Highlights of this year's Download Festival? Where to begin? Motley Crue brought a dwarf on stage. Fred Durst had his shorts pulled down. Papa Roach's Jacoby Shaddix denounced "Shitney Spears". And Los Campesinos! played a secret a capella gig on the Tuborg stage.

OK, that last one didn't happen. But the rest did. And it was all good, drunken fun, as always – but did anyone else find something unsettlingly… retro about the whole thing? Look at the top-line acts: Limp Bizkit. Marilyn Manson. Korn. Faith No More. With a few exceptions further down the bill – Dragonforce, Enter Shikari et al - this could have been an Ozzfest line-up from 1997.

Mike Patton himself recognised the weird pall of nostalgia hanging over proceedings: "This is like an '80s festival, right?" he asked the crowd at one point, acknowledging the battalion of weather-beaten classic rock acts such as Def Leppard, Journey and Whitesnake who dominated the weekend.

Indeed, the only 'new' band on the scene that anyone seemed vaguely excited about were Steel Panther - a decade-old old spoof act recycling the same 'joke' metal has been telling about itself ever since 'Big Bottom'.

Steel Panther

Something is wrong here. When a scene is so utterly reliant on its past, you know its future is struggling to be born. But this is unlikely to change any time soon – because metal is inherently conservative, granite-minded in its resistance to change.

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It's Monday, the dust has settled, and NME.COM's heavy metal squadron have gone home to detox from all the Jaagermeister. There's been a lot of bitching about Download 2008 over the weekend: people weren't happy with the new layout (to be fair, much of the time it did feel like you were just standing on a car park), and after the spectacle of KISS, the other headliners were always going to have a tough time. But Lostprophets actually pulled it off, and all weekend there was a good smattering of proper amazing stuff to see.

But there's a special kind of magic about Download that's different from the other festivals. As Tim Wheeler said the other day, metal fans tend to be overwhelmingly nice, and he's right. Even when you are watching From Autumn To Ashes or somesuch, Download always has a way of putting you in a spectacularly good mood. Or maybe that's just the Jaager...

Here's the festival best-bits as picked by your NME.COM Download team...

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NME.COM's intrepid video team managed to catch up with Arizona emo-rockers Jimmy Eat World prior to their main stage appearance for a quick chat. It was ace.

Plus - we interviewed Sharon den Adel from theatrical goth-rockers Within Temptation and Fightstar. Watch the results below.

Jimmy Eat World:

Within Temptation:

Fightstar:

So highlights of today. There's been a few...

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Gallows-friendly grimester Lethal Bizzle performed for the Download massif earlier today and experienced some of that ol' Donington hospitality - via an onslaught of bottle and Muller Rice tub rockets. We caught up with the star after he escaped the stage to find out how he was feeling.

Watch the interview:

If Kevin Smith was in a band it would have to be Municipal Waste.

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