Download Festival 2023 took place between the 8th and the 11th June 2023.
The headliners were:
- Metallica
- Bring Me the Horizon
- Metallica
- Slipknot
I also made a vlog of the festival, which you can watch below!
The Festival Crew
This year me and my wife Esther went to Download Festival with our usual festival crew: Steve and Nick and Dan.
They were joined by several of their friends, and we also camped with some of Esthers friends; Natalie, Jamie, Chris, Anna and Paul.
Overall this meant we had a very large camp, something that we don’t often do!
It definitely changes the campsite experience when there’s so many people, it’s more of a community vibe, drifting from conversation to conversation, and the mixture of personalities and music tastes makes for a varied experience.
Transport and parking
Parking and queuing has become a rather serious issue this year, and Download Festivals’ parking situation was dire!
And this was even after the exact same thing happened to Slam Dunk festival just a few weeks beforehand.
In fact, the situation was so bad at Download Festival this year, there have been warnings from the local council that the festival may not be allowed to continue in the future if it doesn’t get resolved.
The Bands
The lineup at Download Festival this year was very much aimed at younger people and pushing newer bands.
This is generally something I’m very happy with, I’ve been saying for years that Download needs to be pushing some smaller bands so that they can get the expose and build their own audience and become headline-worthy bands in the future.
It did mean that I had a much smaller list of bands I was interested in seeing though. Even despite there being 4 days of music!
However, I did still see some amazing bands and artists however! So let’s go over a couple of the sets I really enjoyed.
Andrew O’Neill
A fantastic comedian who I have seen several times of the years and they continue to be incredibly funny!
Lots of jokes about being non-binary, being a metalhead and living in Milton Keynes.
If you ever get a chance to see them, I highly recommend!
They were on the comedy tent just before…
Kunt and the Gang
A very funny, very offensive comedy musical artist, Kunt does hilarious comedy covers of famous songs (like his cover of I Kissed a Girl – I Sucked Off a Bloke).
In recent years however, he has become much more vocal with his political views, for example his 2020 Christmas Number 1 attempt, ‘Boris Johnson is a Fucking Cunt‘, and his 2021 Christmas Number 1 attempt, ‘Boris Johnson is Still a Fucking Cunt‘.
Bob Vyaln
This is a smaller artist who has nonetheless been growing in popularity rapidly over the past few years.
The duo (singer and drummer) use a mix of grime, hip-hop and punk, all while having this very positive, happy-go-lucky vibe, Bob Vylan is an amazing artist to see live!
In fact, we enjoyed their first set so much that we left Metallicas set on the Friday to see Bob Vylan do a secret second set in the village (sorry, District X)
The Blackout
The Welsh post-hardcore band has come back from the dead!
After disbanding in 2015, the band made a comeback this year, albeit briefly.
They played a reunion show in Wales and then played Download Festival, both shows were packed with diehard fans and that seems to have spurred the band on to announce a 2024 tour (which me an Esther already have tickets for!).
Their set at Download Festival was a lot of fun, they’ve clearly not grown up any in the intervening years, and God bless them for it!
Municipal Waste
I love me some thrash music, and Municipal Waste are a brilliant modern thrash band who keep the music fast and heavy but include a fun-loving, tongue-in-cheek aspect that makes their music much more fun and accessible.
This set was filled with crowd-surfing and humungous mosh pits and was everything I wanted from this set.
Slipknot
This is the only headliner that I will write about, because I wasn’t very impressed with either of Metallicas sets, and I have literally zero knowledge of BMTH, so I can’t comment on their set at all.
But Slipknot are fantastic and they were fantastic!
An amazing set that was well-deserving of ending the festival and also deserving of their 5th time headlining Download Festival.
The energy was up, they played all the crowd-pleasers, as well as including Custer, which for a few years the band did not play live, which was a shame, as it is a fantastic live song.
Emily Shadows
One of the best parts of this years’ Download Festival was the fact that I got to spend a day as my female-self, Emily Shadows.
I came out as Genderfluid a few years ago, and while I have started going out as Emily sometimes, I have been waiting for Download Festival to come back so I could let my girl-side out and enjoy the festival as a woman.
And I had a great time!
And even better, I did it on the Thursday, meaning the weather was still okay enough for me to wear my leather jacket and not melt in the heat!
Wrap up
This years’ Download Festival was not 100% for me, but I still had a fantastic time!
The lineup had a lot of newer bands that I was less enthusiastic about, the weather was insanely hot, which meant it was harder to just relax and have a good time, and the queuing issues when we arrived meant we got off to a bad start.
However, this year meant I got see some of my favourite bands, I got to enjoy a whole day as my female self, Emily Shadows, and I made a lot of new friends!