No masks in the mosh pit as Download Festival rocks post-Covid Britain

For anyone seeking proof that the country is emerging at last from under the cloud of the pandemic, it’s hard to beat the sight of hundreds of rock fans moshing together.

As the Glasgow quartet Twin Atlantic brought to a close their Saturday evening slot at the Download Festival – the first weekend-long event of its kind since the start of the pandemic – the crowd crashing into each like dodgems included a woman dressed as a dinosaur and a bearded man kitted out as Snow White. They were among the 10,000 attendees who (regardless of their vaccine status, but all in possession of a negative Covid test) were, for 72 hours, freed from the hands-space-and-face constraints of the outside world at this government-sanctioned pilot festival.

Whether joining a silent disco at 3am or drinking in one of the site’s bustling bars, no member of the age-diverse audience was required to wear a mask or bother with social distancing. For those camped inside its perimeter fences, Donington Park near Derby had become the People’s Republic of Rock ’n’ Roll.

All things considered, it was an impressive feat. Pulled together in a little over three weeks, the pilot festival featured 40 British rock acts playing for nothing more than expenses, united by organisers Festival Republic in the hope of dragging live music out of the darkness. Seasoned acts such as Frank Turner & The Sleeping Souls, The Wildhearts and Skindred were joined on the bill by superior emerging acts such as Creeper and Trash Boat. None of them had played a proper gig in at least 15 months; every performer here on the festival’s two stages was, with varying degrees of success, emerging from an enforced hibernation.

So, too, was the crowd: limited to barely one-tenth of the size it would normally be, on a cold and rainy Friday evening, it seemed at first, to have forgotten its role. In pre-pandemic days, before livestream concerts and virtual festivals, any band was greeted with cheers and applause; the audience became part of the show. Here, early, suitably raucous sets by young groups such as Boston Manor and Neck Deep were instead met by the crowd (save for a committed few just in front of the stage) with little more than appreciative silence.

Fortunately, Friday night’s headliner was on hand to liven things up. Striding on to the stage with the jagged air of a clinical psychopath, the soulful punk singer Frank Carter was the weekend’s most compelling performer. Backed by the always capable Rattlesnakes, Carter delivered an 80-minute set that combined sexual swagger with bovver-boy menace. “I’ve been waiting for this [opportunity] for 15-years,” Carter said before the show. “I’m ready for this. It’s in the bag.” As if to prove his point, the set included a combustible and hugely confident version of the evergreen Ace Of Spades, by rock giants, Motörhead.

Better still were Saturday’s headliners Enter Shikari. One of a vanishingly small number of groups on the bill that might accurately be described as world class, the St Albans’ quartet have always been musical shape-shifters. Still hard to categorise, after 15 years on the scene, the group’s sharply intelligent melding of dance music and rock continues to sound both prophetic and fresh. In truth, they deserved a headline slot years ago. “I think that bands like us have been gagging for something like this to happen,” said singer Rou Reynolds, “where the younger generation of [British] bands are allowed the spots on the bill that are usually hogged by the ageing rockers that have headlined for years.”

Next summer, those ageing rockers will doubtless be back at Download. But necessity is the mother of invention and, for one year only, Download gave up the usual American heavyweights such as Kiss and Korn in favour of British insurrectionists While She Sleeps and Sleep Token – both of whom delivered impressively accomplished sets.

Indeed, almost all of the bands warranted their place on this pared-back bill. So, when things do at last return fully to normal, let’s not forget to honour the role played by these noisy British upstarts in helping live music get back on its feet – and 10,000 people at Donington return to the mosh pit, undaunted.