Hellfest, held every year just outside of Paris, in Clisson, France, continues to up the ante every year with forever growing and impressive lineups! Taking place from June 27 to June 30, 2024, Hellfest will once again be four days long and over 200 bands appearing on six stages. For 2024, the headliners for each night will be Avenged Sevenfold, Machine Head, Metallica, and Foo Fighters. The full daily lineups, including one more major band tba, and the ticket link are coming soon!
ArcTanGent Festival, a yearly outdoor four-day fixture at Fernhill Farm near Bristol, attracts a devoted following to its niche yet eclectic lineups of artists who generally have an association with post-rock, progressive metal, or experimental rock. It’s “sort of” a metal festival, but the range of acts it showcases steers towards the more left-field and eccentric end of heavy music and at times stretches beyond what could reasonably even be labelled as “rock”.
The mighty Arctangent Festival 2023 today announces their final main stage headliner for this year’s event, The incredible, truly one-of-a-kind Devin Townsend will be closing out the whole festival on the main stage, Saturday night. The festival will be taking place between August 16th through to August 19th, at Fernhill Farm, a short drive from Bristol City Centre. Also announced today include Haken, Yourcodenameis:Milo, Ashenspire, Clt Drp, The Guru Guru, and many more. Acts already announced include Heilung, Converge, Deafheaven (playing ‘Sunbather’ in full as a UK exclusive), Swans, Empire State Bastard, Sikth, The Fall Of Troy, Cave In, Igorrr, Pigs7, Elder, Russian Circles, Chat Pile, Svalbard, Jaga Jazzist, Brutus, Loathe, Rolo Tomassi, Svalbard, and many more.Continue reading
Eclectic and Heavy, Portals Festival has announced a slew of new bands, joining the already impressive bill. Bossk has been added as a sub-headliner, along with AK/DK (replacing Elephant Tree), Hundred-Year-Old Man, Astrosaur, A Burial At Sea, and many more. These band join Mono, And So I Watch You From Afar, Jambinai, Maybeshewill, Nordic Giants, Aa Williams, Bo Ningen, Ef, Svalbard, ’68, Pupil Slicer among others. Taking place at Earth, London on May 27th & 28th, 2023. Tickets and full fest details can be found below.
Press on, intrepid reader, to find out our top albums of 2022, as voted for by the cast, crew and hangers-on of the good ship Ghost Cult. Over 275 albums were nominated (including one stray and errant vote for Stryper… we’ve had words), some people lauded albums as the greatest of all time that no one else noticed, other albums picked up a steady stream of votes across the board without tickling the top of anyone’s charts, but through it all, we’ve been able to compile our team list of the best 75 albums of the year. And there are some absolute corkers, here. 75 of them, to be exact…
As we move into the meaty part of the Ghost Cult albums of the year for 2022 (as chosen solely by the team that dedicate their time to promote, analyse and share the love for the great alternative music that we exist to talk about), we find a mix of old favourites and a sprinkling of new rising and shining stars…Continue reading
After a false start, someone (naming no names) got rather over-excited about a new Power Metal band that promptly disappeared out of the collective consciousness, it wasn’t until mid-January, and a new 40 Watt Sun album, that alternative, rock and metal really got out of the starting blocks for 2022.Continue reading
The Beach, Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, NV 8/16/19
Progressive music festival AMFest returns to Barcelona this autumn with a focus on post-rock, math-rock, prog, post-metal, and experimental music. The full lineup is headlined by post-rock icons Godspeed You! Black Emperor, the four-day festival takes place at La Farga de l’Hospitalet, on the outskirts of the stunning city of Barcelona, Spain October 6th – 9th 2022. joining them will be Cult of Luna, Carpenter Brut, Lingua Ignota, Deafheaven, Pallbearer, TWDY, Anna von Hausswolf, Oranssi Pazuzu, Elder, GGGOLDDD, A.A Williams, Svalbard, and more. See the full lineup, poster, and ticket link below.
Rejoicing still in the simple fact we can have a physical Roadburn again, the final two days definitely wore on our pandemic shocked psyche and physique. Stumbling more and wearing down in a way I’m not used to, I mentioned to some friends during the weekend the Pandemic has made us all old, and 5 days on our feet now feel a lot longer. Saturday started with the feeling it felt like a Sunday, traditionally called the afterburner, because by that time you are fairly burnt out.
After three years of waiting and longing, finally there will be an in person Roadburn Festival again. While the 2021 online edition Roadburn Redux, was in itself, innovative and the best digital festival I’ve seen set up during the dark days of the pandemic, nothing beats being physically shaken by bass heavy music and hugging friends from all over the world you only see once a year.