Live Review

Sonisphere Day 1 (Part Two) – Knebworth

• 4th Aug 2009

It’s Saturday morning in a field in Knebworth and we are awoken by the sound of two hung-over music journalists complaining about Terrorizer front covers. We tried to get back to sleep having had a fairly heavy night in the Monster energy rock zone and having become well acquainted with our now firm friend Jagermeister, but when they started doing shots of the aforementioned drink, we decided it was probably time to emerge from the sauna that was our tent.

The first band of the day were Soil on the Saturn stage who despite bad sound had great energy and managed to warm the crowd up effectively. Already people were throwing inflatable sofas around, which was a good sign. New songs such as ‘Lesser Man’ went down well, although ‘Halo’ was the favourite and got everyone singing along.

We then headed off to the Bohemia tent to see Sylosis who were excellent. Their sound was a mixture of machine gun fire and borderline epic moments. With their all round tightness and attention to their performance, they are a force to be reckoned with in modern melodic death metal. Considering their young age they raise the bar that all aspiring metal bands need to fear. Yes, they are that good.

Seeing Anthrax was a girlhood dream and they certainly lived up to it. The sound was a bit wishy washy and they didn’t have enough time to get into their stride and do justice to their back catalogue, but the powerful voice of John Bush certainly got the crowd going.

The dark clouds that had been hanging around in a threatening way all day finally let loose as we headed over to see Airbourne, but even heavy rain could not dampen their spirits, or that of the crowd as they pulled out every rock and roll cliché in the book and we loved it. Lead singer Joel O’Keeffe smashed open beer cans on his head before throwing them out to the crowd. He also scaled the heights of the stage and hung perilously 40 feet up, in the rain, playing a guitar solo. You can’t get much more rock than that!

With the rain abating we walked over to see Coheed and Cambria who had been moved to the Bohemia tent, due to a ferry incident(!), leaving their unfortunate replacements, Fact, hideously deserted on the main stage, with the crowd flocking away. Sadly when Coheed and Cambria did play later the crowd wanting to get into the Bohemia tent was bigger than the tent’s capacity and many people, including us, couldn’t get in to see the band. We headed to the bar instead for some much needed cider.

Oceansize followed and as usual were fantastic live. Their set was very constrained by time, but their unique sound, singer Mike’s maniacal grinning, off tempo beats and raw energy proved they are still one of the most interesting bands around. Considering I have seen them pack out the O2 Academy Islington, I was slightly surprised the crowd wasn’t heaving, but those of us there enjoyed it immensely.

Heaven and Hell were next on the Apollo stage and as this is basically Black Sabbath in a different guise, amazing things were expected, but after Airbourne, Heaven and Hell gave distinctly lack lustre performances. Kudos to Ronnie James Dio and co for being stalwarts of the scene and carrying on, but I’m afraid they were never going to top their younger and much more active counterparts. Having said that, the older contingent of the crowd and the more die-hard trad metal fans seemed to lap it all up.

We took a break and topped ourselves up with some hot dogs and beer. Sadly the only beer on offer at the bars was Carlsberg and we hope that next year there will be a bit more variety in both drinks and food. No ale? Frankly, verging on criminal!

Wildhearts were the last band of the night and finished it off nicely. Light-hearted speculation was rife that Ginger had had plastic surgery as his appearance hasn’t changed in 15 years, nor has his dress sense. We were regressed to the mid-1990s and loved it. Despite some technical issues, it was a great performance and the crowd went wild to classic hit ‘I want to go where the people go’.

After the Wildhearts the Bohemia tent mutated into a comedy club and we laughed our pants off to Canadian comic Craig Campbell who asserted, “What I love about the English is you don’t fucking panic.”

We were disappointed that the Monster Energy area wasn’t open at 2am as we were in a dancing mood, but given the potential for Jagermeister related hangovers it was probably for the best and we turned in for the night.