This 10th Download Festival was about one band and one band only. Well, in our eyes anyway. Who? Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, that’s who! Following on from their well-received Birmingham warm up show last month, Black Sabbath, brought back to the mud caked Donington Park arena something it had been sorely missing for a long, long time: Genre defining HEAVY METAL. We mean the stuff that started it all, the music which most, if not all, of the other bands on the Download weekender bill owe a gargantuan debt to, whether knowingly or unknowing, directly or indirectly.
Playing a setlist featuring songs off the first four albums, the four-piece began with the eponymous ‘Black Sabbath’ and kept driving home the riff all the way through to the closer ‘Paranoid’. We’ve picked a couple of reviews of Black Sabbath’s performance for you to peruse over (below).
Agree/Disagree? If you were there we’d love to hear what you thought. So get uploading your pictures and reviews onto our timeline, that’s what it’s there for!
Metal Hammer: “Yes, Bill Ward didn’t make it to the reunion in the end and yes, it is a damn shame, but what we have here is three of the single most important figures in heavy music history, together again, playing songs like Iron Man. At Donington.” (read in full here)
The Guardian: “Reunited except for original drummer Bill Ward, they turned in a sharp and compelling set, with the shambling Osbourne dancing like a rag doll but in strong voice and fully engaged with monolithic, dolorous slabs of sound such as Iron Man and War Pigs. As the baleful Paranoid brought Download to a close, it appeared that the original metal monsters are still the best.” (read in full here)
The Independent: “I can’t imagine anything more fitting, on hearing the reunited Black Sabbath bludgeon slowly through the eponymous opener of their eponymous debut album, than standing in a sludgy Midlands field and hearing Mother Nature replace the sound effects on the record with real-life drizzle and thunder.” (read in full here)
Download Festival: “…it’s important to remember that Sabbath come from an era when the music did the talking, and it still does tonight as multi-platinum classic Paranoid brings a naturally abrupt end to proceedings.” (read in full here)
Setlist from Download:
‘Black Sabbath’
‘The Wizard’
‘Behind The Wall Of Sleep’
‘NIB’
‘Into The Void’
‘Under The Sun’
‘Snowblind’
‘War Pigs’
‘Electric Funeral’
‘Wheels of Confusion’
‘Sweet Leaf’
‘Symptom Of The Universe’
‘Iron Man’
‘Fairies Wear Boots’
‘Tomorrows Dream’
‘Dirty Women’
‘Children of the Grave’
‘Paranoid’
Image taken courtesy of the NME.
