Global Domination | Witnessed | Leeds Festival, 2008

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Witnessed

Leeds Festival, 2008

17/10/08 || Global Domination

Where: Leeds, England.
When: 22nd-24th August.
Why: Why not?
Where all the pictures at: No camera, bitches.

This review was written by ex-staffer/cocksmoker AMP.

I wont regale you with the tiny details of all five days I spent at Leeds Festival this year, because there are plenty of places on the Internet to read about stoned kids quoting Family Guy and even if there weren’t it wouldn’t be fun. Besides, for the most part the sort of bands that play at England’s biggest rock festival have no fucking business being featured under this domain name, but there are a few big names that might be semi-relevant to readers of this site, so onwards!

After two grim days (in the UK the roads are so fucked and the shitty music festivals so popular that you can pay extra to go in absurdly early and hang around in the cold with the metaphorical dicks of the festival organizers implanted between your cheeks…) of walking through mud, camping in mud and drinking muddy booze, the first band on Friday morning were Mindless Self Indulgence, a group of punk/metal/happy hardcore freaks fronted by unhinged megalomaniac Jimmy Urine, who according to the lyrics of the band’s hit single (there’s a phrase you’ll never see again on GD) “Shut Me Up”, likes his coffee “black, just like my metal”. A man of refined tastes, then. Urine’s stage presence is legendary and even at 12.45 on a rainy late-August morning he got everybody’s attention through torrents of abuse and deranged shouting. The band played reasonably, but MSI’s music has never been particularly demanding or complex – just a vehicle for Urine’s immense ego – so I won’t dwell on them too long. The shouting was on good form, as was the inter-song banter, and I left happy and with a new hat. Though the hat has nothing really to do with any of this… 7/10

Later in the afternoon, Slipknot failed to play, as it’s apparently too difficult to play with a broken foot. I’ll give their performance 8/10 for being better than I was expecting, but Joey Jordison’s bones only get 3/10. At some point in the day Avenged Sevenfold did play, although only a couple of songs as they were ill. I wasn’t there, but Avenged Sevenfold get 0/10 anyway. Fuck Avenged Sevenfold. Some more stuff happened throughout the rest of the day but I’ll be damned if I was sober enough to remember any of it until much later in the evening when…

Tenacious D came on stage. Yep, the D, gods of rock. Aside from our being a good mile away from the stage (on camping chairs and thus unwilling to move, that’s the good life), meaning that Jack Black’s voice was utterly inaudible, the sound was unusually good for a stage where, historically, the bass only has two volumes; vomit-inducing and off. All the classics were present (“Tribute”, “Wonderboy”, “Fuck Her Gently”) and after only a few songs the band got on with telling the story from their recent film through a giant stage show, involving a huge metal man and the D’s most regular guest-contributor, Satan.

The material I knew was awesome, and though Jack looked totally shattered and disheveled from a long-running tour with Metallica (I bet that’s wild… Yeah…) he still put everything he had into the performance. The material I didn’t know was less awesome, mostly because it was from their inferior newer album (inferior because I don’t have it) and it’s much harder to sing along when you don’t know the words. I wasn’t expecting hallelujah-great things from a band that basically revolves around one fatass and his jokes, but they still delivered 7/10 and much cheap bourbon followed, as cheap bourbon often does.

Oh, I nearly forgot Metallica themselves. Not surprising. 4/10. When you sound like a bad cover of yourselves you know you’re in trouble.

A new day dawned and after a great stand-up set from Henry Rollins, some solid sets from the local indie trendies and a disappointing set from the Queens of the Stoneage (bring back Kyuss!) I was ready for the highlight of the weekend, and the reason I bought my ticket in the first place: Rage Against the Machine.

“Check-one-two”, and the riot began. A whole load of shows since they reformed a year and a half ago must’ve been all the practice Rage needed, and it’s certainly not taken its toll, cause they were as explosive on stage as they ever could’ve been. Sixty thousand people jumped in the air for “Testify” and didn’t stop until the end of whatever song came last (what, you think I had any idea what was going on by that point?). Zack’s voice is no less abrasive with age, he can still scream his way through “Bullet in the Head” and “Killing in the Name Of” like it’s 1992, and it’s almost possible, from his conviction, to forget that Rage has always been a set of commercial sellout whores. Morello was on top form too – amongst the world of those who care (guitar magazines, no one else) his constant practice and self-improvement has been well publicized, and we were treated to a barrage of even more complex licks in some songs than their studio equivalents.

The band didn’t have a stage show, but they didn’t need a stage show; halfway through “Bombtrack” they had to stop because people were passing out from an overdose of concentrated rock. Sixty thousand people weighs a lot. If it had been any more immense then all of us would have died, a bit like that YouTube video where John Pettruci shoots bees and ninjas at the audience through his amps, except that no one was bored like they would have been if Dream Theater were playing. Four guys, four instruments and one giant fucking red star is all the Rage any of us could take. When the band finished, I went and had a lie down. 10/10, no question.

And that’s the end of Saturday. There were a few bands on Sunday, but do you really want to sit and read about ska? I think we’ve learnt enough from this experience anyway – death metal may be the focus of this site, and that’s all very well if you want to kick the shit out of some babies, but if you want to kick the shit out of the entire world (or just your parents) then you need Rage Against the Machine.

“Fuck you I wont tidy my bedroom, motherfucker…”

Witnessed