It's boiled brain and fried entrails for Sunday lunch today in honour of our esteemed guests all the way from Iowa, Slipknot. By midday the championship for the most repulsive t-shirt and make-up combo is in full swing as the frighteningly young 'maggots' assemble to worship the nine masked nutters. Mum and Dad are oblivious to what's in store.
But before all that, local heroes Hundred Reasons bring things closer to home. They've spread the word the best way possible - by taking the music to the people - and the people like what they hear. That is until a low-flying water bottle shorts out the power and the band are left red-faced while roadies dart back and forth. A full five embarrassing minutes pass during which time frontman Colin has resorted to asking the crowd to amuse themselves and starts singing a jingle from an old advert. He even pleas with the crowd to boo them for being so lame. Consummate professionals.
Thankfully power is restored in time to race through ripping versions of 'If I Could' and the aptly titled 'Falter'. No harm done, if anything it made the set more memorable.
Which is more than can be said for Puddle Of Mudd's Reading debut. Don't get us wrong, their entertaining set of nu grunge anthems is faultless but maybe that's the point - there are no surprises here. They fail to deliver anything beyond the empty Nirvana carbons that have seen them become staples of US rock radio.
'Bring Me Down' and 'Drift And Die' are cases in point whereas the more adventurous yet meandering 'Blurry' fails to replicate the depth of the recorded version. The amusing ditty 'She Hates Me' brings a relaxed humour to proceedings before the arse-smacking 'Control' concludes the set. Trouble is, the past half an hour will probably be forgotten by the time you've reached the toilet queue.
Meanwhile, Incubus specialise in anthems of a different kind. More subtle and with a greater distinction between the light and the dark, their largely aggro-free rock is probably, on paper at least, a little too lightweight for Sunday's traditional rock day.
Unperturbed, they hold their own thanks in no small part to the pretty-boy looks of frontman Brandon Boyd who captivates the multitude of teenage girls present without opening his mouth (incidentally the biggest cheer of the set comes when he takes his shirt off). But when he does finally sing and drops the mildly tortured poses (has he run out of moisturiser?), the undoubted talent shines, most splendidly during 'Wish You Here'. More a case of style over substance but an unlikely hit nonetheless and welcome respite before the mayhem.
Nothing can quite prepare you for seeing Slipknot live, or nothing short of submerging your entire form in a drum of rotting offal while someone hammers the outside with a scaffolding pole. The sheer intensity of the performance is unlike anything previously witnessed - nine grown men dressed in sinister matching boilersuits and Halloween masks, crouched headbanging to ear-drum puncturing industrial metal riffs. The first 'song' contains the slogan 'people = s**t' which on day three of a festival should perhaps be substituted for 'people smell like s**t'.
Five minutes in and you start to get the gist. Not everyone's idea of a pleasant Sunday afternoon but the pantomime is enthralling viewing for ten further minutes. After that, like boxing, watching the crowd reveals the true nature of the beast.
As has been the case with so many acts since the first rock 'n' roll dinosaur crawled out of the primordial swamp, you sense that it's the 'concept' of rebellion embodied by the band's exaggerated imagery and noise that so appeals to Slipknot's devoted masses. It's a notion that gains more and more credence with each rambling noise-athon.
And the crowd is surprisingly motionless. Could it be they're bored? What exactly do you do when faced with music so violent, confrontational and apocalyptic? Why is the mosh pit virtually non-existent during the majority of the set, only springing into life during relatively accessible tracks like 'Left Behind'? Slipknot are without doubt a phenomenon but one whose sell by date is rapidly approaching.
