Download Festival 2013 Review: Iron Maiden, Slipknot & Rammstein

rating:4.5

One thing that's always guaranteed at Download festival is a diverse spread of musical tastes €“ the fest has attracted criticism in the past for including acts that plainly don't fit the bill, like Lethal Bizzle (who was unceremoniously pelted with free rice pudding,) Pendulum and Chase and Status recently. But Andy Copping knows how to cater for diverse tastes, and aside from a few well-publicised missteps, the organiser tends to cook up a good blend for the June festival, offering new bands, niche bands and mega-bands on the same schedule. And this year, Copping got it spot on, pulling in three huge headliners €“ Slipknot, Iron Maiden and Rammstein €“ all falling firmly under the spectacle banner, and each promising high-energy, explosive sets to top off three busy days of music. Like most years, the weather Gods conspired to wrap Donington in a halo of poor weather, liberally sprinkling the collected thousands with both heavy rain and vicious winds as usual. Perhaps black clouds and ominous weather should be considered the perfect backdrop for industrial metal, nu-metal and heavy metal, but that can be scant medicine for the campers who saw their pitches flooded or blown away again. Once more, the logistics of the festival were impressive when they worked, and infuriating when they didn't (the attempts to leave carparks are invariably life-sapping) €“ and though fans will inevitably complain about prices of food stands, beer and merchandise, the metal fest is run like a well-oiled machine, and the weather failed to cancel or postpone any band slots as it had the year before. So, progress has been made. At the end of the day, it's the music that mattered, and with incredible headliners, and a line-up that featured the likes of Queens Of The Stone Age, Korn, Thunder, Limp Bizkit, Enter Shikari and 30 Seconds To Mars, fans were treated to a veritable feast. So how did the bands fare? First off, Friday and Slipknot...