Remember Donnington in 88 being a grim experience and that was just a day trip. I’m too old to be camping in fields of excrement and will need to sleep occasionally. Is Sonisphere at all civilised?

The Prodigy followed by Maiden and Metallica sounds like some pain may be worthwhile…

yes, went about 3 years ago

iron maiden, rammstein and iggy pop

Cracking coffee tent till 2 in morning with pole dancers 🙂

The Prodigy followed by Maiden and Metallica…coffee tent till 2 in morning with pole dancers

I went to the first year, but just for the sunday (mostly to see Nine Inch Nails’ last uk gig, which both sucked balls, and turned out not to be their last uk gig, so hurrah for that).

It was really bloomin good… The bill did feel a wee bit thin, we only went the one day as it felt like 1 day’s worth of festival pushed around 2 days, just like Download etc always end up. But the site was excellent, wee bit flat but otherwise bang on. Great atmosphere, I ended up gutted we weren’t camping. Felt a wee bit middleaged possibly, but not badly so- didn’t have that bullshit atmosphere of forced fun that some do.

Oh aye, and they had the total genius idea of having different stages close at different times, so while everyone else was leaving Metallica, we went off and watched Hundred Reasons- meant a bigger audience for the smaller stages, and less pressure on the exits etc. All festivals should do that…

Only criticism was that the shuttle buses from the town were a disaster… we queued for about 4 hours and missed SAXON!11!oNE. Then it turned out that despite everything they said on the website, it would have been an easy walk to the site anyway. So both incompetent, and unneccesary. But that’s fairly trivial on the grand scheme.

So yeah. Ace. Might be going back this year, I hear Metallica are going to do Lulu in its entirety 😉

My weekend task is convincing my mates (gig-goers but festival haters) that it is a great idea to go in 2014…

I know Stevenage and Knebworth well so certainly don’t take in the BS on the website about shuttle buses. However, I don’t want to be standing around having bottles of piss thrown at me all day – which was the case at Donnington! I’m getting the impression that Sonisphere is a little better?

Went in 2010 and 2011 and both were great. Both times we stayed in Rock Royalty (yurt and then motorhome) which was very civilised. The atmosphere across the whole site was really good though. Can’t compare it to Download as I’ve never been, but from everything you hear it seems a bit more ‘grown up’, but in a good way.

Mate wants to go back next year as I missed the majority of Metallica’s ‘Big Four’ set in 2011 as i was so drunk I took myself off to bed.

cb – Member

However, I don’t want to be standing around having bottles of piss thrown at me all day – which was the case at Donnington!

I’ve never had that tbh- though only been to donington once and not to download. Lots of bottle throwing at reading, it’s a fine tradition, but not full of piss at least. No sheep’s heads either!

Yep we did it in our camper van which was most civilised apart from the sound system that set up next to us. Luckily they were crap drinkers and ended up comatose after 11pm. The year we went Mettalica and Linkin Park Headlined we were up front for Linkin Park and they had the barriers sorted so there was no real crush.