August Bank holiday weekend quickly rolled around again for another Reading festival. Despite initial scepticism that the hard rock festival had waned to the wants of the new generation of teens, who desire the softer tones of the likes of La Roux, Little Boots and Jack Penate; Reading festival once more dually delivered.

Top performers of the weekend included Radiohead, Friendly Fires, The Gaslight Anthem and the outstanding Florence and The Machine. The Arctic Monkeys also gave a fantastic performance, despite defying all festival laws by playing their new album - that had only been released a week earlier! The lads from Sheffield found a happy medium and mixed their new, mature sound with their older classic one, leaving the listeners aurally pleasured. Further special mentions deservedly go to The Prodigy and Chase and Status who proved you don’t need guitars to rock. Both acts respectively drew huge crowds that made the earth shudder. Maxim Reality, MC of The Prodigy built up the masses by calling upon his ‘Warriors’, his ‘Voodoo, Reading and Prodigy people’ alike to stand up and be counted in the mayhem of the big-beats of ‘Take Me To The Hospital’, ‘Omen’ and ‘Smack My Bitch Up’. The supporters went crazy for the hardcore industrial group who gave the usual festival favourites a run for their money for best performance. Likewise Chase and Status got the crowed pumped; so much in fact that the roof was literally raised by the drum‘n’bass ravers climbing up the tent poles at tremendous heights, shaking it to its foundations. The energy got too much at one point and lighting cables fell into the mass of moving bodies, causing the set to be temporarily paused and return with a more mellow dub step beat before ending on a truly emphatic track of ‘Pieces’.

The biggest surprise of the festival this year came from arguably one of the biggest bands at present, Kings Of Leon, but for all the wrong reasons. The internationally acclaimed band ultimately lost control of their emotions on stage in front of a static, motionless audience. Despite playing a reasonably good set, filled with top tracks from their latest album as well as older classics, front man Caleb Followill could not get the crowd moving. The lacklustre audience really affected the front man as he decided it was necessary to confront them three quarters the way through their set. He stated it was time to be real for a moment and that it was clear that “you’re sick of Kings Of Leon” looking very aggrieved while addressing his spectators for notably one of the few times in the set. “We’re sick of Kings Of Leon too. But we are on this stage playing for you, and if you don’t like it then f**k you!” The crowd were stunned. Festival goers didn’t know whether to cheer or jeer, so instead they remained quiet. After playing just a couple more songs the boys from Nashville, Tennessee had had enough. They trashed their set by throwing guitars and drums across the stage, and stormed off with their middle fingers raised at the crowd, finishing their set early without even the prospect of an encore. The true scale of their flop came clear to me on Sunday afternoon; when during Vampire Weekend’s energetic set the sight of a pair of naked saggy tits on the big screen generated a larger cheer than Kings Of Leon could rouse during their entire set.

Maybe not so much a surprise was the ‘surprise’ act on Saturday, ‘Them Crooked Vultures’. Despite the secret having been somewhat unveiled prematurely to the Reading fans, due to the fact the super group played Leeds festival the previous day, this band of true music legends grabbed the attention of hordes of festival-goers by playing real hard rock. The new band formed in LA earlier this year and comprises of drummer Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters and Nirvana, vocalist and guitarist Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, and bassist and keyboardist John Paul Jones from Led Zeppelin. They were absolutely electric and fully deserved the great reception they received.