First up on the Sunday was House of Pain. Most people instantly think of Jump Around when they hear that name, I am no exception. Their set was quality, better than I expected really. It was well performed hip hop that you can't help but nod along too. 

Parkway Drive were next and I'm not a fan of their's but I did sick around for them. Even though I'm not a fan I can honestly say that their set was solid. Any fan would have been very pleased. 

To celebrate the life of Paul Gray there was a two minute silence for him at 2pm, dubed 2 at 2 for #2. As I tweeted after, The "2 minutes silence for Paul Grey was just that. Never heard a festival so quiet". There was the occasion shout from some drunken arse hole but there's always going to be people like that unfortunately. 

Straight after the 2 minutes silence was In Flames. I do like some In Flames but I can't remember a thing about their set. In their defence I have terrible memory. 

Mastodon I do remember. I remember laying on the ground in the sun listening to the most well performed set of the weekend. Not one note out. Laying down really made me appreciate the quality of Mastodon more as I didn't have any distractions. It's highly likely I missed out on some mesmerising visuals as they had last year when I saw them at Rock City but the focus on the sound was worth it. 

For the next band, Airbourne, I'm going to performance on what I saw this Sunday when they supported at Iron Maiden at Birmingham's NIA. Airbourne are some crazy Aussie rockers who clearly grow up listening to nothing but AC/DC, Iron Maiden and the like. It's so apparently in their style of music. They do a solid set with some good tunes but nothing that original. Sonisphere was the second time I had seen them and before that it was at Download 2010. Both times the lead singer has climbed the stage. At Download the sound was cut from his guitar to try to get him to come down (it was raining). However, this did not happen at Sonisphere. He was free to climb to the top of the Saturn stage where he proceeded to rock out on his guitar. A pretty impressive feat. Going back to the set... they do perform well and play likeable music but lack that little something that would make me enjoy them more. 

The next three group of artists were what I had really been waiting for. First of the three was Limp Bizkit. I've seen them three times before and still looked forward to them as much as the other times. They are another one of the bands I got into at school when I was finding my love for metal. Their set was a little different to the usual. Usually a band know what they are going to play and in which order. This time Fred Durst told the audience they were winging it and taking requests. It seemed this was true until he gave a choice of Nookie or Douche Bag. The crowd were clearly loudest for Nookie but they went on to play Douche Bag. Fair enough wanting to play some of the new tracks but ignoring the audience after claiming they'd decide isn't nice. Forgiving them of that fopa the set was great. They played all the classic you'd want, including Break Stuff, My Generation, My Way, Roll' (Air Raid Vehicle) and my favourite tune the cover of George Michael's Faith. If you're not farmiliar with Limp Bizkit then check out their album Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water.

Of all the festivals I've been to in the past I've never seen anything other than a band headline the second stage but Sonisphere 2011 differed. The comedian, Bill Bailey was the Saturn stage's headliner. Well technically Bill Bailey did have a band support him and the majority of the set was musical but he's a comedian really. I've been wanting to see Bill Bailey live for years now as I love watching him on programs like QI and his live DVDs. There's denying it, Bill Bailey is an unusual man but a genius. The set was a mix of musical numbers including Gary Numan's Cars in French, Scarborough Fair in the style of Rammstein (Simon & Garfunkel are most well for this song) and ending on Enter Sandman by Metallica on the horns! Watch the video! He filled the breaks with some stand up and supporting videos. One video he looks into the self service checkout and is hiding behind a bush. If you know Bill Bailey you'll know they are situations filled with humour old he could obtain. His 50 minute set is one of music fun 50 minutes I've ever had.

Last but by no means least (wow imagine is festivals didn't saved the best till the end?) was Slipknot. The first and last time I saw these was at Download 2009, not long before the untimely death of Paul Grey. It was one hell of an experience and one I wanted to relive. The thing about Slipknot that people, who aren't fans, don't get is that it's about pure aggression. Shouting and hitting things to get everything out of your system. This is what I love about them and is what you will get, guaranteed, at a Slipknot gig. The set opened with an intro (which according to setlist.fm is a combination of Iowa and 742617000027) that went straight into (sic). Their music gets my blood pumping and Corey Taylor's gripping and chilling voice brings the music to life. Without the incredibly powerful voice of Corey Taylor, Slipknot wouldn't still be around. And the same applies for the reverse, without the 7 strong army of guitarists and drummers making that unique Slipknot sound they wouldn't have been there. Duality bought out the biggest roar from the 50-60k strong audience. Slipknot played songs from all around their back catalogue and all were chosen well. If the heavy metal wasn't enough for you then there was some big explosions, flames and fireworks to keep you busy. The energy in a Slipknot set is unmatchable. 

So far each year at Sonisphere there’s always been a band that didn’t particular fit in with the rest of the bands. In 2009 there was the ABBA tribute band, Björn Again. 2010 had The Fab Beatles. This year it was the tour of the comedy lounge band Richard Cheese and Lounge Against the Machine. For those unfarmilar with the work of Richard Cheese, he cover unlikely song in the style of a lounge bar singer, think Frank Sinatra. What makes this awesome is he sings metal songs in this style. The most listened to one (on Spotify) is currently Nirvana's Rape Me. He didn’t perform Rape Me this time but he did do Limp Bizkit’s Nookie, Disturbed’s Down With The Sickness and my favourite, People = Shit by Slipknot. Everyone in the crowd was laughing and smiling throughout. I just love the contrast between lounge/swing music and heavy metal. He also mixed in some Snoop Dogg and Sir Mix-A-lot for good measure.

Sum 41 were next up for us. It was back at high school when I first go into Sum 41 and I have many fond memories especially of the All Killer, No Filler album. I was hopping that they’d only play songs off that but they obviously weren’t going to do that played a mix of old and new (a bit too much new to be honest) and they had a crack of Metallica’ Master of Puppets and Enter Sandman which they did pretty well. The last two full songs they played Fat Lip and In To Deep, which is what the audience were clearly waiting for. Finally they attempted to play Still Waiting even though they had over run. The organisers handled it well and slowly turned down the volume until all you could here was faint sound of drums but they kept going. It’s always nice that a band wants to keep playing but it’s very arrogant which I didn’t like. Overall a pretty decent set but would have been much better with more of the old stuff.

We headed off to the Jagermeister stage next so Neil could be near the front for Tesseract who we found out later actually on the Red Bull Stage. While waiting (in vein) we did catch the last couple of songs from Six Hour Sundown. Theses guys and girl were pretty cool. The lead singer (Lauren Harris) was pretty tasty, which of course doesn’t skew my ability to give an unbiased write up. I later found out Lauren is the daughter of Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris so there’s good music in her blood. Neil, as the leader singer of his band Icons, didn’t think much to my suggestion of replacing Icon’s lead with a sexy lady. Heading back to their performance and music. They were alright. Lauren has a decent set of lungs on her and everything worked well but I’d need to listen to them again to give a proper review. 

After a nice down poor and a queue to get into the Bohemia tent we saw Periphery. Another Neil band, but his previous recommendation of the weekend turned out alright so I gave them a try. Once again I actually enjoyed he’s recommendation. Their sound is heavy progressive metal but to my surprise the majority of the time the word were actually sung! I couldn’t fault the performance and did enjoy it but I probably won’t be  putting Periphery on my iPod as that, at the moment, would require me to delete something.

While heading back to the tents we did walk by the Apollo stage where Weezer were playing. I’ve never been a huge fan of Weezer so we didn’t stage long.

To end the day we had Biffy Clyro. They did at first seem like an unusual headliner for Sonisphere but I do like them so it’s all good. The first thing I noticed as walking through the crowd was that there wasn’t anywhere near as many people as there had been for Metallica the night before. It’s too be expected really but those who didn’t show missed out. As they started it was instantly apparent they weren’t there to faff around. They were louder than Metallica! Last year I saw Biffy at Leeds and my quote was “These boys did a cracking set. Really good quality”. That still stands and should be improved on. My favourite song is Mountains and it stood out as the best one of the set for me. During the set they launched some streamers and bubbles in to the air. I was a little infactuated with the bubbles as they floated away, seemly forever and didn't pop. It was definitely an amazing performance by Biffy Clyro so I’ll end with post with three little words.... mon the Biff!

Once again I have an untimely review to write. It’s getting a to be a bit of a habit, leaving some time between doing and reviewing. Something always comes up. Anyway, here’s my review of Friday at Sonisphere 2011.  

Well to start it off I might as well talk about Thursday evening as what we did explains why we only really saw three bands on Friday. Only one of the thress was from the Big Four. On the way down we saw a DOUBLE RAINBOW (STOP RIGHT THERE! Did you click the link and watch the video? No!? Go back and watch it. You’ve seen it? Watch it again! You clicked? Some people are weird aren’t they!) which was nice. The heavy rain wasn’t so nice for the driving but that didn’t last long. After arriving we did the usual setting up of tents and cracked open a beer and headed in for a little wonder around the area. On the way we bumped into some pigs on horses! Well police on horses. I asked the best way to the arena, and made brilliantly witty and hilarious remark (after thanking them for their help of course... which turned out to be wrong) the two horses and female office enjoyed. The other officer, male, was clearly unamused and lacked all sense of humour. Anyway, at least the nice officer liked it and away we went down the wrong path. We did get to the arena and had a quick look around but soon headed back to camp for some grub and wine...

Friday came and to start it off we had some sausages and eggs and then headed off to the arena for the compulsory wonder around to see what’s what. We wondered, taking in the sights, sounds, smells of the arena. It smelt alright at the moment in time. After that we went to the guest area where there was a sofa and a bar. This is were we lost the day. Only 1 pint was consumed each but that red liquid from the previous night has a habit of making me sleepy. One minute I was awake then, what felt like only 10 min later, an hour had past. Then another one of those magical 10 minutes past and it was about 5pm! This was probably the time to go see some bands, so we did. 

First up was Firewind in the Bohemia tent. As I previously explained, this review is untimely and over three weeks have gone by. Thus, I’ve forgotten Firewind but I had made this excellent note on my phone to remind me what I thought. “Firewind. Very Iron Maiden voice”. I’ll take that as being a good thing.

Next up were The Black Dahlia Murder who Neil was dieing to see. As always, when Neil suggests a band, I was wary. The Black Dahlia Murder are one of a long list of bands who’s vocalists roar down the mic, making it impossible to know what they are actually “singing” about. I normally hate this but I actually enjoyed these guys. The set was solid. The music was quality and well preformed. For me the music seemed more original and varied compared to other bands I’ve barely listen to in their genre. I’ll also add that preceding the start of their set there were some technical issues but the band were on stage messing around and talking to the audience which was nice. 

Skipping to a few hours later it was Metallica time. Having seen Metallica numerous times before I knew what to expect and that’s what we got, then a little bonus at the end. They are definitely a band who have mastered the art of live performances and then execute flawlessly. It started with the clip from The Good, the Bad and the Ugly accompanied by The Ecstasy of Gold as they have done for many years now. Of the 18 song set my top tunes were Master of Puppets and All Nightmare Long. Along with the heavy head banging goodness there were some cool visuals and fireworks, which I always welcome. The encore was a bit special. Members for the other three quaters of the Big Four and a member of Diamond Head joined them on the stage to perform Diamond Head’s Am I Evil?, after a lot of hugging of each other... that’s rock n roll for you. For any fan of the Big Four this was something else. Never have I seen 3 (or was it 4) drummers sharing the same kit. It was quite the spectacle, even though the timing was a little off. Ha, I’m not really taking that last comment into account at all. All I’ll say now is that I’ve never been to an below awesome Metallica gig. 

"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.

11am on Friday 3rd Decemeber saw the announcement that Slipknot will be one of the headliners for next year's Sonisphere at Knebworth. I rediculously happy about this! Slipknot are one of the best bands you can ever see live. Their live performances are spectical to be held.

We're looking forward to spending our summer in Europe. This tour is about us and our fans. It’s about celebrating the life of our brother, Paul and his legacy. The door is neither open nor closed. This tour is about burning down that door. See you this summer.

Slipknot

The next announcements are due on Monday and following this announcement it's going to be amazing. More information can be found on the offical Sonisphere site. ...SLIPKNOT