Pointless are the summers without music festivals. Hellfest, though, is beyond any definition of rock music festival. It gathers in one place the legends you have been dreaming of seeing live since you were a child: three days of pure magic for all metal enthusiasts and lovers of high decibel music out there!
This year is no exception, when the 13th edition of the festival takes place from Friday, June 22 until Sunday, June 24 in the picturesque French community of Clisson. Hellfest opens its gates for 60.000 visitors, where a lot of fun, beer and famous riffs await.
You can start out your 2018 Hellfest experience by ‘breaking the law’ on the main stage with Friday headliner Judas Priest and then continue the journey to the finest edges of heavy metal, hard rock, metalcore, symphonic metal and even alternative. The main stage will host names like Avenged Sevenfold, Deftones, Bullet for My Valentine, Iron Maiden, Nightwish, Megadeth and others.
Maybe one of the most beloved alternative metal bands around the world, Stone Sour, will perform on the second main stage. Their last album Hydrograd is one of my favourite albums from them and I am looking forward to also hearing it live. Death metal vocalist Alissa White-Gluz (Arch Enemy) will also delight the public and offer a high energy show. Other great names that will step on this stage: A Perfect Circle, Limp Bizkit, Marilyn Manson, and Alice in Chains.
Remember the child I mentioned earlier? That will be me when I will see in front of my eyes (and lens) on the Altar and Temple stages the bands that I have been listening to since teenage times. These stages will be offering an impressive selection of death, black, extreme and symphonic metal acts like Therion, Dimmu Borgir, Napalm Death, Amorphis and many more. Probably the idol of many guitar players, including myself, Alexi Leiho and Children of Bodom will show again why Finnish metal is simply awesome.
For punk-hardcore fans out there, Rise Against is also present this year at Hellfest. Their last three studio albums have landed in the Top 5 of the Billboard 200 album chart and have done well in numerous corners of the world. You can see them on the Warzone stage which, will also host metalcore and sludge metal bands like Hatebreed, Crowbar and Neurosis.
It is almost impossible to describe in words how killer the whole festival lineup is so you should simply check it out: www.hellfest.fr/lineup. There are many more bands that will step on Hellfest’s stages and I am most excited to see the live performance of as many of them as I can.
Seven years ago, Hellbound’s Adam Wills represented us at Hellfest 2011. It was Adam’s first European metal festival and Hellbound’s first chance to cover Hellfest, so pretty exciting all around: Hellfest 2011 Preview and Hellfest 2011 Review (Day 1) by Adam Wills.
