Tomorrow is Sonisphere 2010 at Knebworth. Hell yeah! Really excited as always. Today has been Sonisphere preparation, packed up all my stuff, did some shopping and tested out the BBQ. 

Sonisfood!

I tasked myself with providing the food for four people and I had a plan to go all out. I'm really happy with what I've prepared, so much so I will be tweeting meal-by-meal, with photos, the food and people's opinions. Be sure to follow the hash-tag #sonisfood on twitter. Here's the meal plan and some pictures. 

• Friday Lunch: Burgers. 
• Friday Dinner: Marinated chicken. 
• Saturday Breakfast: Sausage, bacon & eggs. 
• Saturday Lunch: Chicken, steak, pepper, mushroom & onion kebabs. 
• Saturday Dinner: Gammon steak, pineapple and/or egg. 
• Sunday Breakfast: Sausage, bacon & eggs. 
• Sunday Lunch: Burgers. 
• Sunday Dinner: Steak! 
• Monday Breakfast: Sausage, bacon & eggs. 

For the last month or so nojacko.com has been all Lib Dem'd up and now we're got our new coalition government (it's working out nicely) I thought it should remove it. Instead of going back to the old plan nojacko.com I thought a theme would be nice. So last night I Sonisphere'd up the site.

Check out Sonisphere Festivals. Thanks to David Harrison (Doktored) of Kilimanjaro Live for providing me with the awesome background.

It's time for another Sonisphere announcement. It promises to be a good one. Why? Because I was told two bands about a month ago and having seen them both before I can say they are great.  @Sonisphere said that the special guest will be announced along with 10+ other bands and one possible curve ball (here's the tweet).

The announcement is at 9am. I'll be up and will post my first impressions.... with my completely unbiased opinion (haha!). I WILL be totally honest about what I think.

Update: The announcement consisted of:

• Pendulum
• Alice In Chains
• europe
• Dir En Grey
• Lacuna Coil
• Renegades
• Sick of it All
• Therapy?
• Terrorvision
• Municipal Waste
• Rise to Remain

The announcement has come and gone. Pendulum who I was told are in but the other band wasn't. They might come later as they hadn't been officially signed up at the time. Hopefully they will.

As for the rest of the announcement I've heard of half the bands but never really listen to. I've heard of Alice In Chains, Europe, Dir End Grey and Lacuna Coil. I think I'm slightly out of touch with the current rock/metal scene right now. So day I'll be checking these bands out on Spotify and no doubt I'll have heard songs by most of them, just without knowning who they were by.

I'll report back again later.

Update: So today I went on Spotify, banged the top 5 songs from each of the artists announced today into a playlist and pressed play. Couldn't find Renegades on there so all of the others I listened to. I listen each song Here's what I thought.

Well firstly I should do this more often. Normally I just dismiss bands I don't know unless recommended by a good friend. Today was quite enlightening.

Pendulum: I've been a Pendulum fan for a few years now and have seen them live three times. Once at Leicester University, at Projekt Revolution and last year at Download. So I didn't actually listen to these. Definitely looking forward to seeing these again, hopefully that'll be on the Saturn stage as last year that had some pretty good bass.

Alice In Chains: These guys played Sonisphere last year but I didn't get to see them. They sound alright but doesn't seem to be my kind of thing. Maybe a grower but at the moment not my cup-of-tea.

Europe: How did I forget Europe did The Final Countdown? Seriously! Of course these will be good. The Final Countdown will go down a treat. The other songs I heard all sounded good to.

Dir En Grey: Not sure on these. Might help if they spoke English or were pyrotechnicians (ala Rammstein).

Lacuna Coil: I'm undecided on Lacuna Coil. I'll have a bit more of a listen another time. First thing I noticed is the female vocalist sounds like Shakira at times.

Sick Of It All: I quite liked Sick of it All. They are a heavy sounding punk band, "hardcore" so I'm told. Made me think of Black Flag and Henry Rollins, who is doing spoken word at Sonisphere and would highly recommend listening to.  I think they'll be a pretty decent crowd for Sick of it All and knowing the words, or at least the main parts, would be an advantage.

Therapy?: Diane... where have I heard that before? This was the first song I heard and I know it but I really don't know where from. I really liked what I heard here and after finishing the playlist I then went on to listen to Troublegum in full as I hear they'll be playing this in full at Sonisphere. Again I really liked.

Terrorvision: Tequila it makes me happy... oh yeah what a sound. Terrorvision were quite enjoyable and I'll check them out at Sonisphere.

Municipal Waste: My first thought was "they sound like a heavy Sum 41". I do like Sum 41 and Municipal Waste seem all right, a little samey but I only listened to a few songs so shouldn't judge yet. Another one for the listen to more of list.

Rise to Remain: The final band I listened to was Rise to Remain. Their vocal are a mix of singing and growling/screaming. Screaming puts me off bands normally but I gave them a chance and it was worth it. They've got some really good sounds going on and the screaming was excessive. I away like Killswitch Engage in respect to the good sound and not screaming all the time. I'll be checking these out some more.

Now I've listened to the announced bands I can appreciate it much more and will definitely listen to more bands I don't know.

A few weeks ago my friend, Rob Greaves, asked if I could get my uncle to answer a few questions about Sonisphere for a background feature he had to write for university. My uncle was happy to do so. Having read the article I thought it's really well written so asked Rob if I could publish for him. He went for it straight away so here it is.

About the Author: Rob Greaves studies Popular Music with Journalism at the University of Northampton.

Music festivals are nothing new, especially when it comes to hard rock and heavy metal; the first Glastonbury festival was held in 1970, and the first Monsters of Rock festival was in 1980. But a new festival has arrived, with intent to take over the world.

Sonisphere Festival may only be being run for its second year in 2010, but it has already achieved some spectacular things; foremost of which is being the first ever globally touring rock and heavy metal festival ever. Locations for Sonisphere include Greece, Sweden, the Czech Republic, the UK, Poland, Switzerland, Finland, Bulgaria, Romania, Turkey and Spain. John Jackson is the Series Creator and Director of Sonisphere and has big expectations for this year's festival; "Our licence is for 50,000 (people) per day and we will sell out all 3 days". "In the UK we have expanded the festival to three days whilst keeping the same two day price as last year."

Heavy metal as a genre of music began over 30 years ago as a darker, more sinister branch of hard rock. Black Sabbath are widely regarded as the genres main pioneers, alongside bands like Led Zeppelin and Alice Cooper who also had major influences on the scene. As the years passed, heavy metal began becoming more popular with bands like Judas Priest giving a more melodic and energetic edge to the sound. During the 1980's heavy metal began to get faster, darker and more aggressive, as well as more diverse. Metal began to generate a definite split between its sub genres; this included Thrash metal, Doom, Death metal and Glam, amongst many others. Whilst Thrash and Glam became increasingly popular, a lot of the metal scene became too extreme for many people and sank into the depths of the underground. Heavy metal has been slowly disappearing from the mainstream music scene since the 1990's, but still has hundreds of thousands of followers worldwide who love nothing more than to get together and celebrate heavy metal together, as a community. To metal lovers, it is no longer just a genre of music; it is something to be lived and breathed, and that is what festivals are all about. These festivals are about a mass of like-minded people enjoying their music together, and Sonisphere Festival is taking this idea and escalating it worldwide.

There are already a number of rock and metal festivals held across the globe every year, including Wacken Open Air in Germany, Hellfest in France and Graspop in Belgium. The UK hosts many well renowned metal festivals too, including Bloodstock and the notorious Download festival. But not only is Sonisphere the first ever global festival, they have another claim to fame that will draw most metal fans to this monumental event. "At the new European Sonisphere festivals in June we have managed to put together the legendary Big Four thrash metal bands Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax for the first time in history on one stage," John explains, "something that I am particularly proud of. As we were unable to arrange this line-up for the UK we offered a special deal whereby early buyers of Knebworth tickets were given a ticket to see The Big Four at Poland Sonisphere for free. This has proved to be very successful and indeed Sonisphere Poland is on course to draw 100,000 (people) on its debut."

Although the idea of a worldwide, touring festival was originally John Jackson's idea, the Sonisphere festival is a joint venture with Twin Peaks Ltd, and ex-Live Nation managing director Stuart Galbraith's company, Kilimanjaro Live. Alongside local partners for each country the festival takes place in, primary funding is from the AEG (the Anschutz Entertainment Group). The cost of this years festival is in the tens of millions (USD).

Although the line up changes slightly depending on which leg of the festival you attend, the line-up remains mostly the same throughout the tour so the experience and atmosphere remains largely the same no matter where you are in the world and nobody has to miss out. The UK headliners this year are heavy metal pioneers Iron Maiden, and Alice Cooper along with a UK festival first for Germany's pyrotechnic-mad Rammstein. The Finnish festival will be headlined by Iron Maiden too, but alongside Finland's own HIM. "In Finland we have expanded the festival to two days," explains John, "due to the massive demand of last year's first festival which sold out 60,000 in a day." The 'Big Four', Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, will headline the festival in Switzerland, Greece, Poland and the Czech Republic.

This feature was written by Rob Greaves and published with permission.

So the annoucement came today, right when it was supposed to. Several annoucements came today but the most important is the headliners ofcourse. For the Knebworth, UK festival it will be Iron Maiden and Rammstein. Now that's a great first annoucement. The other bands that have so far been announced for Knebworth are Alice Cooper, Motley Crue, Slayer, Anthrax, The Cult, and Iggy and the Stooges.

The other annoucement that came today is that there will be more events. This year there will be 11 festials, 5 of which are weekenders compared to 6 events with one weekender in 2009. Poland is the only other event that has had any bands announced. Warsaw will see Metallica headline with Slayer, Anthrax, Mastodon, and Behemoth. They don't get Iron Maiden or Rammstein but Metallica who headlined all the events last year. To me it looks like the new events will get Metallica headlining as they cannot really headline 2 years running.

List of Sonisphere 2010 Dates

• Warsaw, Poland 16th June (new)
• Zurich, Switzerland 18th June (new)
• Prague, Czech Republic 19th June (new)
• Sofia, Bulgaria 22nd - 23rd June (new)
• Athens, Greece 24th June (new)
• Bucharest, Romania 25th - 27th June (new)
• Istanbul, Turkey 25th - 27th June (new)
• Barcelona, Spain 10th July
• Knebworth, United Kingdom 30th July - 1st August
• Stockholm, Sweden 7th August
• Pori, Finland 7th - 8th August

Now that's a lot of dates! Last year there was also The Netherlands or Germany on the tour but for 2010 there hasn't been any news. I can't see any room on the tour for them.