The weekend just gone has savaged me in every wonderful conceivable way possible. I am sleep deprived, bruised and battered, hung over and my tummy hurts.

My body hates me. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the ringing in my ears is still not letting up this time next week. Not a bad outcome, for three days worth of rock n roll debauchery.

For me, to judge the success of your time at a festival is almost the same as reading the side effects on a prescription pain killer bottle. If you have at least five of the side effects once you get back home… the festival was super rad! If you have hit seven… it was an epic win.

How I have managed to fit in watching probably only a handful of the near on 200 acts performing over the weekend is beyond me. But I have, so I can report back to you on all that you missed, safe in the knowledge that if you have your wits about you, you’ll start saving up now ready for when next years mighty Sonisphere festival tickets go up on sale! I am so giving.

Friday night? I pitched my tent to the musical backdrop of none other than Alice Cooper! You can see the stage from my camping spot in the distance; all the lights and showman ship are drifting up in the warm night air. Alice Cooper is amazing, and I hurry down to catch the rest of his exuberant set with my mates who have shown me where we will be camping for the weekend.

Sonisphere is much smaller than the other big U.K rock festivals, and size matters with smaller definitely coming out on top when the subject is ‘good times at a festival’.

By Saturday, I have found my bearings, but at this point I’m just smelling all the gorgeous unhealthy food vendor smells, adjusting to the gnarly fair ground lighting that will become the norm for the weekend and enjoying randomly bumping in to friends while wobbling around on uneven field land with my bottle of chucked together booze in my hand.

Friday’s line up at Sonisphere for me was a sweet little warm up for the following two days. My highlights had to be Karma To Burn with their stoner, psychedelic intensity and hard, heavy rhythm.

Black Spiders were new to me and rocked and of course, along with everyone being incredibly excited over Alice Cooper, the talk of Friday was very heavily aimed towards a late night set from 90’s grunge/rockers, Terrorvision.

As it always goes on the smaller stages on the first day, sound was sporadically awful. But no matter, because you get carried away with the sense of freedom that comes with these weekend jaunts, and inevitably ending up at the bar too much, get blinding drunk and trip over someone’s tent pegs on your comical mission back to your tent, wherever that may be.

On the upside, and the other truly great thing about festivals is this, your not alone, everyone else is doing exactly the same thing!

Review by Lucy Lawless
www.chroniclesofthemerchgirl.blogspot.com