Would We Be Happy With The Rumoured Download Line-Up?

So we’ve only just gotten over the blues and depression from this year’s festival season ending and BOOM! We’ve had our first bit of festival news for next year. You will have already heard by now that Download Festival have announced Slipknot as headlining the Friday of next year’s festival with Judas Priest and Five Finger Death Punch also taking up space on the main-stage bill. At the same time as Slipknot we’ll also have the pleasure of checking out Black Stone Cherry’s return as second stage headliners.

Throughout the year lots of talented individuals contribute to a stream of fake, fan-made posters. Although, one has caught out eye recently, and as seeing as we love teasing ourselves and seeing what if we’re going to dissect it for you. So let’s show you it first and then we’ll explain what is plausible about it and what really doesn’t work, and ultimately would we be happy with it?

Source: Download Festival Forum

So then, shall we take a gander? The obvious reason why this is fake is the lack of Black Stone Cherry, now that we’re certain it’s fan made lets move on as to why this is plausible.

1.  It is highly likely that the top 3 of each day are as they appear here. We’ve heard rumours and rumblings through the grape vines to that effect, and Kiss, Crue, Slash and Shikari were in fact leaked by Gene Simmonds a couple of days ago, fuelling the rumour mill.

2. Muse are releasing a new album next year. Apparently the new album is going to be moving back (thankfully) to their rock roots and sounding very similar to the likes of ‘Absolution‘ and ‘Black Holes and Revelations‘, and if they focus on that sound alone would 100% work for Download.

3. Hellfest have just announced their line-up and usually you will see a number of bands being shared between the two, more notably Slipknot, Faith No More, Manson, KoRn, Billy Idol, we could go on.

Here’s some reasons why it just doesn’t quite work.

1. Highly clashable between Slipknot, Manson and good old Devin Townsend, it would be a very unwise move to match those three and one of the reasons why we believe it won’t happen. In saying that the same rumblings we talked about earlier also say Manson is in fact headlining second stage on Saturday instead.

2. Royal Blood – Now this is an interesting one, they’re really hot right now, and I mean fresh out of the volcano. So would they realistically be that low? And more importantly surely they’d be on the same day as Muse, who both attract the more casual rock fans, although at the end of the day they do only have one album out and so probably don’t have that much in the way of content to play a long set.

3. The positioning of Of Mice and Men and Asking Alexandria is another one that bugs me, as we can’t see Of Mice and Men really jumping in popularity with Asking Alexandria in such a short amount of time, but this might be one of the rare occasions we’re just quite simply wrong.

Overall we would certainly be happy with this if it became real, (which it won’t be 100% real), there is a fantastic mix of bands and some that have never played before! Next is to wait until 8am tomorrow and see if our inside knowledge is correct, and Muse, Faith No More, A Day To Remember, and Marilyn Manson is announced, or be prove that we’ve been fed pish.