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If you're in any doubt over whether it was the right call to finally have Limp Bizkit headline Download for the first time - 23 whole years after they pulled out of topping the festival's very first edition - you need only take in the sheer number of red caps bouncing around Donington hours before the nu metal megaweights even arrive on stage.
Once they do, they waste no time - well, maybe a little, teasing Break Stuff right off the bat before Fred Durst halts proceedings to rile everyone up a bit more, guitarist Wes Borland dropping a few bars of the band's rowdy cover of Ministry's Thieves for good measure. Then Break Stuff hits for real, and it's instant bedlam; this is metal's ultimate party band, doing what they do best, in front of what is surely the biggest UK crowd they've ever played to.
Looking every inch the colourful characters that made them household names in millennial rock - Durst continuing his amusing but bizarre modern tradition of donning ridiculous wigs, Borland dolled up like some demonic Elden Ring rooster god - Jacksonville's finest dish out banger after banger, from Chocolate Starfish favourites My Generation, Hot Dog, Rollin' and Livin' It Up to deeper cuts like Gold Cobra opener Bring It Back and infectiously bullish rager Eat You Alive.
Bizkit's backdrop takes the form of a giant speaker system overlooking a collection of cassette tapes packing everything from Sepultura to Kraftwerk, a glistening LED screen at the back cranking out lyrics to each song like they aren't already coded to the DNA of just about every rock fan between the ages of 30 and 45.
And, on tonight's evidence, pretty much everyone else too; Gen X-ers are moshing with millennials while Gen Z kids are crowdsurfing past preteens on their parents' shoulders. That Bizkit are arguably as big as they've ever been is a minor miracle given how out of step they looked only a few short years into the New Millennium, but it's well deserved: they have as bulletproof a greatest hits catalogue as any band to make it big in metal, and they make a wise choice not to dip into the fun but unnecessary Nirvana and Rage Against The Machine covers that have often taken up valuable setlist space.
Not that we don't get some covers, of course. Faith goes off like a hydrogen bomb, while Behind Blue Eyes gets one of the loudest and most sincere singalongs of the whole day, hundreds of crowdsurfers going over as it reaches fever pitch only adding to the spectacle.
It's far from the only emotional motif of the day; much-missed bassist Sam Rivers gets a number of shout-outs, while some young fans getting to jump onstage to sing Full Nelson with Durst is a heartwarming touch.
It's all building to what seems like an unstoppable climax before an accident in the crowd results in a necessary but lengthy pause in the set. A fan is stretchered out, Durst looking shaken for a moment as he watches on, and for a second it seems like the show might end right there. "We could rip one more?" offers the frontman after collecting himself. Donington is in no two minds about whether to take him up on his offer, and while a second burst of Break Stuff is a leftfield way to finish up, it's ferociously effective: there isn't a soul stood still in the field as that final breakdown hits again.
Long overdue, but every bit worth the wait. Surely it won't be another two decades before Limp Bizkit headline Download again.
