If heavy metal is the working man’s opera, to paraphrase Iron Maiden’s singer Bruce Dickinson, then Download is its Glyndebourne. The successor to the Monsters of Rock Festival began in 2003 in the rolling fields of Donington, an almost mythical site in rock folklore. It can hardly be coincidence that almost every major British metal star was born within an hour of here.

Blessed with blazing sunshine, Download 2009 was an enormously enjoyable affair, attracting one of the most laid-back and friendly crowds of the rock calendar. Metal fans have a sense of community and self-deprecating humour that you won’t find at any other festival. The line-up may have lacked the variety of Glastonbury or Reading, but it offered a wide menu, with striking emphasis on reactivated 1980s rock veterans.

A coup for Download, the recently re-formed Faith No More headlined on Friday, opening with a typically wry lounge-jazz cover of Peaches and Herb’s Reunited. Resplendent in a three-piece scarlet suit, the band’s diabolically handsome singer Mike Patton must have a grisly self-portrait hidden in his attic, as he scarcely seems to have aged during the band’s 11-year hiatus. However, there were surprisingly few memorable anthems in their uneven two-hour patchwork of heavy rock, funk, jazz and sardonic self-mockery. “We used to be quite an energetic band,” Patton quipped.

In general, the bigger headliners proved the most disappointing, particularly the Americans. Marilyn Manson’s perfunctory set lacked wit or fireworks, while Slipknot’s horror-movie shtick could not disguise their thunderously dull industrial sludge-rock. ZZ Top proved even more tedious, sounding like a Texan Status Quo as they trudged through an endless procession of soundalike saloon-bar blues dirges.

But a few complacent performers could not spoil the overall carnival mood at Donington. A mood epitomised by LA’s veteran glam-metal legends Mötley Crüe, once poster boys for bone-headed sexist idiocy, who played an agreeable set of good-time sleaze-rock. Tellingly, they were one of the only Download acts not to appear on giant video screens, possibly to conceal their surgically remodelled singer Vince Neil’s alarming resemblance to Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler.

Download’s comic relief came courtesy of the 1980s Canadian also-rans Anvil, recently immortalised in a hilarious documentary, who were rapturously received during their third-stage headline set. Even funnier were Steel Panther, a note-perfect parody of vintage Sunset Strip hair-metal bands. This LA quartet combine X-rated lyrics with affectionate, highly realistic pastiche songs.

Two of the weekend’s most exciting performers were the techno-rockers the Prodigy and Pendulum, both feeding off the fierce energy of a hyperactive crowd. At the other end of the metal scale, Def Leppard specialise in polished pop-rock anthems, but these Sheffield veterans still had a huge audience singing along as they brought the Glyndebourne of loud guitars to a suitably operatic finale on Sunday.

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