By Gemma Peplow

By the time you are reading this, thousands of hardcore rock fans will no doubt already be knee-deep in beer and fast food having made the early pilgrimage to snare the best spots at the three-day headbang that is the Download Festival.

Thousands more will join them over the weekend to pay homage to (deep breath) the greats, the up-and-comers, the shock-rockers, the metallers and even the horizon-expanding dance and drum’n’bass acts, including (even deeper breath) Def Leppard, Whitesnake, Motley Crue, The Prodigy, ZZ Top, Marilyn Manson, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Trivium, Papa Roach, Fightstar, The Answer and You Me At Six.

All in all, there are 100-plus acts. And we’ve saved the best till last.

No act at this year’s Download has had fans dribbling with excitement quite as much as American rap-rock trailblazers Faith No More, who, more than 10 years after calling it a day, are re-forming to play on stage in Castle Donington.

Describing themselves as “some sort of unique beast: part dog, part cat,” Faith No More are promising to deliver, once again, “music almost as schizophrenic as the personalities of its members”.

“What’s changed is that this year, for the first time, we’ve all decided to sit down together and talk about it,” say the band – Mike Bordin, Roddy Bottum, Bill Gould, Jon Hudson and Mike Patton.

“And what we’ve discovered is that time has afforded us enough distance to look back on our years together through a clearer lens and made us realise that through all the hard work, the music still sounds good, and we are beginning to appreciate the fact that we might have actually done something right.”

So, the band responsible for fusing heavy metal with rock, rap, punk and funk, the band that inspired nu-metallers such as Linkin Park, Korn and Limp Bizkit in the ’90s, will grace a stage together for the first time in a decade at the spiritual home of rock.

“We find ourselves at a moment in time with zero label obligations, still young and strong enough to deliver a kick-ass set, with enthusiasm to not only revisit our past but possibly add something to the present,” they say.

“And so with this we’ve decided to hold our collective breaths and jump off this cliff... back, God forbid, into the monkey cage.

“We can only hope that the experience of playing together again will yield results erratic and unpredictable enough to live up to the legacy of Faith No More.”

Info

This year’s Download is the most diverse to date, with Faith No More rubbing shoulders with Def Leppard and Whitesnake alongside masked madmen Slipknot, dance-punkers the Prodigy and shock-rocker Marilyn Manson.

Download runs from Friday to Sunday.

www.downloadfestival.co.uk