Download Festival Review – Guns N’ Roses fails and Letlive thrives as metal’s biggest festival enters the future | Download festival

nFor a long time, it’s been a joke that Download, the UK’s biggest rock and metal festival, kept bringing in new blood and churning out the same 80s giants. But recent releases are finally starting to focus on making headlines for the first time and taking at least minor steps into representation. This year, four-decade-long band Guns N’ Roses returns, while Limp Bizkit makes their debut and Linkin Park, who now shares front row with Emily Armstrong, becomes the first band to feature a female singer at the top of the charts. It only took 23 years.

On Friday, Swiss death squad Paleface Swiss took control of the second stage early. Band leader Mark Zellweger is furious that the festival will only allow him one free hot meal, and takes his anger out on a torrent of hellish breakdowns. German upstarts Electric Callboy command one of the weekend’s biggest crowds on the main stage before hip-hop legends – and iconic metal inspirations – Cypress Hill move seamlessly from classic to classic. Dedicating their performance to the late bassist Sam Rivers and his friend Dougie Miller, Limp Bizkit turn their set into a karaoke night, placing each lyric on the video screen behind them. Sample Soft Cell and Spandau Ballet nestled between the nu-metal bands and the show will be much shorter, but that doesn’t bother the eager crowd. Tens of thousands—many wearing Fred Durst’s signature red hat—jump, scream and scream with delight.

On Saturday morning, British-Iranian trio Lewin dazzled on stage four with their Middle Eastern team. Singer Nina Saeedi evokes Iranian traditions with her piercing voice, not to mention her ritual dress. British sludge metallers Conjurer play material from their latest album, Unself, about singer/guitarist Danny Nightingale’s experiences as a non-binary, neurodivergent person. Let Us Live, which roars to protect the trans community, is a sledgehammer highlight.

Trivium is reliably explosive on the main stage, tearing through 20 years of hits and ferocious songs in just over an hour, but the energy just doesn’t flow for Guns N’ Roses. Time has robbed Axl Rose’s voice of its power, and he barely interacts with his thin audience. There’s no conversation between songs – he doesn’t even provide the song title – while his bandmates’ playing is flawless but lifeless. In the middle of what has been promoted as a 200-minute set by GnR, Blood Incantation offer a reprieve on the fourth stage, as their mix of death metal/kosmische launches the tent to the outer fringes. Those who return for the headlines attest that they finish 40 minutes earlier than scheduled.

Sunday morning begins with raucous guitar feedback from rising British rock band Unpeople, who can lay claim to the top performance of the weekend. Led by Wolfgang Van Halen (son of guitarist great Eddie), Mammoth delivers a minimalist show that owes more to Foo Fighters and Alter Bridge than to his father’s ’70s flair. Indian metal band Bloodywood are the best main stage act of the weekend, their tight jam full of motivational messages and vibrant ballads, but American rock band Letlive stole the entire festival from the third stage. Singer Jason Alon Butler leads a fiery interactive march, then tears down the drum crane and climbs the scaffolding. It feels righteous and dangerous in all the ways rock music should.

Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington is still missing nine years after his death, but his band refuses to wallow in grief. Their renditions of “One Step Closer,” “Crowling” and “In the End” reaffirm their status as generation-defining songs, uniting Donington in a single, with Armstrong and co-vocalist Mike Shinoda smiling throughout. The Fader explodes upon the audience in a final wave of 2000s angst, ending a relatively diverse download on a triumphant note.