Introduction
On the 7th of July I left for Sonisphere 2011, a metal festival held at Knebworth park from the 8th~10th, I got home at 5:30pm on the 11th, here, I'm going to tell you about the Festival and show some pictures I took and some the festival hosts took.
Sonisphere 2011
Lineup:
Thursday 7th July
Thursday was pretty slow, but was torture on my legs and back, I was dropped off in Manchester by my Dad at about 8:30am, I was meant to get the coach at 9:30 but my Dad insisted we leave as early as possible...
But I was excited for my first festival and after meeting up with my friends (Lee, Sam and Max, (who had gone to festivals before) And Paul and Nathan (Who, along with me, hadn't.) at around 9am we boarded the coach and waiting 6 hours to get to Knebworth house in London.
When we got off it was around 3:30pm and scorching hot. Ee were soon sweating, the aches in our legs and backs were made worse by having to carry an incredibly heavy backpack, tent, etc through a crowd of a couple thousand people in a queue to get into the Festival grounds, after an hour and a half we got to the front and got into the festival, it was then a half hour walk to the camp grounds, during which my legs cramped up, having barely exercised in the past year this was quite a shock to my leg muscles :c
But anyway, we got there and pitched our tents in a circle so that we had a little area where we could sit and eat. I made the mistake of having my tent sideways on a hill, which I will forever regret as on the Monday we left I discovered half of it was flooded with water which had run in.
At about 5pm we entered the Festival arena which contained the stages and shops, I bought a Vietnamese helmet (For no reason other than I could) and a collapsable chair. We got some food and returned to camp, where endless hours of fun were had throwing things at the metal helmet without the wearer feeling a thing.
Friday 8th July
Today was the first official day of the festival, and having never camped before I got no sleep whatsoever, I woke up at about 6:30am, got some chips to warm me up and one by one the rest of our group woke up.
Since we arrived a day before with our early bird tickets, lots of people were coming in now, because of this the bands only started at 3pm, the wait until then was soul crushing, especially since it rained heavily then was burning hot in the space of like 15 minutes.
The first band I watched was a band I had never called of called 'Japanese Voyeurs' that a friend of mine wanted to watch, they were on the third 'Bohemia' stage which was in a large Blue tent. Turned out they were pretty epic, couldnt udnerstand a thing the singer was saying though, her voice was so high pitched!
We caught the last song of Diamond Head, which luckily was the only one I know; Am I Evil. I then waited in the crowd for the start of the Big 4, I was pretty near the front for Anthrax and was dragged into my first Mosh pit, which consisted of be being span around, punched and then dragged out by a random stranger in the space of 10 seconds. I then retrated to the surge barrier where there were no pits :|
I missed about half of Slayer because my legs were hurting so much, I missed 15 minutes at the beginning and at the end, I returned to the crowd for Metallica, which remains one of the best, if not the best show at the festival. The atmopshere was just brilliant with everyone singing to all of their songs and everyone being in such a good mood, one of their encores consisted of the entire Big 4 coming on (All of Anthrax, Megadeth, Slayer, Metallica and the singer of Diamond Head) to sing Am I evil (A fan video of which is
)
Saturday 9th July
Today was a nice wind-down from Metallica, my voice was gone from screaming to Master of Puppets, Enter Sandman, etc. The only person I really wanted to watch today was Richard Cheese, who didn’t fail to disappoint.
After that we kindof wandered around, getting some food and drinks when we were approached by two women who told us to watch Jettblack on the Jagermeister stage, to be fair they were pretty damn awesome and I definitely need to keep an eye on them for more.
I also watched a few comedians on this day, one of them got booed by the crowd, causing him to enter rage mode; which amused me to no end. The second one was good, and the third was Steve-O, debuting his stand up career, and to be honest, he didn’t seem that good, just talked about his genitals for an hour.
Towards the end of the day we were a little clueless what to do so we ended up watching Biffy Clyro, who weren’t as bad as I thought they’d be.
Sunday 10th July
The Festivals Final day, being headlined by Slipknot and with so many good bands today was epic. Unfortunately my phone died about half way through the day, meaning no photos or videos past Motorhead
But yeah, first band we watched was Arch Enemy, who revealed to us they hadn’t slept in three days, but were epic non-the-less, it still amazes me how a female singer can sound like she does. It was then House of Pain, who were pretty boring since we only know one of their songs (“Jump Around”) and they saved it until last. It was then Parkway Drive, whose guitarist was in a wheelchair after breaking his leg, their show was pretty awesome as they had people crowd surfing in blow-up boats.
It was then In Flames who we missed to get something to eat. Then Mastodon, who were pretty awesome, considering I had never heard them before. After them were Airbourne, who I wanted to watch but ended up not doing but instead listening to them from the other stage, turns out their guitarist climbed to the top of the scaffolding on the stage.
Motorhead came on the Apollo stage and announced that their guitarist Wurzel had died the day before from a heart attack before continuing to play their show. They were really good and Im glad I saw them. Next was supposed to be Opeth, but one of my favourite bands, Alestorm, was playing in the Bohmeia tent in an hour and I wanted to get near the front so I missed out Opeth and watched Cancer Bats in the Bohemia tent so I could be near the front for Alestorm. And they were truly one of my favourite bands there, the atmosphere was so epic and theres nothing funnier than watching someone crowd surf in a little blue tent whilst Scottish Pirate metal is playing in the background, they even did the Mic test by shouting “Bacon. Crispy Bacon.”
After Alestorm it was Bill Bailey on the Second stage, but it was what happened in the crowd before it that made my day. There’s a Podcast called ‘The YoGPoD’ and its pretty unknown except by fans of the Yogscast, anyway, their way of finding other listeners is to shout “I AM DAVE, EXCLAMATION MARK, YOGNAUGHT. AND I HAVE THE BALLS” In a crowd and whoever else is a listener has to shout it back. One of my goals for the weekend was to find someone else who watched the YogPod. Anyway, just randomly in the silence of about 20,000 people before Bill Bailey a few feet to my right a girl shouted that very phrase at the top of her lungs. I immediately swivelled and repeated it back to them, raising my fists in the air triumphantly. Her and the group she was with cheered and shouted “Thank you !” whilst the rest of the crowd looked at us strangely.
But Bill Bailey was epic, playing some Rammestein versions of Hokey Pokey as well as his own original songs and it was truly hilarious.
But then came the days headliners; Slipknot, who blew me away thoroughly, rivalling Metallica for sheer awesomeness. It was a truly epic tribute for the bands late bassist Paul Grey. And the crazy test (Spit it out) turned my legs to Jelly. If you don’t know what the Crazy test is, during the song ‘Spit it out’ Corey Tailor (Lead singer, AKA Number 8) gets the entire crowd to kneel/crouch on the ground until he shouts “JUMP THE FUCK UP” during the song, at which point thousands of people leap into the air at the same time.
This night riots took place all over the camp grounds and the fences and lights were ripped down, and even through the festival was full of Metal heads, when Slipknot played
whilst bringing Paul Greys costume and mask on stage it was one of the most touching experiences Ive ever had and there were so many people crying.
Monday 11th July
Today I was awoken by a drunk woman at 4am shouting that over the past few days people have been waking her up at 8am with talking. But it was hilarious to watch people throw stuff at her tent and for her to get even more angry and drunk. And the events that followed will not be put here as she then decided she would pleasure a random stranger in the middle of the field.
But it was then a 6 hour coach ride to Manchester and about 2 hours on a train since we missed the one we were supposed to get back home.
All in all I really enjoyed Sonisphere, and Im glad I went.