Hellfest 2024 Reviewed by Diamond Dave

27^th– 30^th June 2024 Clisson, Pays de la Loire, France

Hellfest is the greatest of all the European Festivals!!! There I said it. Now to start a review with such a grand statement, well… You would need to be pretty sure of yourself but you know what? I am.

I have been going to festivals for the best part of 40 years either as a punter, being in roadcrews for many bands and now as a radio presenter. I have been to them all- Donington/Glastonbury/Sweden Rock/Rock AM Ring/Werchter/Hurricane/Bizarre,- but there us something about Hellfest that sets it apart from all of the rest.

I think there are three main reasons which set Hellfest apart from a lot of it’s contemporaries. Firstly, it’s location. Hellfest is in a small town called Clisson (about 30 minutes from Nantes) in France and the area where the festival takes place is not really used for anything else in a way that Glastonbury is a farm,Donington and Rock AM Ring are both racetracks for motor racing but the whole area that Hellfest occupies is for the festival and nothing else. Throughout this review you will see pictures of amazing statues, robotics, fountains and mad pieces of art from round the site. Secondly, Hellfest will cater for all flavours of the rock scene with classic rock/Glam/Industrial/Punk/Hardcore/Thrash/Doom and every other niche so every rocker is happy! The final difference (and in some ways it could even be a negative) is the fact that with each day starting at around 10am (except the Thursday which started later and then the last bands would finish at around 2am….. well a Hellfester may need a certain amount of stamina! Now throughout this review there will be many names missing whether that be Metallica/Dropkick Murphys/Machine Head/Bruce Dickenson/Neck Deep etc that I simply could not see because I was watching other artists.

Thursday

The first day of Hellfest was always going to be a bit of a struggle for this rotund Northern Irish rocker as I was up at 4am in a hotel at Manchester Airport to catch a (very) early morning flight to Nantes and I have to say to say I was very impressed with the number of my fellow headbangers who were washing down their breakfast with a bevvy or two!! With hotel checked in complete, sun cream applied it is off to the site I go!

Kerry King who had graced the Hellfest  Main Stage 1 stage with Slayer numerous times kicks things off in a positive way before I venture over to the Valley to check out Green Lung for a few numbers and we are off! BabyMetal do not do it for me so they are avoided but Megadeth follow with a concise, well executed set of the hits which I enjoyed. Yes, maybe I would have liked to hear more tracks from early Megadeth albums but that is just me and they are dragged back on stage for two encores in the form of Peace Sells and Holy Wars so it shows how they went down.

Next up on this Thursday of Hellfest is eh, Thursday who play in probably my favourite stage at the festival, The Warzone gives those who like their rock to be of a more tuneful variety than sheer brute force, a well deserved treat. Some sound issues take away a little from the overall performance but these are forgotten as the night comes in. This is when Hellfest truly comes alive with it’s incredible use of fire, jetting in all directions all through the festival site. I remember when I first experienced it was back at my first trip in 2013. Jets of flame don’t just come from the stages but from all over the place (the Merchandise Area/Toilets/it seems everywhere come alive at night and being able to watch a fire display that Rammstein would be proud of while you queue up to buy a bag of chips (OK French Fries, I had forgotten where I was). The piece de resistance (ooo and indeed lllaaa laa) must be a massive ball that shoots fire from all angles. I imagine it is controlled by someone who, as a lad, had parents who said “Don’t Play With Matches!!!” and has been making up for it ever since!! Dropkick Murphys start at 1am but having been up for nearly 24 hours straight….well it is a hotel bed calling me as an encore!

Friday 28^th July

Saint Agnes, a band who I love, had come on stage at 10.30am on the Saturday of Hellfest and to be honest I would have had to go to bed significantly earlier than 3am to be able to have made it in to see them (or indeed to have taken part in a Heavy Metal Aerobics Session which started each day…Yes I kid you not, this is a real thing). Fear Factory play a reasonable set as I am munching my late lunch of a rather nice vegetable curry for those who ae interested…oh you’re not …well I shall make my thoughts on Steel Panther clear to the world instead. Indie band , The Smiths (no they are not playing!) released a track in the mid 1980’s called “That Joke Isn’t Funny Any More” and I must admit, I am getting a bit bored with Steel Panther. Yes, the difference about us rockers is we can laugh at ourselves and I know that tracks like Asian Hooker or Friends With Benefits have their tongue so firmly in their cheek that these guys who I enjoyed so much seeing on the Sunset Strip in LA in 2011 that I am very much in the minority. BUT I don’t feel comfortable being a middle aged man seeing young girls flashing their bits and bobs (Have I suddenly turned in to your Grandad??) on the massive screens. It is 2024 and I just don’t like it but hey, this is no judgement on the thousands that love them.

Tom Morello provides one of the most enjoyable sets of the whole weekend on Main Stage 1 as he kicks off with new track, Soldier In The Army Of Love. From then on in, it is a rollercoaster of great tunes from throughout his career and a gentleman with a smile on his face that does not diminish throughout the whole of his hour long set. Morello covers his whole career with a set comprising of Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave, Nightwatchman and solo material. He thanks this French crowd who were one of the first audiences to really take RATM to their hearts and whenever he plays a tracks from that particular band’s wonderful back catalogue, it is the crowd who provide the vocals! There are incredible covers with songs from the MC5 (Kick Out The Jams), Bruce Springsteen (The Ghost Of Tom Joad) and John Lennon (Power To The People) showing that Morello is a revolutionary in guitar playing as well as his politics, as he seems to make his instrument make noises like no one else. I suppose though in many ways it is when the face of Chris Cornell, Morello’s bandmate in Audioslave, comes up on the giant screens as they launch in to Like A Stone that in a similar way as we will see when we hear Keith Flint from The Prodigy’s voice later during their set….well words can’t do it justice.

Fu Manchu put in a great headlining performance at The Valley and they are pretty epic, mixing new material from their new album The Return Of Tomorrow and their classic back catalogue, they leave the audience wanting more! (well luckyily they have plans to tour Europe and the UK in the Autumn.) And so day 2 of Hellfest ends with The Prodigy who have always known how to end a festival and right from set opener , Breathe continuing through Firestarter, Their Law the band have this crowd in their pocket! It is the way they are able to build each song up almost toying with the audience into a crescendo of headbanging/ dancing/ screaming that means that once again it is time for this fella to find his bed!

 

Saturday 29^th June

Now I knew that the final day of Hellfest was going to be very long so I had decided I was going to cut my losses and arrive later on the penultimate day so this meant that I missed the likes of Alien Weaponry, Anvil, Black Stone Cherry, Mammoth WVH and Brutus but I did however arrive in time to get myself in a prime spot to see Kvelertak. Now I am not sure what it is about Scandanavian music but there is a long list of bands who hail from the North of the planet that I adore. Refused, Soundtrack Of Our Lives, The Hives, The International Noise Conspiracy… oh I love them all and Kvelertak are like that for me too. It’s as if myself and fellow fans know something that a lot of others don’t. It’s like we all belong to some secret society that have taken the decision to look for something a little different and myself and the rest of the crowd crammed in to the area of The Valley stage are treated to something special. I won’t try and spell the song titles from their set list as you can probably see from this revue that writing in English is a problem, let alone coming up with titles in their native Norwegian, but they are quite breathtaking. Mixing hardcore with at times a more traditional heavy rock sound that can almost be Thin Lizzy like , it is a joy.

Extreme and Accept both follow and I have to say I was a bit….well bored to be honest, but what follows are decisions that I have been messing with my head for a few weeks, ever since the set times for Hellfest were announced. I shall call this ….The Saturday Night Dillema! Here goes, now when you are putting together a festival bill as good as you get at Hellfest, you are not going to be able to see everything. My choices were to see the whole sets from two of the following artists. Metallica/The Interrupters/Bruce Dickenson and Mr Bungle. Right Ok, I know it’s not quite a life or death decision but you know. And the two bands I chose were????

To begin with…. Mr Bungle! Right here is the reason for that choice. Just look who is playing alongside Mike Patton in Mr Bungle these days. Scott Ian from Anthrax, Dave Lombardo the ex Slayer drummer and let’s not forget Trevor Dunn who is one of the most wonderful, experimental bass players on the planet, joined up with original Mr Bungle member Trey Spruance and the legend that is Mike Patton who founded the band in his pre Faith No More times. With those names in the band it is no surprise that they have certainly gone in a much heavier direction with most recent album The Raging Wrath Of The Easter Bunny and tonight we hear some of the best songs from it, Anarchy Up Your Ass and Eracist being just two. But these are two reasons why Mr Bungle make these soggy French people forget their current drowned state (the heavens opened for all their set). Firstly it was the special guests who they brought on. We were treated with cameos from Wolfgang Van Halen for a wonderful version of Lose Of Control (wee Wolfie’s Dad would have been proud!) and later, Andreas Kisser from Sepultura played along to the Sepultura classic Territory. The second thing that had me in ecstasy was a brilliant choice of covers that peppered the set, with tracks from 10cc, Slayer and even a bit of Grease!!! Well, you can’t say that Mr Bungle don’t know how to throw a curveball!! The final thing that made Mr Bungle so great is Patton himself as a frontman…he really is an absolute hero to myself a most of this wet but thoroughly happy crowd.

So my final choice had to be……The Interrupters! Hey , I didn’t miss out on Metallica completely as I got to see the second half of their set (and curiously every time The Interrupters finished a song we could hear their set too, with The Interrupers also playing along to Metallica at times which was thoroughly entertaining!). The three Bivona Brothers along with one of my absolute favourite singers Amy really are something special at Hellfest, a frenetic ball of energy with tunes that you just can’t help singing along to at the top of your voice!

The set starts with Gave You Everything and we are treated to 15 tracks from the band’s rather impressive back catalogue including from Fight The Good Fight (Title Holder, A Friend Like Me and set closer She’s Like Kerosene which all sound as great as they did since I first heard them back in 2018) which fit perfectly with newer songs such as In The Mirror or Raised By Wolves. There was even a cheeky cover of Billy Eilish’s Bad Guy and there is something amazing seeing all these meatal heads joining in on the Miss Eilish classic. Right I am soaked to the skin and I can give an ear to Metallica as I go back to get my train a very happy man!

Sunday 30^th June

So, I have made it. The Sunday and final day of four has arrived. Once again, the fact that I didn’t get to bed till gone 3am means I have to miss Cosmic Psychos, HotWax and High On Fire but I do get right up to the barrier to check out the wonderful Nova Twins and as usual they are absolutely superb! I got in to the band very early in their career when I caught them on tour with Skunk Anansie and just knew that stardom awaited.  There is just something about them, they leave it all on the stage and never stop bouncing, headbanging and running around the stage for their 40 minute set. I am amazed that they seem to have one of the biggest crowds of the whole weekend and you can so see that this step up playing on these massive stages (they have been touring with Foo Fighters) is an easy one for them to have taken and the exciting thing is that I really could see them headlining stadiums relative ease. Oh and they were absolutely charming when I got to chat to them on my plane journey home too!!!

Therapy? take The Valley Stage by storm. It us very hard to be able to talk about Therapy? in a cool, level headed type of way having worked for the band for the best part of two decades (they were the Ushers at my wedding for goodness sake!) but I did find myself at the very front and I absolutely loved it! They kick off with Turn, one of the five tracks from their Troublegum album which they will celebrate  the  30^th anniversary of throughout Europe on tour later in the year. It is followed by Teethgrinder which is when a relentless amount of crowd surfing starts which doesn’t really end. Potato Junkie (has there ever been a song that sums up being from the Emerald Isle better?) is sandwiched between newer tracks Woe and Poundland Of Hope & Glory. Finishing with a Screamager/ Knives double delight just makes me want to start counting down the days until I will see them again!

With both Frank Carter And The Rattlesnakes and Royal Blood following each other on the 2 Main Stages both bringing out the hits and going down extremely well , it makes me think about the British music scene. Therapy? have been around for 35 years, Frank Carter came to prominence with Gallows debut in 2006 while Royal Blood’s debut will be ten years old in a few months and my day was started with Nova Twins who are embarking on something truly wonderful…. British rock is in a great state!

I was very lucky to see Queens Of The Stone Age as Josh Homme only managed a couple more gigs after Hellfest due to a medical issue needing surgery and in many ways they were the band of the festival. You know what you are going to get with QOTSA, no nonsense, heads down rocking. They kick off with Regular John that blends into The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret and Little Sister. There is just this groove that they maintain throughout their fifteen song set and with the sun coming down with a cold drink in my hand I am simply…. Grooving. Older tracks like No One Knows and Song For The Dead sit perfectly with new ones like Carnavoyeur or Burn The Witch. QOTSA have been over playing in Europe the last two Summers and I have been lucky enough to catch them at two very different shows (well Halifax in West Yorkshire is a bit different to Clisson in France) but I absolutely loved both of them and it is funny that only now, nearly 30 years in to their career that I am beginning to realise what an incredible band they are.

Hellfest 2024 finishes with two bands that you could bet your last pound (ok, Euro I am in France) will be very entertaining, The Offspring and Foo Fighters. The Offspring make me laugh every time I see them with Dexter and Noodles almost like an alternative music Eric and Ernie and at some points I am thinking, oh stop messing about and play another song as they are ace but I am in the minority as they go down a storm! (Although… I am not quite so sure their crowd is quite the same number as the band are guessing but who knows, maybe it IS the World Record for the biggest crowd of ALL time! The Foo Fighters do what they do best, playing a greatest hits set that has the crowd dancing , singing along and smiling. And lets be honest that is what we want a headliner to do. Kicking off with All My Life which is one of the great concert openers we are treated to a set including The Pretender/ Monkey Wrench/Everlong/Best Of You , all of them delivered by a band that are at the top of their game and with Dave Grohl one of the great front men orchestrating a truly memorable night. Even when it is just Grohl with a guitar (which he did for Times Like These and My Hero before the whole band crashing in), you can just see what a quality songwriter this fella is and add that to his drumming (and acting, the lad was in a horror film too don’t you know!!!). This makes them the perfect band to bring this Hellfest to a close. Same time next year rockers? Oh go on then!