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The famed mud and sludge of Donington Park that the hallowed Download Festival calls home is a five-hour drive away from where I live, and this past weekend, I made the trek to see my childhood faves. This year was a throwback, with headliners Limp Bizkit, Guns N Roses, and Linkin Park, plus many other 90s and 00s icons scattered across the weekend and various stages.

It was the perfect nostalgia-fuelled weekend, with history in the making as Linkin Park became the first ever female-led headliner in Download history. But it was Final Fantasy 14s in-house band, The Primals, who tempted me into committing to that long drive with enthusiasm.

Download marked the first time that The Primals have performed at a concert that wasnt for a dedicated Final Fantasy or gaming event. And you know what that means: it was time to introduce the metal rockers of Download to the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy 14, which has an expanded free trial that you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn, the award-winning Heavensward expansion you know the rest.

Download really did introduce festival-goers to Final Fantasy 14, as District X had a dedicated booth with exclusive art t-shirts and plectrum engraving (both of which kept selling out), and of course, plenty of game booths to step into the shoes of the Warrior of Light.

The Primals On Crowd-Surfing And Fangirling

[Masayoshi Soken and Jason Charles Miller on stage as The Primals at Download Festival 2026.]

The Primals performed at the Dogstooth at the early but respectable timeslot of 17:50 on Friday, with Jason Charles Miller joining them on stage for the majority of the set. It was short at 30 minutes long, but chock full of rock. The band opened with Fiend, then hit us with Not Afraid, Absolute Tyranny, and eScape, before ending on fan-favourite Under the Weight.

There was a dense crowd surrounding the stage, and you could easily spot the tell-tale signs of FF14 players as light sticks replicated in-game emotes, a Serpent of Ronka stuffed toy was held aloft, and you couldnt look around without spotting an FF t-shirt or Fan Fest bag. Yet as The Primals burst into life on stage, you could also spot festival goers curiously approach and join in the throng of fans to appreciate a brand-new experience.

I caught up with FF14 sound director and The Primals guitarist and vocalist Masayoshi Soken, FF14 localisation director and vocalist Michael-Christopher Koji Fox, and guitarist GUNN the day after their set.

Download was the shortest set time The Primals have ever had. Because it was a broader rock festival rather than a specific Final Fantasy fan event, Soken tells me the band had quite a lot of discussions about what we wanted to do to really reach out and appeal to rock fans, especially because we had such a limited time to play with them.

During Under the Weight, someone was crowdsurfing, and I was like This is what we wanted, Soken says with a smile. The crowdsurfer was pulled away by security as he reached the stage, but he had the biggest grin on his face as he re-entered the crowd. That would never happen in Japan, Fox adds excitedly. Security might not approve, but we approve!

[The Primals on stage at Download Festival 2026.]

The Download lineup this year included Tom Morello, with whom The Primals have previously collaborated in the past, but sadly, the band were leaving before his set. However, they were just as excited as the rest of us by the staggering line-up this year. Yesterday was obviously Limp Bizkit; today, Guns N Roses. I really want to see Babymetal. I would have loved to see Band-Maid yesterday, Soken tells me.

When we were cleaning up after the set yesterday, we could hear Cypress Hill, GUNN says. When I was in my teens learning to play guitar, I was listening to them, and so it was unreal to see them up there. I want to go back in time and tell myself, If you keep practising, in a couple of decades time, its where youre going to be.

For me, its just overwhelming, I have that sense of I don't belong here, Fox explains. Im a kid of the 80s, so we always think, no matter how hard we try, I don't belong here. He goes on to gush about how, when walking around Download, he saw artists whose songs he has on his phone and how he also fangirls about them.

Yesterday, BEX was in the back, and I discovered them on my own last year, and I started listening to them, and I fell in love with their music. And then she's like right there, and I'm like, Can I have a picture, please? Fox pauses to apologise, explaining his bandmates have had to hear about this same story for the past day. Im just a kid in a candy store with it.

For a man who was on stage, screaming his lungs out like the best of them and putting his whole energy and heart into being a rock star, Fox is surprisingly humble. I work in localisation. Its all thanks to Soken. I owe all this to Soken for providing this opportunity for me to be here.

If it wasnt for him saying, Koji, we dont have money, can you sing? And then it turned into this, and now Im here, and I'm just like, Im not worthy, but can I get a selfie? Fox explains when they were going into 2.0, There wasnt as much budget because we were remaking the game. Everything was like, Weve got to make it with what we have. And [Soken] was like, Koji, write the lyrics. Koji, sing. Koji, stage. Okay! And now here they are, years later, performing alongside rock royalty.

Fan Favourite Songs, Requests, And In-Game Stages

[Koji Fox, Jason Charles Miller, and Gunn on stage with The Primals at Download Festival 2026.]

The Primals song that gets the biggest reaction at gigs is different depending on the country, with Soken telling me, In Japan, its quite common for audiences to do set choreography to songs, so I would say there is a lot of similar energy for a lot of them. In particular, the song with the time stop, Rise, that one always gets a good reaction.

It's that group work, everybody working together, everybody stopping at the same time. It makes you feel like they're as one. So yeah, Rise is pretty big, Fox agrees. However, he says Americans prefer screaming and making a lot of noise. Stuff like Titan, Scream, where they all sing together. Thats usually the big ones in those areas.

The Primals always do their best to play fan favourites, so they dont believe any fan requests have gone unanswered, but they say some songs would be difficult to perform live. Fox suggests that Garuda would be difficult to do live, though his bandmates quickly point out that no one requests that. I know that GUNN doesnt want to play it because its- he then mimics having to play the hell out of an air guitar.

Koji and I are not professional singers. We're shouters, Soken laughs. So occasionally, when people ask us to do things that require me to sing, like Titania or Bee My Honey, it's pretty hard.

The Primals have played across many stages all over the world, but where would they pick if they could choose an FF14 Trial for their stage? I mean, it would be pretty scary, but Titan, GUNN suggests, with Soken quickly adding, But it keeps getting smaller! As sound director, I'm going to go with Dancing Green.

I'm old school. It would be the Leviathan battle on that boat, Fox says, before joking about getting washed off while playing, which leaves the band laughing as they consider how all the Trials would be completely unfeasible as stages. I don't know about the Titan one, because you'd see all the fans just falling off, and you'd be like, No, no, no, wait, wait, wait!

The Primals’ Download Festival Experience

[Masayoshi Soken on stage with The Primals at Download Festival 2026.]

Other than a strong wind and the occasional overcast sky, Download was behaving relatively well this year. Despite some rain earlier in the week, Friday onwards saw the sun shining and the tank tops (and sun tan lines) out in full force. It was a far cry from my last visit to Download, amid thunderstorms and torrential rain.

Thats just what a rock festival is, right? Soken laughs. It doesnt matter if the ground is all soggy and muddy as long as were on fire.

Its been a while since Fox last visited a Western festival, but he tells me Download felt like coming home, explaining that the biggest thing that hit him was seeing so many elderly couples enjoying the festival together. They're just sitting in their chairs, but they've got their T-shirts on, and all their tattoos, and that's the 80-year-old I want to be. When I see myself in 30 or 40 years, I want to be with my wife, sitting here, listening to some heavy metal band.

The sense of everyone coming together because of music was poignant to Fox. This is going to sound really cliche, but right now the world is like we hate each other, I'm on this side, Im on that side. This brings everyone together, and coming to this, it made me feel good for society again.

[The Primals at Download Festival 2026.]

Fox likens the Download community to that of FF14. Everyone loves hard rock, metal, metalcore, and they've come here, and they have that in common. FF14 is the same. You have your white mages, you have your tanks, you have your DPS, but they're all there for the love of the game, and it brings them together as a community.

Soken has been to many Japanese rock festivals over the years, but was blown away by the sheer scale of Download and how many people were there, with the festival regularly drawing 80,000 people a year. You just dont have anything on that level in Japan.

Fox teasingly adds at this point, He wasnt taking pictures of the band. He was just taking pictures of the crowd.

A lot of the bands that are playing here, we know them in Japan, Soken says. We're very familiar with them as well, particularly for those of us who were really into rock back in the 90s. Some of the big names here. It just really struck me the same way that Koji was talking about that kind of longevity of the fans and how everyone is still keeping up with the music, living right on the edge there with the music. As a fan of rock music in Japan, Im kind of jealous.

GUNN nods in agreement. It just really struck me, whether its all the people backstage, the crew, everyone working behind the scenes, or whether its everyone out front having a great time, they just all feel like theyre at home here. Everyones got such a sense of warmth and laughter, and it just feels like a beautiful place to be.

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Released: August 27, 2013
ESRB: Teen / Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, Sexual Themes, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence, In-Game Purchases, Users Interact
Developer(s): Square Enix
Publisher(s): Square Enix
Engine: Originally the Crystal Tools engine, but currently it's a custom engine using parts of the Luminous Engine.