Sonisphere Knebworth 2011 Sunday Review - A Celebration of Paul Gray

After the fairly restful happenings of the Saturday of this years' Sonisphere, topped off by Gojira's stupendous performance in Bohemia, Sunday's schedule had indicated that it was likely to be wall to wall quality metal with lots of stage dashing. With this in mind the whole group was up relatively early and we made it to the arena with plenty of time to spare, which was somewhat fortunate as Volbeat, who were kicking things off on the Apollo stage started approximately 10 minutes early.

I'd never heard Volbeat before, but had been told good things about them by many people, including certain people who opted to see Volbeat rather than Megadeth at Download 2010 (who I immediately branded pathologically insane). Needless to say, their appeal was obvious from the start of their extended performance which took in dedications to Johnny Cash and snippets of Slayer amongst a selection of their own songs. For the uniniated, Volbeat can only be described as a "rockabilly metal band", swerving from country style guitars and singing to some really heavy riff work and drumming at will, sometimes multiple times per song.

Much like when describing Royal Republic at Download, from the way it sounds on paper it should never work but it's surprisingly good if you give it a chance. Volbeat for several of us were the pleasant surprise of the entire festival and I'll certainly be paying a lot more attention to them from now on (though I'd still never ditch Megadeth for them). 7.5 / 10.

From the pleasant surprise of the weekend to unfortunately the biggest disappointment in Black Tide. Their debut album Light From Above was one of the highlights of 2008 for me and it seemed if the boys could build on their debut album then stardom could beckon. Then they took on Sharon Osbourne as their manager, and whilst I like Mrs O, for lack of a better expression, everything seems to have gone to shit since. Opening with Hit The Lights as Metallica did two nights ago was a brave move (I'm guessing no-one had bothered to tell them about James and co on Friday night) but after that they committted a cardinal festival sin; They played a set of almost entirely new material. As a result the crowd became stone dead, and compared to Light From Above the new songs sounded so generic and lifeless, the antithesiss of their debut album.

Black Tide: Oh Dear

By the time the set ending Warriors Of Time came around few people cared anymore, as fantastic as that song is this performance was long beyond saving. Here's hoping the band learn from this mistake or experiment (call it what you will) and don't do it again. Something of a train wreck. 2 / 10.

After the disappointment of Black Tide we were back in much safer hands trudging back up the hill to the Apollo Stage as Arch Enemy, led by Angela Gossow and her titanic growls were there to pick the mood up. Playing a set of material from across a number of albums, the first real heavy metal action of the day went down superbly with the crowd and there was headbanging and pits alike all over the place.

Arch Enemy: All For One

Tracks new and old alike meshed well together as Arch Enemy's Knebworth debut was very well received, particularly the closing one-two punch of old favourite We Will Rise and Nemesis, surely the best thing the band has ever written or is ever likely to write. A thunderous triumph for Arch Enemy, who on this evidence would be a very popular choice for a return to Sonisphere in the near future. 7.5

The full Arch Enemy Setlist was:

• Yesterday is Dead and Gone
• Revolution Begins
• Ravenous
• No Gods, No Masters
• We Will Rise
• Nemesis

After Arch Enemy, food and collecting one's mobile phone meant missing House of Pain, but I was able to find my friend Iain in time to watch Parkway Drive with him as I had promised. Parkway are a band that I have previously never listened to, despite their growing profile and the polarised opinion that they seem to generate whenever they are mentioned.

Parkway Drive: Breakdowns & Wheelchairs

On the live evidence of them, I thought that some of their material was a bit samey, but they are quite an entertaining live band, particularly with their stunt of getting two inflatable dingies into the crowd and insighting a race, with whichever side got their manned dingy to the back of the front crowd section the quickest the winner. Guitarist Luke Kilpatrick also deserves credit for being onstage playing in a wheelchair with a broken leg. I can see why they are compared to the likes of Bring Me The Horizon and A Day To Remember and why they have toured with BMTH in the past. They're not likely to become one of my favourite bands anytime soon but they are good value live. 6.

At 2pm, after Parkway Drive and Before In Flames, something quite remarkable happened, though I hope for obvious reasons we never experience anything like it again at another festival for many years. Paul Gray's Slipknot outfit was placed on a stand in the middle of the Saturn Stage, and the entire arena fell silent. You could have heard a pin drop across the entire field. I've been at many immaculately observed moments of silence at football matches but because this was spread across such a wide space it was just so much more impressive. Some people were moving around in silence, others with their heads bowed or hugging friends or loved ones and a lot of people were emotional. But the two minute silence was absolutely immaculate, and at the end of it there was thunderous applause in celebration of the life of Paul Gray. A fantastic tribute and I wondered and hoped the other members of Slipknot were around to see it (and not hear it, as it were).

Much like following Gojira on the previous evening was a thankless task, being the first band on after the two minutes silence cannot have been an easy job, but In Flames fared a bit better than Paradise Lost. Opening with the always popular Cloud Connected, The Gothenburg quintet injected life back into the fields of Knebworth with an almighty jolt. Anders Friden remarked that he didn't know how to react to what he had just seen minutes before taking the stage, and dedicated the next song Trigger to Paul Gray.

In Flames: Burning Very Brightly

New and old songs were mixed together as Alias from 2008's A Sense of Purpose and new lead single Deliver Us from the recent Sounds Of A Playground fading fit nicely alongside older tracks such as Pinball Map and in a real surprise, The Hive from the Whoracle album ("We're from Gothenburg, we're gonna show you about where we come from" was the introduction to that song). The Quiet Place had horns and hands clapping far to the back of the field and then Take This Life finished things off in short, sharp style. While the sombre period before their set took some of the initial impact away from In Flames, they must be commended for turning the mood into a very positive one and they put on a very enjoyable performance. Hopefully a first proper UK tour in three years will occur sometime in 2011. 7.

In Flames' setlist was:

• Cloud Connected
• Trigger
• Alias
• Pinball Map
• Deliver Us
• The Hive
• Where the Dead Ships Dwell
• The Quiet Place
• Take This Life

My relationship with Mastodon live is very love/hate. Sometimes I thoroughly enjoy them, other times I can't get on with them. Sonisphere Sunday was unfortunately not a love Mastodon day for me, and after 15 minutes I went to meet a friend (but managed to go from the arena to the main gate and back and when I returned Mastodon were still playing, which I was fairly impressed with). I may have been in the minority as two of my best friends put them in their top 3 bands of the weekend but I didn't enjoy Mastodon on this day at all. 4 (based on what I heard).

I caught up with some more friends during Airbourne (but managed to see the now seemingly routine "climb the scaffold and perform a solo from the top of the stage", much as they did at Sonisphere two years ago and Download last year, though unlike Download 2010 they weren't cut off for doing so.

The sombre undercurrent of the day continued as when Motorhead took the stage, Lemmy got on the mic and announced to the festival that Wurzel, Motorhead's guitarist for 13 years had passed away the night before, having suffered a heart attack. He then dedicated "this show, and the rest of our lives" to Wurzel. With this in mind, it is not surprising at all that Motorhead seemed a little bit flat compared to their usual selves.

What definitely did not help the cause was that, whether it was just where we were stood (near the soundstage), but you couldn't hear Lemmy's bass at all for the first half of the performance. Considering they're only a three piece that makea a considerable difference to the sound. One or two of the new songs sounded good, as from what I understand the last two Motorhead albums have been some of the best of their entire career and that was reflected in the live delivery. Obviously The Ace of Spades produced its usual crowd pleasing reaction, and at this point we departed on a high note. 6 / 10, which is a good score considering the circumstances around their performance.

The full Motorhead setlist was:

• Iron Fist
• Stay Clean
• Get Back In Line
• Metropolis
• Over the Top
• One Night Stand
• I Know How to Die
• In the Name of Tragedy (with Drum Solo)
• Going to Brazil
• Killed by Death
• Ace of Spades
• Overkill

The reason we left Motorhead early was to get a good spot for arguably the funniest frontman in metal Mikael Akerfeldt, and his merry men in Opeth. It was at this point the rains made their unwelcome return, but it didn't affect Opeth one bit (indeed some of Opeth's music almost feels at times like it was made to be played in a torrential storm, not that the weather was quite that bad at that point).

Opeth: Funnier than Bill Bailey

Due to their song lengths being on the fairly substantial side, 45 minutes wasn't a great deal of time for Opeth, but they managed to fit in songs new and old into their set, with the biggest cheers being reserved for Masters' Apprentice and The Lotus Easter. "So up next on this stage is Bill Bailey?" Mikael asked the crowd. When given the affirmative response, the reply was simply "He's a rather nice chap". Considering Opeth are one of Bill's favourite bands there may be something of a mutual admiration society there. "We're gonna play a song that we probably like more than you do" Mikael announced before Opeth finished with Hex Omega. I would somewhat disagree with his statement as it went down well with the crowd, but you have to admire his honesty. Opeth were very good as always, but they need a longer set to fully flex their considerably musical muscle. 7 / 10, but could have easily been higher had they had more time.

The full Opeth setlist was:

• The Grand Conjuration
• Face of Melinda
• The Lotus Eater
• Master's Apprentices
• Hex Omega

Towards the end of Opeth's set, it started raining again. Only this time, unlike on the Saturday, it never actually stopped, only changed in volume, frequency and speed. Nevertheless, after a bathroom break, we were amongst the huge crowd who wanted to party with Limp Bizkit in the rain. Fred and the boys got things off to a rowdy start with Hot Dog and never let up from the word go. There were people pitting, bouncing and dancing all over the fields of knebworth to the likes of My Generation. Seemingly allowing the crowd to choose what songs would come next, Break Stuff appeared early on to allow approximately 50,000 soaked people to let off some considerable steam while new single Douchebag fit in well alongside the old material.

Limp Bizkit: Big Fans of Boobies

It was classic Limp Bizkit from start to finish which means depending on your disposition towards them, you will have either loved it or hated it, they're not a bad that really allow much room for sitting on the fence. A huge singalong for My Way then led into Bizkit rarity Boiler which went down a storm, and then it was Mission Impossible Time with Take A Look Around. Throughout the performance, Fred Durst had commented many times on the amount of beautiful ladies in attendance, so he decided to strike a bargain with the Knebworth crowd. He promised that Limp Bizkit would play Faith, but only if as many ladies as possible got up on shoulders and showed off their assets. I would imagine few people have ever seen that many boobs in the same place at the same time. It was obviously good enough for Mr Durst as George Michael's old hit got its usual nu metal reworking to the delight of everyone in attendance. After that there was only time for one more song, and the fields of Knebworth headbanged and did some very shoddy dancing in unison as Rollin' finished things off to everyone's huge satisfaction. Fred Durst complimented the crowd on how awesome the evening had been before announcing that the Bizkit were going to play the O2 Arena in December. This performance may have sold a lot of tickets to that show. Thoroughly enjoyable throughout and exceeded expectations. 8.

The Limp Bizkit setlist was:

• Hot Dog
• My Generation
• Livin' It Up
• Break Stuff
• Douche Bag
• My Way
• Boiler
• Take a Look Around
• Faith(George Michael cover)
• Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)

After Limp Bizkit, I had someting of a dilemma. See Bill Bailey, or go to the Jagermeister stage to see Fozzy? In the end I decided to do both so I left the others at the Saturn Stage and fought my way through the assembled drenched hordes to a good spot in front of the Jager stage. Unfortunately the Fozz were running slightly late, so in the end I didn't see too much of them. It also seemed that approximately 30 seconds before they took the stage the rain became harder than it had been all weekend to this point. Old hands at this by now, it didn't faze Fozzy one bit and the whole band were greeted with thunderous cheers, Rich Ward and Chris Jericho in particular. They raced through opener To Kill A Stranger sounding great, as they did when they went straight into Martyr No More. At this point I decided to leave to catch the second half of Bill Bailey, but Fozzy were on form and if they'd kept up the initial level of performance would have been one of my bands of the weekend.

Chris Jericho and Fozzy: Weatherproof

The first thing I noticed about Bill Bailey when I got within earshot of the Saturn Stage is that it was bloody hard to hear him. By the time I'd wormed my way considerably closer to the front and found my family & friends, things hadn't improved too much. And in my opinion, when you could hear him, I just didn't think he was that funny. I'm not the biggest Bill Bailey fan (more of a Billy Connolly man myself) but many of my friends were, and most of them were thoroughly annoyed that the majority of his set was just old routines from his past tours and DVD's. Based on this, I REALLY wished I'd stayed at Fozzy. When he did venture into the new material, things took a distinct upturn. The Rammsteinified version of Scarborough Fair was genuinely a) hilarious and b) really good, while playing Enter Sandman on a set of old car horns deservedly got some chuckles. As a result, this really felt like a missed opportunity on Bill's part as those snippets showed what he could have done if he hadn't played it safe. In his defence (as my discussion with Steve rose to my attention), his appearance was hyped up to almost biblical levels, making me think that it was never going to live up to the hype, but I still didn't enjoy it apart from the parts I have highlighted. 5 / 10.

We left Bill slightly early but with the rain still teaming down we decided not to get too close to the front for Slipknot. We ended up with a pretty damn good view of things as we awaited a performance that like the big four, a lot of us wondered if we would ever see. We didn't have to wait long as the stage lights turned red, the rain beat down harder and there were eight masked men on stage fixed in position, Paul Gray's uniform hanging from the same stand as it was earlier in the day in his customary position slightly to the left of where Corey Taylor often is in the middle of the stage. They stood and milked the crowd before launching into a particularly ferocious 'Sic' and there was no doubt based on that Slipknot had come to cause carnage. They weren't in the mood to mess around and followed 'Sic' straight into Eyeless (here comes the pain indeed).

A thoroughly good mix of favourites old and more recent was to follow with Wait and Bleed getting a huge singalong, The Blister Exists prompting the largest air drumming session of the weekend as well as a lot of muddy circle pitting and Liberate and Before I Forget inciting general chaos amongst the assembled maggot hordes. Corey Taylor wasn't quite his usual talkative self for a lot of this performance, but reminded everyone that tonight was a celebration of Paul Gray's life. He still commanded the stage like few others can, but he didn't need to talk a lot to do so. With songs like Left Behind and Disasterpiece pulled from the library the music more than did the talking and the crowd needed no encouragement to go crazy, bad weather or otherwise.

Corey did stop at one stage to thank everyone for the 2 minute's silence earlier in the day, saying it was one of the most memorable things he'd ever seen and that it would stay with all of them forever, as I think it will with all those who were present. A huge "2" backdrop also replaced the All Hope is Gone one and stayed there for the rest of the set. Telling everyone it was time to go Psychosocial was guaranteed to get a huge reaction and Knebworth didn't disappoint. From there on it was the chaotic, destructive Slipknot we all know and love with Duality, The Heretic Anthem and Only One before around 55,000 people got down and jumped the fuck up in the mud as Spit It Out closed off the main part of the set.

The encore was short and sweet, and by sweet, I mean brutal. People = Shit set us up and Surfacing well and truly finished us off. Unfortunately by the end we were too far away from the stage to see the whole band gather before Joey embraced Paul's uniform on its stand one last time, but the performance was a fitting tribute to Mr Gray and a tour that a lot of people (myself included) thought would probably not happen I think has been deemed a huge success.

To put it into context, I have seen Slipknot better. For me, it didn't come anywhere near Download 2009 (one of the greatest shows I've seen by any band ever) and the quality of the weekend was so high they were great, but just not quite among the top 3. Here's hoping they they return to do it all again though! 8 / 10

The Full Slipknot setlist was:

• Iowa
• 742617000027
• (sic)
• Eyeless
• Wait and Bleed
• The Blister Exists
• Liberate
• Before I Forget
• Pulse Of The Maggots
• Frail Limb Nursery
• Purity
• Left Behind
• Disasterpiece
• Psychosocial
• The Heretic Anthem
• Duality
• Only One
• Spit It Out
• ===========================
• (515)
• People = Shit
• Surfacing
• 'Til We Die (over PA)

With that, another weekend of quality metal had had its last notes played for us as we headed back to the campsite. From a musical point of view, I don't think I've ever enjoyed a festival so much. That was always likely to be the case with the big four in attendance, but there were so many other good bands, I don't know if this festival will ever be topped. For my future festivals I hope it will, but Sonisphere 2011 will take some beating!

I'd be interested to know other people's top 3 from the weekend, so here's a selection of ours from the group. Please post yours in the comments if you were there.

Me: Metallica, Gojira, Megadeth

Jayne: Metallica, Limp Bizkit, Volbeat

Steve: Gojira, Mastodon, Metallica

Sam: Alestorm, Slipknot, Volbeat

Matt: Slayer, Mastodon, Megadeth "Metallica didnt count" (so they were best?)

Iain: Slipknot, Biffy Clyro, Protest The Hero

Diane: Volbeat, Alestorm, Slipknot

Rob: Slipknot, Volbeat, Metallica

Poppy: Slipknot, Metallica, Parkway Drive

Adam: Biffy Clyro, Volbeat, Mastodon

John: Black Spiders, Metallica, Megadeth

Tags: Sonisphere Festival, Sonisphere Knebworth 2011, Sonisphere, Slipknot, Bill Bailey, Fozzy, Opeth, Limp Bizkit, Mastodon, Motorhead, Parkway Drive, Volbeat, Arch Enemy

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