?Oh, goody, a festival review! I was there! I can't wait to see whether this review entirely shares my opinions, or whether it has its own mind. Tell us what you think??
Thanks for asking! There's an inclusivity to heavy metal that makes spending time with fans of it a total joy. They don't sneer at how you're dressed, and their music exists in a vacuum. Metal has had varying popularity in different forms but it hasn't been ?cool? since Nirvana were knocking around.
Free of the need to conform to notions of cool, they are also free to concentrate on rocking. Kurt Cobain was consumed with an exaggerated attention to the subtle cultural and intellectual differences that separated his band from the ?corporate? rock that it (temporarily) replaced. And look how that ended. Heroin addiction, history of depression, and permanent physical pain aside, we always got the impression that Kurt killed himself because he couldn't live in a world where Nevermind outsold Doolittle. The fact that it was outselling Dangerous meant the poor beautiful bugger didn't stand a chance. What we're trying to say is that Kurt missed the point. By a massive distance. You know the distance between the interesting idea of Lady Gaga and the piss-poor reality of her actual music. About that far.
?er, hecklerspray, you're doing that thing again where you would rather detail the history of popular music than actually review anything?.
Alright, alright, we're getting there. we're just trying to get you to see why metal festivals rule- we?ll try to come back to it later. We walk past CKY and notice that they seem harder than we remember. That's all we're going to say since we were on our way to see Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows, purely on the strength of their name. Remember Dominic Monaghan?s unconvincing rock star character from Lost? Well him + irritating voice + slightly shouty emo rock = this band. Still think they sound good? Well that name that initially seemed awesome shortens to D.R.U.G.S. Our thoughts exactly.
We grab some lunch and sit down. Puddle of Mudd just happen to be playing near us. Is there a word for the opposite of serendipity? ?Puddleofdipity perhaps?
You know how your parents thought all your music sounded the same. Well Young Guns do that to us. Are they the archetypal emo-rock/pop band or are we just too old? We ask a nearby 14 year old. A response of ?fuck off paedo? doesn't specifically address the question but manages to answer it regardless.
Does the world need The Darkness right now? Embraced by the mainstream rock press for having their tongues firmly in their cheeks, they were abandoned when their audience started including fans of the genre they were lovingly satirising. Unlike the NME, the masses have no difficulty in rocking out and laughing at the same time Then their audience abandoned them when they started taking themselves seriously. But even they abandoned the band when they started taking themselves too seriously. They certainly remind everyone what made that first album so damn fun, causing the first big sing-alongs of the weekend. Occasionally we find ourselves thinking ?this one sounds like if the Darkness had made a second album?, before realising that they did and this one is from it. Maybe the band having fun again is the first step on the way to a successful comeback?
Bored with joy and laughter we check out Korn but the change in mood doesn't really work for us. It's not that Got the Life doesn't rock, it's just that we?d prefer to see it somewhere with sweat on the walls.
We never expected Pendulum to be the band that steal the day. The only distinction they have normally is of being rubbish at multiple genres but right here, right now they make total sense. Maybe we've been missing big electronic sound, maybe it's the fact that they are making an effort to entertain but whatever it is, these guys are making us dance like idiots- a worthy festival headline act. We like being surprised by a band and retire happy.
Tune in tomorrow for views on Saturday and Sunday if you can possibly stand the it. And yes, Glastonbury was on this weekend wasn’t it? Everyone’s talking about that aren’t they?
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