Thunder and lightning might delay the start of play by an hour, but when the Saturday of Sonic Temple starts the energy is all the more rabid for it. Snot get a massive turnout on the Altar stage and bodies fly over the barriers in a constant stream, the band’s bounding riffs and spring-loaded energy just what we need to shake off two days’ fatigue.
Kicking off their set with Sway, Coal Chamber are bringing out the big guns early on. The churning bass lines and fault-line grooves bypass the brain to get bodies moving, and its as if the morning’s weather snafu never happened when the sun suddenly blazes out as the band stomp through Big Truck. By the time they finish on a crushing Loco – introduced by vocalist Dez Fafara as “a song we wrote in 1992 – long before any of these nu metal bands came about” - it feels like CC are long overdue their own reappraisal.
