge, even recent song The Shortest Straw didn't sound out of place coming before they pummelled us with Seek & Destroy. Even if James in-between song pronouncements were overly grandiose as usual, the treatment of Ride The Lightning certainly wasn't and it looked like there might be some actual Lighting to go with it. The Memory Remains got their biggest sing-a-long complete with a fade out at the end of it.
They really seemed to be enjoying themselves and sounded better than the other times I've seen them Even The Call Of Cthulu didn't go too far over the top, whilst One and For Whom The Bell Tolls were played really sharply before they ramped things up towards the end of the set with Fade to Black going into a brilliant version of Enter Sandman as they exited to the huge applause and the road crew got very busy wheeling out loads and loads of extra equipment for the encore.
Yes, as if to prove all the doubters wrong for the encore they brought onstage almost all the musicians from the big 4 and the singer of Diamond Head to pay tribute to his band's influence and to play the massed band version of the Head's legendary I Am Evil. It featured lots of hugging between musicians and at the end some big hugs between Dave Mustains and James and Lars who it appears are all friends once more. Hooray. Once the stage cleared again, Metallica finished the encore off with a really hard and fast Battery and a slower but still crushing Creeping Death that brought day one to a close in style.
Well it did for us as we couldn't get near the tent where Killing Joke and Hayseed Dixie were playing.
|
