Thunder and lightning might delay the start of play by an hour, but when the Saturday of Sonic Temple starts the energy is all the more rabid for it. Snot get a massive turnout on the Altar stage and bodies fly over the barriers in a constant stream, the band’s bounding riffs and spring-loaded energy just what we need to shake off two days’ fatigue.
Kicking off their set with Sway, Coal Chamber are bringing out the big guns early on. The churning bass lines and fault-line grooves bypass the brain to get bodies moving, and its as if the morning’s weather snafu never happened when the sun suddenly blazes out as the band stomp through Big Truck. By the time they finish on a crushing Loco – introduced by vocalist Dez Fafara as “a song we wrote in 1992 – long before any of these nu metal bands came about” - it feels like CC are long overdue their own reappraisal.
Vindication seems to be the theme of the day on the main-stage. Black Veil Brides, Motionless In White and Bring Me The Horizon have all copped shit from gatekeepers in the past, but prove the haters wrong with respective triumphant sets. “A lot of people used to talk shit about us,” acknowledges Andy Biersack. “So we wrote this one for them – it's called Revenger.” The rediscovery of their metalcore roots certainly doesn’t hurt in making BVB’s set feel ferocious, new album Vindicate dominating a set that is punctuated with blasts of pyro and feels suitably massive for the big crowd the band draw.
Kreator are already well-acknowledged as one of – if not the – best legacy thrash bands around in Europe, but word is slow making its way across the Atlantic. They might not pull as big a crowd as some of the nu metal nostalgia acts that’ve popped up on the Altar Stage, but the bodies that do show up go hard, sprinting about in a joyously hostile frenzy.
The veterans have barely finished opener Seven Serpents when Mille Petrozza demands a wall of death, and the fact the stage stands on concrete does nothing to deter a massive pit breaking out, bodies clattering to the ground with joyous abandon as they thunder through a selection of modern thrash anthems – Hate Uber Alles, Enemy Of God, Violent Revolution – that thankfully sees their audience grow massively by the end of the set.
With Bring Me The Horizon headlining the main stage, fellow British metalcore stalwarts Architects are clearly feeling fired up with their own big-league aspirations. Any worries their status as one of Britain’s best bands would be lost in translation somewhere over the pond are allayed by the absolute massive turnout the boys from Brighton greet.
More than that though, their audience is united in utter devotion, screaming and howling along to every song like their lives depend on it. The gentle intro to Elegy gives way to some serious propulsive energy, and the big screens surrounding the band lend a striking visual accompaniment to a set that feels genuinely massive. With absolutely colossal tunes like Doomsday and Animals dropping in the latter half of the set, you’d best believe we’re feeling some serious national pride as the final notes fade out and the crowd surges over to Bring Me The Horizon.
