So Download is over for another year. NME.COM has locked the Jaagermeister away where it belongs, and we’re going to listen to nothing but Belle and Sebastian for the next week just to calm down. Okay, joking! Because as intimidating as three days with the heaviest music on Earth may be, Download is always a more varied affair than you expect. We saw heavy metal, doom metal, gloom metal, death metal, deathcore, but also emo, screamo, dreamo, opera rock, hardcore punk, hair metal, and of course we saw I Was A Cub Scout.

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In the end, the old timers won the day at Download. As hot as the new breed were - and they were brilliant - Download still lives in the shadow of the Monsters Of Rock. Across the board the line-ups are rich and varied (I Was A Cub Scout played for Christ's sake), but as always Download 2007 was owned by the legends. It's there in the soil of this place.

On the Main Stage just now, Iron Maiden made the ultimate festival gesture by driving a bloody great tank onto the stage, complete with articulated Eddie. That's what you want at Donington.

Motley Crue stole the show yesterday through sheer exuberance. No other band this weekend looked like they loved it quite as much as the Crue.

Then look at Perry Farrell. Nobody's going to get overexcited about the music Satellite Party make, but having one of the great living showman do his thing was still breathtaking. He's easily the coolest of anyone to swing through our NME Playground this weekend.

This year, Download also remembered Dimebag Darrell by renaming the second stage in his honour. The Pantera and Damageplan guitarist was murdered onstage in 2004.

My Chemical Romance entered the big league pulling off their first major British headline performance. And they hardly got anything thrown at them.

Enter Shikari, Gallows and good old Biffy Clyro showed a British rock scene in fabulous health.

AND IT DIDN'T RAIN!

Download kicked off the whole brilliant, ridiculous adventure that is the British festival season on another rollercoaster year. Exciting, isn't it? Team NME is going home. We'll leave you with a little Maiden. Goodnight, rock fans!

Well, war on histrionic vaudiville goth pop, at any rate. Amy Lee from Evanescence called by the NME.COM Fortress earlier on to fill us in on who's left the band and who's joined this week. And she seemed quite happy until our video guy Phil asked her if she was afraid of getting bottled? After all, the Download crowd are unforgiving in the face of That Which Is Not Metal, and by all accounts Gerard Way was bricking it. She seemed a little puzzled. I hope we're not responsible for what's going on out on the Main Stage just now...

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So obviously Biffy Clyro were one of last night's muse-see turns here at Download. But it was all the more exciting because their album 'Puzzle' came out on Monday and shocked the world by shooting straight to the top of the midweek chart. The charts have just been announced and Biffy are number two in the album charts! It's about time this magical band got their dues, and this puts them right at the top of the UK pop tree where they belong. They just got edged out by 'Good Girl Gone Bad' by the amazing Rihanna. But they beat The Twang!

We caught up with them just before they played.

Congratulations boys!

Jared Leto, once the face of My So-Called Life, now, some would say, the brains behind My So-Called Band. In spite of a mega-bucks record deal (see the mind-meltingly expensive video for 'From Yesterday'), 30 Seconds To Mars drew mixed reviews on the Dimebag Darrell Stage. Does that prevent Jared from pouring his tear-jerking Hollywood heart out to us? Nope.

Click through to watch things unfold.

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