It’s early. It’s Sunday. It’s been raining. It is absolute not the kind of situation that is conducive to a great festival set of heavy fucking metal.
But Download has previous for this. Years down the line, those who were there can still recall Trivium rocking up at 11am in 2005 and blowing everyone away, or Five Finger Death Punch acting like they owned the place before midday in 2009. Two sets that have gone down in legend. Well, this morning, Swedes Orbit Culture may have just added themselves to the exclusive ranks of the 11am club, with a set that will surely win them a lot of new fans.
There’s an impressively large crowd waiting for them as they amble on, but it’s when that crowd starts immediately moving as the band strike up Descent’s blinding mix of Carcass meets Gojira that you think there might be something a bit special happening here.
A mere two songs in and frontman Niklas Karlsson has commanded circle pits - and he gets them. Multiple pits, in fact, breaking open across the field and which actually seem to get bigger as he relentlessly barks out orders to the gathered throng.
He goes even further, splitting the field in two and giving Download main stage its first real wall of death of the weekend. Karlsson is a real one; with the presence of James Hetfield, the bark of Joe Duplantier and a neck to rival George “Corpsegrinder” Fisher, he’s every inch the complete heavy metal frontman.
By the time the band end their short but superb set with the crushing riff of Vultures of the North, you feel that the likelihood of them being on this early even again is slight. This is a proper statement of intent from one of the finest metal bands around at the moment; carry on this momentum and we could be looking at future stars. If you were there, you’ll probably be talking about it for years to come. Welcome to the club lads.
