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!
Graspop Metal Meeting, one of the most acclaimed metal festivals in the world has finalized more names for their 2024 new lineup. Final headliner Alice Cooper has joined the bill with 83 other bands for year 27! Bruce Dickinson, Corey Taylor, Deep Purple, Electric Callboy and Megadeth as part of 130+ other bands. The fest takes place from Thursday 20 June through Sunday 23 June 2024 at Graspop Metal Meeting in Dessel, Belgium. Tickets go on sale this Saturday, November 25th at the link below.
Download Festival, the greatest rock and metal festival of all time, returns for its 21st edition, reborn and recharged in 2024 as DLXXI. Announced today are headliners Queens Of The Stone Age, Fall Out Boy and Avenged Sevenfold, as well as over 70 more huge names from the rock world. This year’s festival will take place on 14-16 June 2024 at the spiritual home of rock in Donington Park, Leicestershire. General tickets are onsale at 9pm on Thursday 9 November at the link below.
Pantera, Tool, Slipknot and Avenged Sevenfold will headline the 2023 edition of the Welcome To Rockville festival, set to take place May 18-21 at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. Also scheduled to appear are Deftones, Rob Zombie, Godsmack, Evanescence, Incubus, Queens Of The Stone Age, Alice Cooper, Chevelle, and Coheed & Cambria, among many others. Tickets are on sale now at the link below.
Heavy Group announces the return of the Heavy Music Awards (HMA) and the arrival of its spectacular new home for 2023, the OVO Arena Wembley on Friday 26 May. Since its inception in 2017, the HMAs has recognised the most influential and groundbreaking creatives in the heavy music landscape and certified itself as a staple of the heavy music awards calendar, with a move to OVO Arena Wembley now cementing the event as the largest rock music awards ceremony ever.
My Saturday at Download began over at the main stage where I caught the retro new wave of classic rock act Those Damn Crows, a band who have amassed a significant following in Wales thanks to appearances at the likes of Steelhouse Festival and other rock-oriented affairs. Possibly one of the smallest acts to perform on the main stage this year, the band spared no expense offering a fantastic wake-up call with some unremarkable if solid hard rock tunes. The day’s proceedings then continued firmly in the rocky territory with a southern, slightly heavier twang with Black Label Society, in their first festival appearance on UK soil since 2015, and with less of Zakk Wylde’s expectedly lengthy and tiresome soloing. Don’t get me wrong, Zakk was still doing his usual thing, but with a much-needed addition of percussion, making the moments of instrumental wankery much more palatable than usual.
After a prolonged absence from the British metal scene courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic (save for a scaled-back pilot event in 2021), Leicestershire’s iconic summer rock, punk, and metal weekender, Download Festival returned to Castle Donnington in a maximalist blaze of glory, packing in a full-scale 5-day experience with some familiar favorites, hotly tipped up-and-comers and some of the best international acts that rock and metal scene has to offer.
Returning to the USA for the first time since 2019, Parkway Drive has been announced as the Co-Headliner for ShipRocked 2023! They join Falling In Reverse atop a bill that includes Nothing More, Skillet, Suicidal Tendencies, Motionless In White, grandson, Ayron Jones, and over a dozen others. The January 22-28, 2023 sailing on Carnival Magic will feature Parkway Drive’s first American performance since spring of 2019.
