Monday, September 27, 2010 6:59am ET by  
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Thousands witness Eminem’s comeback

The Epicenter Festival in Fontana, outside Los Angeles, is a familiar one on the big prestigious festival circuit. It's certainly no Coachella. But this year's festival scored big with Eminem who made his US West Coast comeback this weekend alongside unlikely fellow headliners Kiss and Bush, plus Papa Roach, Big Boi and House of Pain.

Halfway through Eminem's performance, he stopped and asked the rapturous crowd, "Did you miss me?"

Eminem wasn't known for any sort of artistic reticence until he disappeared from the headlines five years ago, before re-emerging with two albums in the last two years: 2009's 'Relapse' and 2010's 'Recovery'. Drenched in sweat and backed by a set full of crushed cars (he is from America's Motor City, Detroit, after all), with stacks of crushed cars as decor to evoke the wreckage of Detroit, Eminem also utilised bloody images galore on giant video screens during '3 am' and & 'Kill You'.

Others on the set list: 'Stan', 'The Way I Am' and 'I Love The Way You Lie', which he dedicated to any woman in the audience who has ever been in a dysfunctional relationship.

Eminem wouldn't be Eminem without a little controversy though. During 'No Love', he shouted, "Free Lil Wayne!" Wayne, who originally collaborated with Eminem on the track, is in prison in the US for gun possession.

Though Kiss took the stage after Eminem, much of the festival's audience had left, making it very plain exactly which act they had come to see.

Gavin Rossdale also made a comeback of sorts earlier in the day, appearing with his band Bush. Sporting hair in a bun and three stripes of bright orange tape on his right arm, Rossdale and co. stuck mostly to old hits but did play 'Afterlife', their new single from upcoming album, 'Everything Always Now'.