A METAL REVELATION.....
download; to copy or move programs or information into a computer's memory,especially from the internet or a larger computer.
; a 3 day rock and metal festival held at Donington Park, Leicestershire, UK.
Of all the varied musical genres i've gotten into over the years, heavy metal has never really been one of them. The odd band or song has occasionally caught my attention, and a few have become fond favourites, but overall i've found the sledgehammer riffs, growling, screaming and associated fashions not to my taste. Heavy Metal has a long history stretching back to the late 60's, with the birth of the genre through bands like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin, and over the decades it has diversified and evolved into Thrash, Death Metal, Glam Metal, Industrial, and many more. The likes of Saxon, Venom, and the mighty Iron Maiden succesfully revived the sound with a (initially) more punk sensibility in the late 70's and early 80's in what was dubbed the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, and throughout the following years more commercial sounding bands like Def Leppard sold millions. Aside from the occasional Maiden single (their top 10 hit "Can I Play With Madness?" was a teenage favourite of mine), none of this denim clad, long haired riffola interested me. I remember lads at school listening to the aforementioned Leppard, and Glam or Hair Metal bands like Bon Jovi, Poison, Motley Crue, and (ugh) Guns 'N' Roses, taking the piss out of my considerably more Pop tastes and considering "their" bands to be proper music. After i left school and started my first job i found myself working with a hitherto unknown relative who was and still is a Metalhead, and was frequently given tapes of Maiden, Metallica and so on to listen to whilst toiling away for a minimum wage. I did enjoy some of this music, but it wasn't for me: my rock interests would lean ever closer to Punk, as they still do, and the appeal of Metal in all its many forms still eludes me.
So when i found myself attending the Download Festival - just for the one day - with my aforementioned third cousin Carl and a couple of his mates in 2006, i felt like a fish out of water. Surrounded by people who were black of clothing, long of hair and many of piercing, it's safe to say i did not look the part! But the weather was hot and the beer plentiful, so we found a spot near the main stage and watched our first band of the day, the comedy punk band Bowling For Soup. They played a pretty entertaining set including their big hit "Girl All The Bad Guys Want", which never seems right without its Nu-metal spoofing video. I enjoyed them though, certainly more than the music that followed: the turgid sound of Alter Bridge, whose frontmans' vocal style i can only liken to a constipated man straining on the throne. Anthrax followed, not bad but not my thing, and then the second of three bands i liked that day, Finnish gothic rockers HIM. I was already a fan of these after their Love Metal album came out, so i looked forward to watching them. The rest of the crowd evidently did not agree, as a hail of bottles and plastic pint glasses made their way towards the stage at regular intervals, HIM being seen as a "teenybop" band amongst the rock snobs in the audience. Poseurs Velvet Revolver - made up of ex-G'n'R and Stone Temple Pilots members - were shite. That left the headlining act, the legendary Black Sabbath. My knowledge of this bands music was minimal to say the least, and my only exposure to frontman Ozzy Osbourne was occasionally seeing him shouting "SHAAAAAARON!" on his familys' MTV reality show The Osbournes. So i was blown away when they took the stage and the doom-laden chords of their eponymous song rung out. All of their most loved classics followed; "Iron Man", "NIB", "Paranoid", War Pigs", "Fairies Wear Boots" and more. Ozzy himself was like a man transformed when onstage, a far cry from the doddering wreck he seemed on tv.
After watching them i did download quite a few of their songs from iTunes, as was my habit at the time, although to this day i've yet to actually buy any of their albums. I would attend one more Download festival the following year when i would get to watch another legendary band whose work would make more of an impact on me, but the genre itself largely remains absent from my collection. Within a few years though, another black clad style of music would become part of my life.....
; a 3 day rock and metal festival held at Donington Park, Leicestershire, UK.
Of all the varied musical genres i've gotten into over the years, heavy metal has never really been one of them. The odd band or song has occasionally caught my attention, and a few have become fond favourites, but overall i've found the sledgehammer riffs, growling, screaming and associated fashions not to my taste. Heavy Metal has a long history stretching back to the late 60's, with the birth of the genre through bands like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin, and over the decades it has diversified and evolved into Thrash, Death Metal, Glam Metal, Industrial, and many more. The likes of Saxon, Venom, and the mighty Iron Maiden succesfully revived the sound with a (initially) more punk sensibility in the late 70's and early 80's in what was dubbed the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, and throughout the following years more commercial sounding bands like Def Leppard sold millions. Aside from the occasional Maiden single (their top 10 hit "Can I Play With Madness?" was a teenage favourite of mine), none of this denim clad, long haired riffola interested me. I remember lads at school listening to the aforementioned Leppard, and Glam or Hair Metal bands like Bon Jovi, Poison, Motley Crue, and (ugh) Guns 'N' Roses, taking the piss out of my considerably more Pop tastes and considering "their" bands to be proper music. After i left school and started my first job i found myself working with a hitherto unknown relative who was and still is a Metalhead, and was frequently given tapes of Maiden, Metallica and so on to listen to whilst toiling away for a minimum wage. I did enjoy some of this music, but it wasn't for me: my rock interests would lean ever closer to Punk, as they still do, and the appeal of Metal in all its many forms still eludes me.
So when i found myself attending the Download Festival - just for the one day - with my aforementioned third cousin Carl and a couple of his mates in 2006, i felt like a fish out of water. Surrounded by people who were black of clothing, long of hair and many of piercing, it's safe to say i did not look the part! But the weather was hot and the beer plentiful, so we found a spot near the main stage and watched our first band of the day, the comedy punk band Bowling For Soup. They played a pretty entertaining set including their big hit "Girl All The Bad Guys Want", which never seems right without its Nu-metal spoofing video. I enjoyed them though, certainly more than the music that followed: the turgid sound of Alter Bridge, whose frontmans' vocal style i can only liken to a constipated man straining on the throne. Anthrax followed, not bad but not my thing, and then the second of three bands i liked that day, Finnish gothic rockers HIM. I was already a fan of these after their Love Metal album came out, so i looked forward to watching them. The rest of the crowd evidently did not agree, as a hail of bottles and plastic pint glasses made their way towards the stage at regular intervals, HIM being seen as a "teenybop" band amongst the rock snobs in the audience. Poseurs Velvet Revolver - made up of ex-G'n'R and Stone Temple Pilots members - were shite. That left the headlining act, the legendary Black Sabbath. My knowledge of this bands music was minimal to say the least, and my only exposure to frontman Ozzy Osbourne was occasionally seeing him shouting "SHAAAAAARON!" on his familys' MTV reality show The Osbournes. So i was blown away when they took the stage and the doom-laden chords of their eponymous song rung out. All of their most loved classics followed; "Iron Man", "NIB", "Paranoid", War Pigs", "Fairies Wear Boots" and more. Ozzy himself was like a man transformed when onstage, a far cry from the doddering wreck he seemed on tv.
After watching them i did download quite a few of their songs from iTunes, as was my habit at the time, although to this day i've yet to actually buy any of their albums. I would attend one more Download festival the following year when i would get to watch another legendary band whose work would make more of an impact on me, but the genre itself largely remains absent from my collection. Within a few years though, another black clad style of music would become part of my life.....
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