Blaas of Glory engaging the crowd with an impromptu jam

Knebworth Park, Hertfordshire
1-2 August 2009

As a teenage metal head, it was my dream to go the Donington Monsters of Rock festival in 1996. With a line up that included KoRn, Type O Negative, Sepultura and Fear Factory, it looked like heaven, but there was no way my broke 14 year old self could afford it. I entered a competition to win tickets, and after months of waiting, gave up hope. Then, one morning in the middle of a holiday in Scotland, my parents shamefacedly admitted to me that I’d won the Donington tickets, but they hadn’t told me because it clashed with the holiday. Horrified, I vowed revenge, but no matter how many goats I sacrificed, it wouldn’t change the fact that I’d missed the greatest festival of my life.

Donington was cancelled the following year, but by then I was well on my way to becoming the Pixies-loving, latte-sipping, primary colour-wearing milquetoast I am today, and I never went to a metal festival. Until now.

This weekend, I’m going to leave my Sufjan Stevens albums at home, dust off my Nine Inch Nails bootlegs, and me and my 14 year old self are going to rock the fuck out. Although, in the spirit of reciprocity, my younger self has agreed not to pack the ill-advised cheapo black lipstick that he thinks looks so awesome.

Situated on the grounds of stately Knebworth House in the middle of the Hertfordshire countryside, Sonisphere is a brand new festival, a challenger to the phenomenally successful Download. But it comes with a reassuring pedigree as organiser Stuart Gilbraith used to put on the Monsters of Rock festivals, the face of the UK metal festival scene from 1980 to 2008.

The scale of the arena isn’t as mind-boggling as Reading or Glastonbury, allowing you to stroll from one end to the other in under five minutes. One genuinely great thing about Sonisphere is that the stage times on the two main stages are staggered, meaning that there’s none of the agony of having to choose which band to see and which band to miss that blights most festivals, and that anyone spending the day in the arena will probably be able to see every big band playing.

Opening the festival are unannounced guests Blaas of Glory, an umpteen-piece saxophone/accordion/banjo/drum marching band. They receive a hesitant greeting from the crowd, who quickly warm up once they start belting out polka versions of hard rock standards like ‘Enter Sandman’ and ‘Ace of Spades’.

There are some bands for whom it’s sort of amazing that they’re even together, and two of them are Alien Ant Farm and Soil, who haven’t been heard from since nu metal ruled the airwaves but are opening the main Apollo stage and the smaller Saturn stage. A lot of Soil’s crowd seem to have been keeping up though. As their groove-heavy metal brings a field full of fists into the air, lead singer AJ Cavalier jumps off the stage to meet the crowd like he’s the headliner. Alien Ant Farm bring their standard limp funk metal to the proceedings, and everyone waits politely until they play ‘Smooth Criminal’.

After a one-two punch of has-beens, I feel like checking out some new talent and head for the Bohemia tent, nestled in a corner of the field, where I catch Blakfish, who have a lot of the twitchy energy of the Blood Brothers, all ragged stop-start guitars over shuddering bass and frantic call and response vocals.

As literally the only non-metal band on the bill, it is interesting to see whether the crowd will take to Bjorn Again or if they’ll be the target for a barrage of bottles. But from the top of the hill, you can look down on 200 yards of black-clad metallers moshing to ‘Mamma Mia’ and the second novelty ‘Enter Sandman’ cover of the day.

There has been a big question mark over whether Anthrax will be able to make the festival after the surprise departure of vocalist Dan Nelson in July, but the thrash veterans manage to draft in old singer John Bush at the last minute, and put on a tight, aggressive, incredibly loud set. Anthrax were always on the punkier side of the thrash movement, but tracks like ‘Antisocial’ serve as a reminder of how closely related punk and metal were before the two genres got polarised, chiming melodies and chugging riffs managing to share the same song pretty well. It’s probably a mistake for John Bush to try rapping Chuck D’s verses on seminal Public Enemy collab hit ‘Bring the Noise’, but it’s still one of the sets of the weekend.

“This song is about the last time I was in the UK, and a bee stung my balls,� says The Used frontman Bert McCracken, and it’s probably a tribute to how forgettable their brand of mall emo is that I spend most of their set trying to imagine what he must have been doing for that to happen in the first place.

Coheed and Cambria have apparently been delayed on a ferry, so their set is filled by Fact. Catapulted from the tent stage to the main stage, this could have been the young Japanese band’s big break, but sadly their brand of hardcore is pretty forgettable despite a few token bits of electronica, and the crowd melts away.

Just another average day in the Hertfordshire countryside

The heavy grey clouds that have hung over Knebworth all day finally open, spitting out heavy scads of rain that come and go over the next three hours, but the doom-laden skies and gloomy atmosphere are actually pretty appropriate for Heaven and Hell, an Ozzy-less Black Sabbath with Ronnie James Dio on vocals. Heaven and Hell end up sounding more eighties Dio metal than sixties doom metal, replete with air raid siren vocals and gothic keyboards, but the Sabbath players are still a ferocious backing band, with an ageless Tony Iommi laying down some amazing riffs, particularly on ‘Bible Black’.

By the end of their set my clothes are soaked and it feels like I’m wearing an otter instead of a coat, so I head to the Bohemia tent to dry off and catch Oceansize. I’ve always felt bad for the Manchester group, as they seem to have been playing midway down the bill of tent stages for the last ten years or so, despite supporting the likes of the Smashing Pumpkins. Their mix of Tool and Pink Floyd sounds as good as ever, and they’ll probably be playing it in exactly the same slot next year.

Granted, main stage headliners Linkin Park may be the most cynical, bottom line-oriented bunch of careerists to come out of the entire nu metal craze, but they can bring it live, cranking out a set of wall to wall hits. Every song sounds like it wasn’t so much written as genetically engineered for maximum airplay, but they’re absolutely irresistible: tracks like ‘Numb’, ‘Breaking the Habit’, ‘In the End’ and ‘Somewhere I Belong’ galvanise the entire crowd into a mass of bodies. Even the album tracks sound like hits.

Eleven pm is the curfew for the main stages, but the Bohemia stage runs until after midnight, and as I enter the tent, Fucked Up are tearing up the crowd. But where’s man mountain frontman Pink Eyes? His gruff, larynx-shredding vocals are echoing through the tent but onstage he’s nowhere to be seen. I head into the pit to investigate, and it seems he’s in the middle of the crowd, where he spends the entire show, running in circles dictated by the length of his mic cord. One of the reasons Fucked Up have gotten so much attention beyond the hardcore scene is how much depth there is to the music. Guitarist 10,000 Marbles’ sometimes beautiful, sometimes raw guitar work often ends up closer to the Pixies than Earth Crisis, and tracks like ‘Black Albino Bones’ could be bona fide hits if it weren’t for the harshness of the vocals.

Before I head back to my tent, I stay for start of Thunder’s set, billed as their last ever show. I’ve never been a fan, but the crowd seem to know every line of every song, and it’s a pretty good send off for the British blues rock legends.

Highlights of the UK Sonisphere festival will be shown on Channel 4 at 12.05am on 14th August

By Tom Brown