Download Festival 2024

Last year I attended Download Festival ‘23 on the Sunday only. I was mostly looking forward to watching Ghost & Taylor Acorn. We headed to the Avalanche Stage where Taylor Acorn was to perform, made our way toward the front whilst it was emptier and got a couple rows from the front. A few songs in we glanced around to realise the tent had completely filled up. Which honestly was totally deserved because Taylor Acorn was absolutely brilliant. I’m so glad I got to see her in that festival setting & witness that crowd singing along so loudly. It makes you feel like a proud parent when you see an artist you love get the crowd reaction they deserve.

Shoutout to Ricky Jab, (guitarist/producer/mixer) who currently plays guitar for Taylor Acorn, I got the chance to meet him after their set on the Avalanche stage. Ricky is also part of a band called Unsafe, Unsound which you may even have heard of from their insane cover of Rascal Flatts’ ‘What Hurts The Most’. A snippet of the cover went viral on TikTok which then lead them to release a full version that has currently racked up over 4 million streams on Spotify. 

After our time over at the Avalanche stage, we headed over to the Opus stage where Ghost was set to headline. With it being Download’s 20th anniversary it was quite busy so we decided to stay at this stage for the rest of the afternoon. This ended up being such a great decision as we got to see some awesome bands we’d not heard from before and thus I discovered Palaye Royale. I’ve already mentioned in previous posts how I became an instant fan of these guys, their stage presence was wild and the music 1000% up my ally. 

Finally, Ghost were on and despite all the Ghost fans I’d witnessed throughout the day, I’d highly underestimated how bloody massive that crowd would become. It felt as though everyone in the festival had come round to watch because turning around we could no longer see the vendors at the back of the field. We were completely surrounded at every angle. With Ghost being my favourite band it was another one of those proud moments to witness. Ghost definitely have a super interesting look & style, the lore of this band is immense and I highly recommend reading into it. Also the music is simply great & they’re fantastic live. Both frontman ‘Papa IV’ and the nameless Ghouls put on a great show, they are highly entertaining. I feel like Ghost is just one of those bands you can’t fully describe but you just gotta trust the process and believe me when I say they’re well worth listening to.