Sonisphere Festival Italy Review 2011

Sonisphere Italy 2011: All I got is to be happy.

Imagine the hottest day of the year in the hottest place ever, on the ground where once a year shining vehicles with the most powerful engines of the world spin around. Can you figure it? Well, now imagine that instead of F1 fans you have rock and metal addicted and instead of cars you have more or less twenty of the best hard rock bands of the music scene; instead of oil and gas you have beer and water that flow everywhere.

Sonisphere Italy 2011: a success!  With more than 25000 people on the first day and 15000 on the second one, the first edition of this huge event was definitely a success - This might have been for the very good organization: free camping, affordable prices, clean showers and toilets; and must have been for sure for the bands called to play.

The incredible hot weather was proportionate to the flaming souls of all the huge fans gathered there to assist this great show.

Day 1: Leave any hope you who enter.

The 25^th of June was the hard rock day with Bring me to Horizon, Apocalyptica, Mastodon, Rob Zombie, Papa Roach, Motorhead, Slipknot, Iron Maiden: big names for a big day!

The burning flames arose, starting with “smaller” bands such as Bring me to Horizon, which were better live on stage than on CD. Then the audience was left breathless with the sound of the Apocalyptica that with 3 violoncellos on the stage brought the Apocalypse on earth. Mastodon almost destroyed the stage with the greatest energy; Rob Zombie transferred you directly into hell; and the following Papa Roach did a superb show with both new and old great songs and the unbelievable voice of the leader, Jacoby Shaddix.

Fortunately between each group you had the time to reload your energies and refill your stomach with beer, ice creams, and all the coldest things you could find to cool you down; fortunately there were several spots in shadow where you could sleep, relax or simply take a break from that huge, massive structure built up for the event.

Suddenly it was the time for the magnificent three: Motorhead, Slipknot, Iron Maiden; a tour de force that empowered and filled you with adrenaline.

Motorhead: “that’s the way I like it baby” quoting Lemmy singing “Ace of Spades”. That’s right, we liked it, we loved the sound and energy of this evergreen band that played no stop for one hour.

Later on the arena was full…guess why? That was the time for the Slipknot!

I must say that this was the best performance of the entire festival even if it was the first time of Slipknot coming to Italy without the primary songwriter and one of the founding members of the band, the bassist Paul Gray who died one year ago.

Corey Taylor dedicated in memory to his friend “Duality” that was singed by the entire audience.


The eight members of the band did a great line up with astonishing pieces such as “Wait and Bleed”, “People=shit”, “Psychosocial”, “Duality”,  “Sic”, while enormous flames were thrown from the stage into the air. Michael Shawn "Clown" Crahan jumped into the crowd from one side while Chris Fehen, the other percussionist, jumped from a 3 meter-high roof, doing stage diving on the overwhelmed and adoring crowd.

Fans were mad by their energy: this was epic!

After sweating for one hour it was the time of the headliners Iron Maiden.

Half of the people there wore Maiden’s t-shirts and the arena was definitely full. Fourteen songs, two hour playing and the crowd exploded! Maiden are always Maiden and they had no fear of performing at top levels leaving everyone entirely satisfied.

11 p. m., music off, back to the camping, first comments: “the line up of the day was amazing”, people of all ages agreed. Even if someone was there just for the Iron Maiden they enjoyed every second of the day…but party never stopped! For all night long people were still singing: old music addicted and younger ones gathered together, drank together, and shared their opinions and experiences, having suffered for the entire day under the boiling sun without caring at all.

That’s the music spirit: for some hours you are there with thousands of people sharing a great experience…just for a moment the world stands still.

Day 2: “Sing it out loud and in the end it doesn’t even matter”.

After a crazy night, at 8 o’clock in the morning the sun was shining again forcing everyone to leave the camping because it was too hot to stay there (even more than the day before).

Anyway, as the previous day, the gates opened at 9:30, so there was no time to waste. The first punk/rock groups shook the first few people in the arena, but there were not as many people as the day before.

This day was more punk/rock in order to cover any genre of rock for every people’s taste: the crowd this day was much more younger, some of the youngsters didn’t even know who the Motorhead were.

I think that the “dated” group on stage this day were the Guano Apes, and they rocked! The front man (actually front woman) had still her amazing voice leaving everyone breathless and making everyone jump. The following, “The Cults”, did a pretty good performance and they were acclaimed by lots of fans.

I had great expectations on the Alter Bridge that left me satisfied because they did a very good show playing both old songs such as “Metalingus” and some more recent ones, but they had not so much time to play (only 35 minutes).

The young and punk Sum41 enflamed the crowd and did great with their energy, clean sounds and easy lyrics.

I must say that I am a good fan of melodic rock but this second day was with less energy and adrenaline that the previous one: this was more the day for the youngsters.

With the new album just published My Chemical Romance entered the stage, playing less than expected but leaving the fan satisfied. Up to me they could have done more (they didn’t even played their massive success “sing”) but we enjoyed their performance as well.

At the end the ones that everyone was expecting were the super Linkin Park.

They were the real leaders of the day, the columns of the line up, the best.  The voice of the leading singer, Chester Bennington, was perfect, much more than I expected. They put all their energies and they loved performing for the Italian audience.

Playing almost all the songs from the massive successful album “Hybrid Theory” they conquered everyone.

Summing up the entire experience, leaving the camping on Monday morning with no problems, having been there since Friday, this first Italian Sonisphere was great, very well organized, funny, and astonishing.

Shining bands playing in that enormous structure with the basses and drums vibrating in everyone’s chest left the crowd completely satisfied.

Music is the most amazing glue, the most powerful engine that shook the racetrack of Imola like no F1 could have ever done.

So, we all hope that next year it would be as shining and rocking as this one and that we will still be able to keep rocking every night and party every day.

Review and photos: Caterina Boiardi