Finland is a huge country on the level of rock and metal music and has quite an amount of interesting festivals that showcase this. This year another one has joined the list of events in the country of a thousand lakes: The (Big Stone) Rock Fest. On Friday 9th and Saturday 10th of June the first edition of this festival will take place in Vantaa and it’ll be one for the books looking at the variety of bands and genres that’ll be represented there.
Or like the organization themselves put it:
RockFest offers uncompromising rock music for its true fans, as many other festivals have moved from rock to pop. There is a place and need for a true ROCK festival. With two stages and two dozen artists, RockFest guarantees a full-blooded rock atmosphere with many activities and services. There is no age limit for the festival, but there are plenty of separate drinking and VIP areas for its adult guests.
We’ve tried to gather up as much information as possible about it here in this preview article…
Line-up
We’re highly impressed with the names they managed to gather up in the line-up of the festival, of which a few really big ones:
Click on the picture for the schedule
The biggest eye catchers are of course the ever entertaining German machine of Rammstein and the American Evanescence as the headliners of The Rock Fest. We can promise you that they won’t disappoint! Besides them there’s a lot of time in the spotlight reserved for Finnish bands, big and small, to shine on stage. Household names in the Finnish rock & metal scene like Brother Firetribe, Diablo, Stam1na, Turmion Kätilöt and more are all there to light up the stage! There are also some foreigners represented with Guano Apes, Dead By April, Metsatöll, Pain and Royal Republic of which we can ensure you that it’ll be quite a party. And if you haven’t partied enough yet by the end of the headliners, the organization managed to get Infected Mushroom and Finnish DJ legend Proteus (live feat. Erilaz) to be there to get an afterparty going for all of you…
One thing that really caught our attention when looking at the time schedule (click on the picture above to see for yourself), is that you won’t have to miss out on any of the bands if you don’t want to. There is never a band that’ll play during another artist performing, you can basically switch from the Main stage to the Perkele stage and back to see every single band! The gates open on Friday at 16:00 and on Saturday at 14:00.
Location
Rockfest is organized in the new festival area Vehkala in Vantaa. Vehkala is located between Vantaankoski and Kivistö train stations and the festival address is Härkähaantie 13, 01730 Vantaa. The location is easily reachable by train from Helsinki Vantaa airport or Helsinki itself. The organization has also provided us with a shuttle buss leaving from Kiasma in Helsinki and bringing you back there after the last shows (for more information go here). They advice you to not come by car to the festival since there are no parking spaces available in the surroundings. You should definitely plan to arrive early to be on the safe side. There will be one main gate with a bunch of lines for people who bought the basic ticket and VIP customers have their own entry.
You can find accommodation at hotels near the airport or in Helsinki itself, since the festival doesn’t provide this themselves. Bringing your own drinks (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) is not allowed, though you can bring an empty plastic bottle to get water from the free water taps. Alcohol will of course only be available for 18+ from the dedicated K-18 bar areas. There will also be a wide arrange of food to choose from to replenish your energy for more partying.
Tickets
At the moment tickets should still be available, but the organization has made it clear that there aren’t many of them left!
- A 2-day ticket starting from €129
- A 1-day ticket starting from €99
Get your tickets here.
We’re really looking forward to some awesome shows on this cool new event and hope to see you there…
