Yeah it was fantastic. The Maiden show was brilliant. I also thought there was a lot more atmosphere. I got within 5m of the front and was surrounded by people who new all their stuff. 'twas great fun. Last week Bruce was obviously very much looking forward to Soundwave and he enjoyed himself last night.
I got there for the last couple of songs of The Sword, which sounded pretty good, before heading over to the main stage to see Monster Magnet. They were good, and Dave Weindorf has put on a bit of weight since the 1990s. I just googled images of him, and blimey he's put on more weight than I thought!
I then headed back to the metal stage, but caught a few Bullet For My Valentine songs on the way over. I don't quite get them. Are they a metal band or a pop band? Anyway on to DevilDriver it was, who were good but suffered from bad sound. I couldn't hear much in the way of guitars, with the wind not helping. They're an entertaining band though, and are what a band like BFMV should be like. I'm not sure why Dez has facial tatts, but hey it's his life and he doesn't have to work as a public servant like I do. Far out, I just found this image. He's covered in them:
http://www.moratphotography.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Dez_07.jpg
Then saw All That Remains, who were pretty good but annoyed me whenever they strayed into clean vocals. Why do so many bands do that now? It works for Fear Factory and a few others, but mostly pisses me off.
I'd been looking forward to Dimmu Borgir, but technical problems meant that their set was delayed by 20 minutes or so, which is not great at a festival. That meant that they only played for 25 minutes, which was disappointing. They said they're looking at touring next year though.
High on Fire were up next. I'd not heard them before, which shows my ignorance, but they were like a rocky Entombed. Sludgy heaviness. After that I saw most of the Murderdolls' set. They were pretty entertaining, but the songs didn't seem interesting and varied enough to be enjoyable for a lengthy show. Towards the end of them I moved back to the main stage to see Slash, along with half a million other people. I started off a fair way off, and felt rather detached as a result, but managed to make my way a fair way forward. It was a fun show, with Myles really seeming to enjoy himself. It's a pretty good gig he's got.
Unfortunately Slash clashed with Slayer, which meant that I missed half of the latter. That was rather disappointing, for Slayer were in good form. The best bit was seeing a middle aged guy and his 12 year old son go nuts when Raining Blood kicked in.
The Slayer crowd up and left upon completion of their set, which left a much smaller crowd to watch Kylesa, who were really good. It was weird/interesting seeing two drummers playing together like that. The girl in the band had a Meanies t-shirt on, which was cool. Anyway, they impressed me.
After that I saw half of Rob Zombie's set, which was really cool. I'd like to see one of his side shows one day. Great stage show, as you'd expect. I left half way through though so I could get a good spot for Maiden, seeing a couple of Queens of the Stone Age songs from afar. They sounded good actually.
So yeah, Maiden. They were great. No need to say which songs they played! Now I just hope they come back on a 7th Son era tour.
