A deeper look at Download Festival Australia’s epic lineup

Download Festival will descend upon Sydney and Melbourne this month. The lineup is packed with titans of punk rock, emo, post-hardcore, industrial, metalcore, stoner rock and death metal.

The local contingent includes Melbourne heavy punks Clowns and venerated pop punk unit Bodyjar. Swedish alternative metal crew In Flames are coming back to Australia for the first time in six years for the fest, while pirate metal champions Alestorm are making a triumphant return after last year’s sold-out headline tour.

As for heavy rock royalty look no further than industrial metal pioneers Ministry, who’ll be dipping into their 35 year back catalogue. Northern England’s Carcass are of a similar vintage, although their specialty is melodic death metal.

Let’s take a closer look at this year’s headliners, who’re some of the most influential and enduring bands from the punk, metal, hard rock and emo sub-genres.

Download is your only chance to catch the reunited My Chemical Romance.

The New Jersey band has been making headlines since announcing their reunion in October 2019. My Chem’s first show in seven years took place on December 20, 2019 in Los Angeles and sampled generously from their four-album back catalogue. Particular attention was given to 2006’s The Black Parade and 2010’s Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys.

My Chemical Romance formed shortly after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The incident had a profound impact on front man Gerard Way, who wrote the song ‘Skylines and Turnstiles’ as a means of processing his grief.

“It became my therapy from the PTSD that everyone had experienced from 9/11,” said Way at last year’s LA Comic Con.

Listen: My Chemical Romance – Skylines and Turnstiles

My Chem are generally seen as bastions of the noughties’ emo and post-hardcore movement. However, their sound was built on a variety of different ingredients. “We were trying to take bits of everything we loved, like driving and fast punk, but then it’ll have metal, and the lyrics will be like storyteller lyrics,” Way said.

“I wanted to build worlds with music and that’s what we started to do together in bringing in gothic elements, or bringing in vampires, and building this thing.”

MCR came good on this aim with their third album, The Black Parade, which rendered the emo tag redundant. The record had as much in common with Queen as it did The Cure or Black Flag. It also brought them immense mainstream approval, going triple Platinum in the USA.

Don’t sleep on alt-metal white ponies Deftones

Deftones have been coming to Australia since 1998. The Californian alt-metal band released their breakthrough LP, Around the Fur, the previous year. Boasting the singles ‘My Own Summer (Shove It)’ and ‘Be Quiet and Drive (Far Away)’, Around the Fur doesn’t sound like it’s more than 20 years old.

This is partly thanks to Deftones’ decision to avoid the prevailing sounds of nu metal. Around the Fur and 2000’s magnum opus White Pony showcase groove metal and shoegaze influences as well as Deftones’ art rock inclinations. Led by Chino Moreno, Deftones were never interested in being a stock standard metal band. Their willingness to experiment has remained right up to their latest album, 2016’s Gore.

Watch: Deftones – Change (In the House of Flies)

Everything will be all right with Jimmy Eat World

Jimmy Eat World attracted mainstream attention a few years before My Chemical Romance. However, their roots are in the emo underground of the mid-1990s. Formed just outside of Phoenix, Arizona in 1993, JEW have maintained the same lineup since 1995.

The band members’ 25-year alliance makes it hard to pinpoint the star attraction, but Jim Adkins’ emotive and unaffected lead vocals form an indispensable part of their appeal. The band’s biggest and most enduring release is 2001’s Bleed American. It’s a front-to-back stinker (that’s a good thing), earmarked by genre classics ‘The Middle’, ‘Sweetness’ and ‘A Praise Chorus’.

Listen: Jimmy Eat World – A Praise Chorus

While Adkins and co. have never quite matched the commercial or critical heights of Bleed American, the record secured them a fanbase for life. The band’s creative wellspring has never dried up either, with their tenth studio album Surviving coming out in 2019.

Clutch bring the booze, blues, and stoner rock riffs

Download also boasts an exclusive appearance from Maryland stoners Clutch. Under the direction of hard rock auteur Neil Fallon, Clutch have carved out a reputation as the “platonic ideal of stoner rock” across 12 studio albums dating back to 1993.

Clutch aren’t limited in their stylistic proclivities, however. They’ll just as soon summon the filth of a barroom blues jam as rip into a sludge metal riff a la contemporaries Mastodon. The title of their latest album, 2018’s Book of Bad Decisions, hints at the sense of humour that’s always permeated their work.