Download 2006 - Snickers Stage, Friday

United Kingdom | by Mat Hocking, Dan Jones | 14 June 2006

As the sun bakes the crowd outside, the Snickers Tent is going off like a pressure cooker!

The Snickers stage kicks off in style on Friday with the Tool meets Hawkwind stylings of former Justin Chancellor (Tool) bandmates Suns Of The Tundra; but it’s not until Throwdown that things really get moving; their almost evangelical hardcore and frontman Dave Peters walking on the crowd is a combination that makes them bigger than Jesus.

French upstarst Gojira’s sweet metal makes them worth the hype, whilst Bleeding Through’s best show ever is no idle boast – there’s steam rising from the pit less than ten minutes in, and that’s something you can’t just blame on the weather alone. It’s a relief when Dredg hit the stage, the perfect comedown after all that sweaty business. With the strict half hour set time keeping a lid on their usual self indulgent tendencies, Clutch manage to strip rock down to its very barest of bones whilst still sounding remarkably essential during the biggest show of their illustrious fifteen year career.

With an image more post-hardcore than post-grunge, Inme embellish Deftones softly-screamy histrionics into their set in a way that’s refreshingly unique for a British band. Dave Mcpherson’s vocals may be hit and miss in parts but you can’t argue with a rock star showmanship that simply dazzles on such a small stage.

Bruising fashion-led melodic hardcore is the order of the day when it comes to Atreyu and judging by their particularly well-coifed, designer-clad fan-base the fashion aspect seems as integral to the sound as the mosh-tastic grooves that pound relentlessly from the stage.

All-American Rejects seem a rather odd choice for the Snickers stage headline slot, if only because of their ‘support-band’ status in recent years with the likes of Bowling For Soup. Their passionate post-emo pop is polished enough, yet the tunes never seem to shine strong enough to draw you in. It’s standard pop- punk fare – sugar-sweet hooks, simplistic teenage sentimentality yet without that spark or originality they seem destined to remain filed under ‘heard it al. before’.