Festival preview: Download 2012

Download Festival 2012 preview – 8-10 June

Now in its 10th year, the UK’s premier hard rock festival is going from strength to strength – thanks to an always solid line-up and a mostly safe and friendly atmosphere. As they are in 10-year celebration mode, this years festival has one of the strongest line-ups in its history – particularly the headliners…

Download 2012 headliners:

Friday 8 June – The Prodigy

Anyone who has seen The Prodigy live will know they are a great choice for opening night headliners – capable of whippng up the rockers into a frenzy with their back catalogue of massive dance-rock tunes. A bit like this:

Saturday 9 June – Metallica

Not much to say about these guys – except this headline slot will see them perfroming their legendary ‘Black Album’ in its entirety. Should be a gig to remember!

Sunday 10 June – Black Sabbath

Like Metallica the night before, these legends of the dark arts of rock need no introduction and should be a great gig to close the festival – so long as Ozzy isn’t too messed up after 3 days at the festival!

Other notable acts:

However good the headliners may be, a festival lives and dies by its choice of undercard performers – and this is where Download 2012 is slightly weak, although they’ve done the best they can with the dearth of big rock acts around at the moment. I’d like to see up and comers like Cancer Bats get higher billing, and the likes of Biffy Clyro, Megadeath and Soundgarden help to bulk up the early evening slots.

Download 2012 tickets

All the weekend tickets for Download 2012 are now sold out, although there are day tickets available for Friday and Sunday – costing £82.50 each. Click this link for full details: Download 2012 tickets.

Download 2012 weather forecast

The all important weather forecast! Will you be bopping in the sun or trudging in the rain? Well, it’s not looking too good if you’re hoping for a dry and sunny weekend. I think the weather forecasters term for it is ‘changeable’, with sunshine and showers predicted to dominate the weekend’s weather. It doesn’t look too bad though, probably wellies and t-shirt weather. The forecast is liable to change between now and then though so keep your fingers crossed!