Download Festival Madrid announced the lineups for its next round of shows in 2018. Ozzy Osbourne will headline, along with A Perfect Circle and Marilyn Manson. Download Festival’s global ooze had yet to seep from Paris to Spain before 2017. The notoriety and resume of the festival ensured the operation’s success. It will continue on next year in June, and will host Avenged Sevenfold, Judas Priest and Bullet For My Valentine.
Download Festival began in Leicestershire, England, and continued to set up in Donington Park from 2003 to 2008, when a new Formula One racetrack took its spot. It is the most popular summer rock and heavy metal festival in Britain. The festival has attracted Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Iron Maiden and Kiss, to name a few. Guns N’ Roses also played, adding to the lineups range of genre.
In 2015, British police used the concert in an effort of massive surveillance. Working in tandem with the festival organizers, police issued wristbands and employed facial recognition to scan festival goers against a criminal database. The wristbands used radio frequency to act as a tracker.
Stuart Galbraith, Tom Pyke and Andy Copping created Download Festival in honor of the Monsters of Rock festivals that dominated Donington Park between 1980 and 1996. The chose the word ‘download’ as their name because it represented the free intake of their music that had begun to change the industry. They actually liked the idea because of the rock n’ roll idea of music as contraband. The trio grounded their name idea initially by supplying codes printed on sold tickets that would allow attendees to download the songs being played as they listened to them. Once ‘Download’ made a name for itself that made the use of mere gimmick obsolete, the codes vanished. However, within the Download Festival Forums lives a thriving community that actually influences organizers’ decisions. The festival has proved a huge success over the years and has spread all over the world. Buy tickets here.
Lineup:
Ozzy Osbourne
Avenged Sevenfold
Judas Priest
Marilyn Manson
A Perfect Circle
Bullet For My Valentine
Clutch
Tesseract
Galactic Empire
Photography Credit: Marv Watson