Rock and metal take-over at Reading on Saturday!

After a genteel start on Friday, Saturday dialled (almost everything) up to eleven!

This was the third time we had seen Lambrini Girls in the last year and it was also the most disappointing. Despite a typically committed performance, they just struggled to fill the Main Stage area with their sound, it didn’t have the punch it should have. They have everything it takes, a bit more practice at this scale should set them right. They did give early rising moshers their first chance of the day and a dedicated crew set to it. After two tracks, and ten people involved on our side of the pens, two managed to bash heads together and an early stream of blood was running off of a forehead. Security rapidly ensured a plaster reached it, despite protestations from the owner of the head that they were fine. The pens had already cut up from Friday, and anyone down there all day had to be prepared to deal with huge quantities of dust.

A band who absolutely understood how to level up their sound for the Main Stage was South Arcade. Wow. Wow. Wow. We have listened to their tracks, we knew they had a great live reputation, but they still managed to blow us away. To Radiohead, Foals and Glass Animals we add the name of South Arcade to utterly brilliant bands to come out of Oxford.

The mosh-pit went up a gear here and we must give respect to Elmo and Cookie Monster who were hard at it all over the festival, though they did take a bit of a breather during Example:

South Arcade are a mix of heavy rock and nu-metal/party metal. At the end of their time, they let the cat out of the bag that they were today’s secret set on the BBC Introducing Stage. As we were over there to see Finn Forster, we had to stick about for round two.

Despite losing time to set up issues, and trying to wipe us all out by employing a Main Stage level of bass on the tiny stage, they still managed one track acapella and three plugged in. They will be back much higher up the bill, quite possibly future headliners.

We got over to Royel Otis in time for the brilliant recent single ‘car.’ Whilst they were sounding great and doing well, there was a mad scrabble of people getting up to standing when they announced a special guest! Royel Otis have always enjoyed doing fun cover versions, it has helped raise their profile several times in their career. Sophie Ellis Bextor came out to help them with ‘Murder On The Dancefloor’ and the crowd went wild. Bextor commented she didn’t think most of the crowd was alive when she last performed at the festival (in 1998 with her band ‘The Audience’). It was a top moment of the weekend and one of the best singalongs.

We only caught the end of Pale Waves and massively regretted not getting down sooner. The last two tracks sounded brilliant.

Bakar is a really interesting artist. You quite often get a ‘who?’ if you mention his name to middle aged, or older, music fans. However, the young audience at the Chevron Stage was utterly devoted. He has an easy listening quality and a joyful streak running through his tunes. He also reproduces how he sounds on record well in the live arena. ‘1st time’ gets a mass sing along going and it never really drops off after that. His crowning achievement to date is ‘Hell N Back’ and you just know he is going to be performing that track until he is 75.

The toughest decision of the day was a choice between old stalwarts Enter Shikari and rising indie-rock icons Wunderhorse. Having seen both before we plumped for Wunderhorse as it felt like this might be a real moment for them. What a difference twelve months makes. The Chevron Stage was utterly rammed and the crowd belted out the words to every song. They loved it. A year earlier we were in the Radio One Stage tent that was barely a third full watching them, as many people there through curiosity as being big fans. This was a solid performance today, but the one twelve months ago had been utter magic, electric from start to finish. The electricity wasn’t there today. ‘July’ wasn’t even on the set list, when last time watching Jacob Slater stab out the unnerving intro was incredible. It was like watching Nirvana in their pomp. They have played an awful lot of gigs in the last year, whilst by no means bad, I think they are in need of a chance to regroup and get themselves raring to go again. They are undoubtedly one of the best bands in the world, but this performance did not live up to those very, very high expectations today.

US megastar Conan Gray made an appearance on the Main Stage today. It was a truly incongruous booking. He would have fitted in better on Friday. Today, whilst the festival has moved further into the pop-mainstream than in the past, this didn’t feel a million miles away from sort of position that led to the infamous bottling of Daphne and Celeste in 2000. Here, he appeared on stage amid a simple set looking like a shipwreck and dressed like a dandied pirate from the 1800s that had been bitten by a vampire from Twilight. There was rapture down the front from the pop crew, and a bunch of hardcore fans had bought a day ticket especially for him. Further back in the crowd, and elsewhere, the mutterings from the rock and metal fans were less kind.

It was safe to say a lot of people had bought a day ticket for Limp Bizkit. Fred Durst was once an icon of crisp, simple clothing styles. Today, he more resembled Hip Hop Santa on his summer holiday. Despite a few statements that leaned a little bit close to tin-foil hat territory, the band still showed they could break out the hits and cut it with the younger bands. Durst got a member of the audience to come out and sing with him (this is fast becoming as much of a live music cliche as getting everybody to crouch down low and spring up at the same time, though is obviously a huge deal for that person). ‘Take A Look Around’ sounded as excellent as ever.

Reading Indie Life also enjoyed sets by Mudi Sama, Sunday (1994), Finn Forster and Nxdia.

Saturday was all about Bring Me The Horizon bringing their Post Human: Nex Gen tour into town. This always felt like being one of the biggest deals of the whole weekend. The sense of anticipation was tremendous. Ten minutes before they started the two video screens at either side of the stage came up with a computer game menu screen with a choice of options to click on. In true computer game style when nothing is pressed, you then got a few moments of ‘game play’ every now and then where a digitised Oli Sykes took on various demonic computer sprites, either doing okay or getting brutally killed. Eventually from the menu screen “Play Game” was selected with the difficulty level set at “Extreme.” Reading went nuts.

There was a nominal plot to the whole thing. The crowd were in danger of having their souls harvested by a digital avatar as we were all possessed. Only the Church of Genxsis could save everyone. It sounds a bit silly when spelt out like that, but it was an electrifying experience in the moment with just enough tongue in cheek moments to have you moved between awed and giggling. Images of people in the crowd were altered by a live rendering AI program, so they appeared demonic. Whilst we have had apps on phones for a while now that can augment reality in real time the sheer scale and range of what is attempted during this show is truly mind blowing. At one point, Oli writhes around on stage whilst the video screens show him transform into a demonic form with none of it being prerecorded. This was a glimpse into a crazy new future of stadium level gigs where only the imagination of the artist, or the team they work with, can limit what is possible. The handheld camera operator on stage deserves a massive pay rise, I have never seen a camera man have to work so hard for 90 minutes. All the on-stage surfaces (initially hidden by the starting church set) were made of video screens so they could alter everything at the drop of a hat. As a spectacle it was the most incredible thing we have seen at Reading Festival since Imagine Dragons in 2023.

This was the 8th time BMTH had played Reading. They are deeply connected to the Festival, Leeds is clearly also very important to them as Sheffield natives. Frontman and director of the whole show, Oli Sykes, got very emotional and almost overwhelmed at times. It was the completion of a long journey for the band that has taken nearly 20 years to achieve.

There were no special guests, tonight was all about them and the sheer spectacle they could provide themselves. They played 15 songs, encouraging moshing from the end of their first track by dissing the efforts during Limp Bizkit. There was a flurry of movement from those further back who didn’t want to be involved after circle pits opened up all over the place. It died down a bit after that, except for in the pens where it was almost non-stop carnage. They had the sense to play their brilliant cover version of ‘Wonderwall’ which allowed them to bring in a lot more of the weekend audience who were less familiar with them. An epic encore saw them unleash both ‘Drown’ and ‘Throne.’ As the band took their bows, both delighted and struggling with the enormity of what they had just achieved the crowd had just witnessed one of the great Reading headline sets for the ages.