Day 2 – Saturday
Sybreed
I was told by a friend to go and see them, so I took my only trip to the Pepsi tent. They excused themselves for their accent caused by their Swiss-French origin. The industrial rock that they played reminded me at times of Meshuggah maybe, with a lot of mixtures of black and death metal, but with a lot of electro/synth stuff that were a turn off for me and made me leave before the end of their show. I still remember the massiveness of their bassist whose last name is, ironically, Grand, and who made me think of a character from some SF series, and was doing some really cool bass tapping.
Flyleaf
I wanted to see Atreyu on the main stage, but they switched places with the Americans from Flyleaf. They are a female fronted band, with a mean looking bassist. I felt the crowd was bored and I ended up with the same mood. The singer, Lacey Mosley, didn’t have a bad voice, and she was able to sing while spinning or jumping around, but the music was nothing outstanding. They were not the most talkative band on stage, only announcing that “this is our last song” and the bass had annoying distortion at times.
My Passion
By the time I write this review, I really forgot I saw them. Now I recall a somehow electronic/dance sound with punk looking musicians on stage who jumped around and kept reminding me of Linkin Park.
Cancer Bats
I decided to stick around the second stage to watch the Canadians from Cancer Bats, as one of my friends recommended them. I witnessed a wild hardcore punk concert, with a singer who spent most of his time on top of the crowd and the rest of the musicians going crazy on stage. They put out some ear killing heavy riffs, and I actually saw few people getting wild on their music. But again, it might have been due the singer’s passion of being as close to them as possible.
Five finger death punch
Last time I saw this heavy metal / thrash band, they were “four finger death punch”, since one of their members was at the hospital. It was a mad show, but the one at Download beat it big time at madness. The singer, Ivan Moody, came on stage with a hockey jersey with the name of the band and kept talking to the crowd in between their songs and getting the moshpits started, since he got the confirmation that everyone wanted to have fun. The most extreme was when he asked the crowd to surf all the way to the stage, touch him and go back. Here it is, filmed for posterity:
