Sonisphere Festival at Knebworth

The Sonisphere Festival at Knebworth has won over music fans in its first year.

KNEBWORTH’S Sonisphere rock event won a top prize at the 2009 UK Festival Awards last night (Thursday).

The inaugural Sonisphere spectacular headlined by nu-metal favourites Linkin Park and metal legends Metallica scooped the Best New Festival gong at the O2 in London.

The Kilimanjaro and K2 staff took to the stage en masse to accept the award which festival director Stuart Galbraith dedicated to Maurice Jones, his former partner and mentor and the founder of Monsters of Rock, who died recently.

A statement on the Sonisphere website said: “Team Sonisphere would really like to thank all those that came to the festival, got involved with the community and in turn voted for us.

“Thank you so much. Let’s do it all again in 2010!”

Despite the economic downturn, 80,000 rock fans attended the two-day festival in its first year, with Limp Bizkit, Machine Head, Alice In Chains, Bullet for My Valentine, Anthrax, Feeder and Nine Inch Nails all joining the headliners at Knebworth.

Sonisphere was in fact up for three awards at last night’s Indigo2 bash, with prizes voted for by the fans.

However, it missed out on the Best Major Festival to Glastonbury.

Metallica, who closed the heavy rock and metal festival in the grounds of the Hertfordshire stately home, were beaten to the Best Headline Performance by Blur’s set at Glastonbury.

Also up for the coveted trophy were the likes of Kings of Leon at the Leeds Festival, The Prodigy at Global Gathering, Radiohead at Reading and Slipknot at Download.

The dates for Sonisphere 2010 have been comfirmed as July 31 to August 1.

No headliners have been announced yet.