The morning started off nicely but then the rain came and it stayed all day. It was wet, which brings me to the first band of the day, Madina Lake. They were terrible. I do remember for a time that I liked a couple of songs but that was a long time ago. Even though it was early morning, they shouldn't have been on the main stage. 

Next up was Bowling for Soup, who we had seen the day before on the acoustic stage. Just like the acoustic set it was really fun and to top it off the rain subsided for awhile. They played all of the songs from the day before plus a few more. The highlight had to be them taking a blow up penis from the crowd, having sex with female blow up sheep on the stage which then slowly deflated while they continued the set. Very silly. All in all the it was just what was needed on a miserable day. 

Due to the rain we decided to head to the third stage to get out the rain. While here we heard some My Darkest Days and Star Seed. Wasn't so much bothered about these than getting on the rain for a bit. The only thing I can remember of the two was Star Seed performing Pornstar Dancing, which I recognised from somewhere I don't remember.

Leaving the third stage, we headed for the second and the Viking war songs of Turisas. In the cold and rain the Vikings of old would have sang to keep up moral. It was just like that for those who attended Turisa's set. The whole band was covered with red and black war paints and wearing the matching attire. Their music, as I mentioned, styled on theatrical Viking war songs. This in includes the sounds of a violin and an accordion (played by the lovely Netta Skog). Now I do not know a single song of their's but it was all good. 

Back on the main stage it was time for Disturbed who are one of my favourite heavy metal/nu metal bands. Their music is very catchy with a heavy sound that must be listened to at full volume. I saw Disturbed last year for the first time, after a long time waiting, and they were one of my must see bands of Download this year. As expected, their set was one of the best of the weekend. Unlike some bands, Disturbed completely owned the main stage. They filled it with quality metal, mesmerising visuals on the screen behind them and the powerfully raw lead vocals of David Draiman. The set included Prayer, Liberate, Stupify and ending with, what must be their most well known track, Down with the Sickness. For any fan of metal, Disturbed are a must see band. 

Next up was Bullet for my Valentine and following them, Rob Zombie. Well that was the original plan but we gave up on the weather and headed home. The reasoning I had was that I'd seen Bullet before and wasn't too bothered about seeing them again. I was looking forward to seeing Rob Zombie but I only know Dragula and having deciding not to see Bullet I didn't see the point in waiting 3 hours for just that. The weekend was great and made it home in plenty of time for Family Guy and an early night so all good.

For breakfast we had some sausages and Skindred. Skindred are a band that gets the crowd going with it’s mix of heavy metal and reggae sounds. The singer, Benji Webbe, was probably the best dressed artist with his sparkly Union Flag jacket and top hat. His loud and over the top attire was only shadowed by his stage presence. Now this must have been the third time I’ve seen these guys live and once again I enjoyed their set no end. Their music is perfect for getting people into a great mood. You can’t help but move and sing along. Take a listen to Nobody or Warning (features Papa Roach’s Jacoby Shaddix) at full blast and tell me otherwise, I dare ya!

The next two bands were Hollywood Undead and Down. Given that over two weeks have passed since seeing these and I wasn’t bothered about seeing them in the first place, I can’t actually remember them. So I’m not going to comment on them too much. The one thing I do recall (I think) is that Down were heavy on the bass(?) and I know I didn’t dislike them.

On to the Jagermeister acoustic stage for a short set from Bowling for Soup, another band I loved at high school. But before they were on we caught the end of Dan Reed. One man and his guitar... and another man with a guitar too. Dan Reed was pleasant to listen to but did repeat his lyrics at lot, which made it easy to follow I guess.

So Bowling for Soup, they also played on the main stage on Sunday but I’ll get to that in the next post. For now I’ll stick to the acoustic. My word, what a fun set! Just two of them were on stage, the lead singer and (not as funny as he thinks he is) guitarist. I expected an all round fun set full of sing-a-longs and that’s exactly what I got. Actually, it was much more fun that I expected. The audience interaction was priceless if a little crude, in the good sense. 1985 went down the best with the crowd, which was huge for such a small stage! They also played Almost, Girl All The Bad Guys Want, High School Never Ends and their new record S-S-S-Saturday. I can honestly say I had a huge smile after Bowling for Soup. 

I have given Avenged Sevenfold a lot of stick in the passed. I’ve never been a fan but this wasn’t my first time seeing them and they really aren’t deserving of what I’ve said about them before. The set up was the same as last year when I saw them support the amazing Stone Sour. It was a solid performance, well exectuted and deserving of the support slot. Maybe it’s familiarity or age that’s making them grow on me but liked more songs than I did last time. Afterlife is (I think) my favourite tune of their’s. 

System of a Down were the main stage headliners and of the three headliners the one I wanted to see the most. SoaD are yet another band I was in to at high school but lost interested since. Occasionally I hear them when out and do still enjoy them. They’ve not been around for ages either so it was the moment of truth. Do I still like them and are they main stage material? Yes is the answer to both questions. The set was loud and explosive and much to my joy I remembered everyone of the songs. Cigaro’s slow, acoustic intro was a nice change of pace to the rest of the fast paced metal you’d expect form SoaD. I kinda wish I had stayed near to the front, where we had got to at the start but due to a mix of being in the sun all day and a little claustrophobia I left for the hill. On the other hand, lying down listening to songs like Bounce, BYOB, Chop Suey! and Violent Pornography was pretty sweet. When they do a headline show in the UK I'm definitely down for that.

Another great day, ending with a bang and steak, burgers, kebabs... by now I had realised I’d bought too much food but the genius behind “gammon guys” was pretty happy with the spare food.

Download has pretty much become the official start of summer for me with 2011 being my third trip to the festival. This year our group had dwindled a little to just two, myself and Neil, aka ginger and beard (as dubbed by the leader of Ginger Lovers Anonymous), and “the gammon guys” (as dubbed by some random guy who saw our gammon on the BBQ... mmm gammon). We headed down on the Thursday evening, set up camp, found some random guy almost dead,  cooked pork chops and did some drinking. Bring on Friday...

First band up was CKY. A lot of people I know have raved about CKY in the past but I’ve never really taken the time to listen to them. Turns out they are pretty good. Their song 96 Quite Bitter Beings, to me, was one of tunes that you know even if you don’t know how. Their set was pretty solid and was a sound start to the weekend. 

Next up was Puddle of Mudd who I remember very well from high school but they haven’t done anything since. I was definitely looking forward to these guys. They were just as I remembered. They played all the songs I could really remember except for Blurry but in any case that's a bit of a soft song and they didn’t have much time. The highlight of Puddle of Mudd had to be singing along to She (Fucking) Hates Me! 

Black Stone Cherry were next. Like CKY I knew people who raves about this band and yet I’ve been kinda hidden from them. The only song I really knew preceding their set was Lonely Train, which I had discovered on Download FM in 2010. The first thing I thought was lead singer, Chris Robertson, has a fantastic voice! One of those voices that are spot on every note, every time. The rest of the band and the set as a whole was great. After seeing them live I am definitely a fan. And lucky for me they’ll be in the UK with Alter Bridge this November. A gig I do not want to miss. 

By now it was time for lie down in the field with a beer and some chill music courtesy of Thin Lizzy. They played some classics including Boy are Back in Town, Jailbreak and Whiskey in the Jar, a song I thought was made popular by Metalica but was first done by Thin Lizzy. The set... well I wasn’t particularly paying attention (I was too busy getting burnt) but I enjoyed what I heard. 

My favourite band of the moment and the main reason I really wanted to go to Download this year, Alter Bridge, were on the main stage. I absolutely love Alter Bridge. Since the release of AB III you’ll rarely catch me listening to anything else. Myles Kennedy’s voice and the talent of the guys behind him make for a very special band. They started the set with Slip to the Void, as they did last year. During their performance of Ghost of Day Gone By I actually got goose bumps. They were the highlight of Download for me and knowing they’ll be back in November (with Black Stone Cherry) was icing on cake. 

The Darkness were the penultimate band on the main stage. They haven’t been around for a while but they are hard band to forget really. Now they are back and Justin Hawkin is looking so much like Freddie Mercury. Although I wasn’t particularly bothered about seeing The Darkness they were pretty damn good. I surprisingly recognised everyone of their songs. I was going to see Times of Grace with Neil but decided again it as I was enjoying The Darkness. 

After not going waiting to see the start of Times of Grace I did head down to catch the last 25 minutes or so. Neil had been telling me I’d enjoy them because they are so like Killswitch Engage (they do have KSE’s original singer and guitarist, I believe). He was right. I did enjoy them. After the first song of theirs the crowd was chanting “KILLSWITCH! KILLSWITCH!” for obvious reasons but after a talking to they moved on to Time of Grace. Hearing another bands name during your set must be disapointing for the members that weren’t in said band. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoy their set and was listening to them when I started this post (now I’m on Alter Bridge). 

Friday’s headliner was Def Leppard. They are a very well know band who I couldn’t recall a single song of theirs as I’ve never listened to them really. Actually that’s a lie, I knew Pour Some Sugar on Me but I didn’t know that was what they actually sang, I only knew the tune. We stuck around for Def Leppard but neither of us were particularly into it. In all honesty we should have gone to see Pendulum, however we didn’t as we both had seen them before and thought we’d give Def Leppard a try. The was reinforced when we decided to volt from Def Leppard early and walked past the second stage which was going absolutely mental! Oh well. I hope that doesn’t sound like I dislike Def Leppard, I just didn’t get into them. Maybe next time I have a chance to see them I’ll brush up on their back catalogue. 

The day as a whole was great. The sun had been shinning and it was back to camp for gammon.

Once again I've come to a point where I want to my CMS and accompanying framework. Sigh. Actually I have good reasons for doing it. First up is that recently I've added quite a bit to the CMS and have realised it quite a hassle to add something new. The ability to extend the CMS is there but it's a pain. I want to rework this to be more manageable. Secondly, after having tried to rework a lot of the CMS's inner workings without a rewrite it's become very messy and inconsistent. 

Rewriting the CMS has also prompted my to rewrite my framework. The framework I created to run my CMS on is pretty cool but could do with a tidy up too. With framework being rewritten I've decided to use version control (SVN) and to make it open-source. Not sure why I decided to open-source it but a friend at work is always asking why I didn't open-source things so I have this time.

Making the framework open-source gave my the problem of not having a name. I couldn't just open-source it without a proper name. I thought of loads of names... DNS Framework (Dot Net Sucks), POO Framework (PHP Object-Oriented) and many other silly names. Then I remembered a domain I had registered a few years ago for a site I never got round to making. My framework will be called Twuddle Framework and subsequently the CMS will be called Twuddle CMS. 

I've made start on Twuddle Framework. The source can be found on Google Project Hosting. Open-source CMS? I haven't decided if I will open up the CMS code yet.

The current version of the CMS isn't dead yet. There's a while before Twuddle Framework and Twuddle CMS are ready to be used so I'll continuing to use the current CMS on this site and James David Jackson. Hopefully I'll be blogging my progress on a semi-regular basic too.

"The Big 4" of thrash metal are joining Slipknot and Biffy Clyro for next year's Sonisphere at Knebworth.

Oh, I forgot to blog about Biffy Clyro joining Slipknot. Well they are and I think that's pretty cool. Biffy are completely opposite to Slipknot on the rock scale which is pretty cool to have that range in bands headlining acts. Should be good, they are a quality band.

Back to the big 4. These guys played several of the Sonispheres last year and their show in Sofia, Bulgaria was shown in cinemas the world over. When they were announce for other Sonisphere and not the UK so many people were disappointed even though Metallica had headlined in 2009. Well the people are getting what they want next year.

With this announcement Sonisphere looks to be topping Download who announced Linkin Park an System of a Down. Both bands I really like but Linkin Park were a bit of a let down with their new album. Bring on the next announcements in the new year.