Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes join Download line-up

NME

Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes have joined this year’s Download Festival line-up.

• READ MORE: 20 festivals to look forward to in 2022

They will be joined by newly announced acts including Napalm Death, Kris Barras Band, I Pengshui and Aniilmalia. KISS, Iron Maiden and Biffy Clyro were previously announced as this year’s festival headliners.

Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes will now be headlining the Second Stage on Friday June 10, replacing The Distillers who last week announced that they’d postponed all their European festival appearances, as well as their June headline tour.

The Brody Dalle-fronted band shared a statement on social media that said: “It is with great regret that The Distillers have been forced to postpone their upcoming European festival appearances and headline tour this June.”

“The band express their sincere apologies to all of the fans and hope to return to Europe to play the headline shows as soon as they can, so please hold onto your tickets.” No reason was given for the postponement.

Last year, Frank Carter & the Rattlesnakes headlined the first night of the historic Download Pilot event, which welcomed the return of camping festivals to the UK.

Download festival will take place from June 10-12 at Donington Park, Leicestershire. Tickets for the event are now on sale here.

Happy Friday! There’s been some changes to your #DL2022 line up. We’re adding @therattlesnakes, @officialND, @KrisBarrasBand, @PENGSHUIMUSIC and @ANIIMALIA_uk

Still not got your tickets? Don’t hang about https://t.co/XD79yzw6pT pic.twitter.com/fLO9YvQMPa

— Download Festival (@DownloadFest) April 22, 2022

“It’s just over 50 days until we open the gates to the campsite, and there are many, many people counting down every single one of those days,” Festival Republic boss Melvin Benn told NME recently. “Also, it’s been nearly 1,100 days between Tool closing in 2019 and Heriot opening in 2022. That’s definitely too long without this festival.”

With the festival fast approaching, Download announced some major new site improvements for accessibility, inclusivity and green issues – including moving camping area The Village closer to The Arena, bringing it closer to the Access Camping area for disabled fans, and a range of new more environmentally-friendly camping schemes.

“The Download community embraces fans with disabilities probably more than any other festival, I would say,” Benn told NME. “We’ve been listening to fans, and formerly the accessible campsite was a distance away from the campsite village and almost impassable during a wet year, so we’ve redesigned the campsite overall. The two are now much closer together and it’s nearer to the heart of the camping world.

“The walk from the campsites to the arena is now much shorter than it was before. It was a trek, but it’s much better now.”

“We’ve already got all of our headliners booked for 2023,” Download festival booker Andy Copping told NME. “It’s the first time I’ve booked all the headliners in advance ahead of the prior year’s event. That news will come out not too long after this year’s festival, hopefully.

“We’re way, way down the line – because next year is essentially our 20th year so we wanted to do something a little bit special. All I can say is that it will be very, very exciting.”

The post Frank Carter & The Rattlesnakes join Download line-up appeared first on NME.