Top 10 Performances of Download Festival 2012

4. Slash

A living legend in his own right, Slash wasn't the only star of his performance at this year's Download, with now-regular collaborator Myles Kennedy once more proving exactly why Slash keeps coming back to him. Along with Chris Cornell (and perhaps Steven Tyler), Kennedy is easily one of the finest rock vocalists currently performing, his soul-soaked voice suited to a variety of song types, packing emotion and power when required and utterly spell-binding. In him, Slash has undoubtedly discovered a singer capable of holding his own alongside his own technical ability.

And that's saying nothing of the man himself: a genuinely brilliant rock technician, his guitar slung on his hip an extension of his person, and a phallic one at that, pulling sexed-up, soulful notes out of his strings, and effusing the kind of cool that would make anyone who could bottle it a billionaire. With Kennedy in front of him, Slash is free to prowl the stage, bouncing off his front-man, occasionally drawing focus away to remind us all who he is and just how much power he has, but equally at ease playing in the background.

By God he knows how to craft a live show, and though it has taken some time, his solo live show is now up to the very highest level, and it is a truly spell-binding experience to watch the great man swagger through old, iconic material like "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Paradise City" and captivating newer material like the wonderful "Star Light".

Read our full Slash review here.

3. Metallica

Aside from one over-extended bait and hook call-out sequence ("can you feel me?"), Metallica's performance in the Saturday headline slot was typically slick, honed after decades of tours and a familiarity with the material that makes its performance almost second nature. But that familiarity in no way breeds contempt, as the thrash metal Gods swagger their way through a set-list that begins with some crowd-pleasing classics, including the always exceptional "For Whom The Bell Tolls", "Hit The Lights" and "Master of Puppets", and then moves to focus on the main event: The Black Album. As usual, Metallica play through the album in reverse order, ending with a bang on "Sad But True" and "Enter Sandman", before the set closes with rabble-rousing versions of "Battery", "One" and "Seek and Destroy". They've grown into their live performance, maturing an already excellent skill-set into an effortlessly astounding live show that grips the crowd and barely loses potency even in the earlier, comparatively less-brilliant songs in the Black Album set. http://youtu.be/Q1VaTMvJaJE Next Up: Celtic fire and infectious cock-rock gold.