Reading Festival 2010 (Saturday)
Richfield Avenue, Reading
28 August 2010

So, Planet Loud arrives on site at Richfield Avenue to find The Futureheads already trawling through their jingly-jangly indie rock. “How were Guns n’ Roses last night?” they ask to be greeted by a chorus of boos from the Saturday crowd. That answered that question then.

Alternating between Band Of Skulls and Cerebral Ballzy next. The former a lazy way to spend your early Saturday afternoon while the latter, well, it just seemed like we had already heard their brand of brash, chaotic speed-punk about twenty years ago and, when they wound their set up by announcing “this one’s about skateboarding..”, we realised that we had.

Next up were 30H!3, an abortion of a band who dragged many young punters away from the main stage for their Bloodhound Gang style tripe. Next. Off With Their Heads and Paint It Black are up next but sadly, while Paint It Black frontman Dan Yemin wins scariest frontman of the day award for his eyes-out-on-stalks glare, both bands just seem to be fillers on a stage which offered so much more yesterday.

Our next choice is a no-brainer. London-based rap-dance-rock mob Hadouken! or “The Rats” a band nobody had ever heard of. Well, with rumours going around the site for days that “The Rats” were in fact Watford punks Gallows, the tent was suitably buzzing as Frank Carter and his motley mob take to the stage and rip it apart with their furious punk rock. Watching Gallows is always a breathtaking spectacle and it doesn’t take long before Carter joins the front rows as the set decends into predictable carnage.

Kids In Glass Houses are very popular at Reading and it shows by the hysteria that greets the Welsh rockers as they take to the stage for their set with their double whammy of Give Me What I Want and Undercover Lover being the highlights of another impressive set from the Welsh lads. Back on the Lock Up stage and the chaos shows no sign of abating as Trash Talk frontman Lee Spielman hurls himself straight into the pit much to the annoyance of the security who spend the best part of the set trying to drag him out of the carnage his band are causing.

Missing pop-punk rockers Zebrahead, our next port of call is the utterly jaw-dropping Frank Turner who may be the most underated act on this bill. Armed with an acoustic guitar and a smile, his laid back acoustic tunes are the most punk rock thing you’ll hear on this bill all day which, following the carnage caused by Trash Talk and the Gallows, gives your senses a chance to calm down before the raging thrash of Cancer Bats who, by the time they bring their set crashing to a conclusion with Hail!Destroyer, have a stream of kids pouring out of the tent clutching their noses.

A huge roar goes up as Serj Tankian, former frontman of Armenian nutjobs System Of A Down, takes to the stage for this first UK solo shows. Hard to pin down soundwise, two things are clear from his set. Firstly, Tankian is the only person who can get away with wearing a white suit at a festival and, secondly, the grin on his face as he gyrates around the stage show that this is a man who is clearly enjoying what he is doing. The Get Up Kids on the other hand, may have a large cult following going down well with both the legions of fans in the Lock Up tent and those stood side stage but, their shoe-gazing performance isn’t exactly a spectacle to watch.

Another tough choice next – do we check out punk rockers NOFX who are making their second appearance of the weekend this time as the “secret act” in the Lock Up stage or do we head over to catch Brit rave-rock faves Enter Shikari? Well, Fat Mike wins hands down treating punk rock fans to a fifty minute set of songs from their impressive back catalogue. “We played all the good ones yesterday so, well, you’ve just got the shitty ones today..” he jokes but, to be honest, the grins on the faces of the punters shows that nobody gives a shit.

A hundred yards away the pit at the front of the Radio 1 stage has turned into bedlam as Shikari frontman Rou announces “we broke the record for crowd surfers last year when we played on the main stage so we’re going to try and beat it..” before the band slam into crowd fave “Sorry! You’re Not A Winner”. With a relentless surge or kids streaming over the barrier, there is a real danger of security losing control and, even ten minutes after the band have left the stage, kids are still being ushered out either back into the packed crowds outside or straight round the back to first aid.

Talking to security earlier in the day, there was a real question as to why dance-rock mob Pendulum had been booked on one of the lower stages and, with the tent suitably jammed and fans grabbing any space they could for a glimpse of the band, the Australian outfit lived up to their reputation. Blasting through their set accompanied by an eye-melting light show and a fair bit of pyro, the band bring the Saturday night at Reading to a suitably chaotic climax leaving you wondering if, next year, they’ll be a bit further down the site on a much bigger stage.

Review by Graham Finney