Download festival review – the rock fest’s most cursed

Donington Park, Leicestershire
Plagued by rain, technical issues and boycotts – as well as by some distinctly non-metal headliners – the weekend is practically a washout, despite some virtuoso shredding and fiery melodeath lower down the bill

Is this the most cursed edition of Download to ever go ahead? Optimism for the 2024 edition of the heavy metal festival was at a low from the off, when the two-thirds non-metal trio of Queens of the Stone Age, Fall Out Boy and Avenged Sevenfold were announced as headliners. Then, in the week before the event, the smaller stages were gutted by bands such as Pest Control and Ithaca pulling out over the sponsorship of Barclaycard, which has ties to defence companies supplying Israel.

Early on the Friday, as the festival begins, “bimbocore” provocateur Scene Queen announces on the second stage that Barclays has withdrawn its sponsorship of the weekend, and that she’ll be donating her payment to charities supporting Palestine. The Callous Daoboys, similarly, scream “Free Palestine!” after being one of the few acts to actually grace the fourth stage today. Their violin-backed mathcore makes for a brilliantly disorientating sonic cocktail.