The recent resurgence of rock's popularity has made this year's Ozzfest an oddly anticipated event for possibly the first time in its six-year run. A re-formed original Black Sabbath line-up is here with an entourage of pretenders and some of Aerosmith's nu-metal descendants.

Hed(pe) give the best demonstration of funky nu-metal of the afternoon, complete with scratch DJ. Papa Roach frontman Coby Dick, the portly prince of nu-metal excess, veers from sub-Van Halen to sub-Rage Against the Machine with only the current single as a stand-out track. When he says, "You can cut my legs off because all I need is rock'n'roll," it seems a sensible suggestion. His invitation to "eat a bowl of fuck", however, is somehow less attractive.

Amen cram an unfeasible number of power chords into each bar, but fail to engage the audience. Even those initially frenzied by the hype start to sit down. Slipknot cranks up the waning energy levels. In their tailored gimp suits, they bound about the stage like frogs on a hot plate, and soon the crowd is doing the same. But the fake DJ interlude fails to convince that their ideas go further than the image and a simple desire to turn everything up to 11.

While Led Zeppelin went down the US blues route to conjure up images of Avalon, Black Sabbath stuck with a resolutely British sound of untamed power in order to evoke pictures of a decaying industrial wasteland. Those who expect to see a set largely unchanged since 1970 are not disappointed; but I'd forgotten just how damn good the songs are. War Pigs is exactly the sort of anthem that other bands today would kill for; Iron Man and Paranoid likewise. New material from a band who have been around this long is usually a cue to go to the bar, but Scary Dreams from their forthcoming album manages to hold its own. The re-formed, reinvigorated classic line-up eclipses the power of the previous years of solo Ozzy sets and, uniquely for a 30-year-old band, they don't seem like old codgers ringing their glory days dry.