Hellfest is an annual music festival in the French town Clisson. It is held in the outdoor sports complex Val de Moine, about 400 km southwest of Paris. The festival hosts a variety of heavy metal, hard rock, hardcore and punk acts.
Our crew and editors could not resist to attend this extreme festival once again, so now we’d like to share our experience of this 12th edition of Hellfest with you!
| General | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 |
Day 3
Wow! It’s still hot in Hell! And we’re on to day 3!
Welicoruss
Bringing Black metal stuffed between elements of symphonic and folk metal is not a new thing to bring forth and there are lots of bands that have played the genre in the past. Welicoruss is is a band that has improved on a lot of the shortcomings of other band and are really knocking on the door to become the next band that keeps on bringing it to the stage. We can highly recommend the album “Az Esm” and let you explore this band. Also a joy to see a band that played in our own venue Asgaard doing well on a big stage like the Temple stage on Hellfest.
Skindred
Time to go over to the mainstage area again, this time for none other than Skindred. We always look forward to their shows, because it’s guaranteed to be one big party with very nice music. It’s not a typical sound and a bit hard to put a genre on it (a mixture of heavy metal with reggae?), but what we can say is that if you haven’t seen them before, you definitely should! Their singer, Benji Webbe always knows how to get the crowd dancing, jumping, take of their shirts to wave them around like a helicopter to the fantastic song “Warning”. Even people that didn’t seem to know any of the songs and saw the band for the first time, quickly caught on!
Ufomammut
This band from Italy blew us away before so we had quite high expectations. Before the show we already recognized the familiar green amplifiers they play with. “Green” is, besides the color of the amps, a sub-brand by Matamp and is a wink to the English amplifier company “Orange”. The drum is red in color, and when the show started, mostly red lights were used, which created an interesting play of colors on stage. The visual show was the same as last time, and that’s a few years ago already. But they’re great, they start with these cave-like stalactite images, but mirrored and with a colorful overlay. Psychedelic!
The music consist of heavy riffs, but mixes up with psychedelic noise and droney parts, created by the bass player. The vocals are drowned in some sort of bubble-like effect, which creates some kind of outer-world experience, supported by heavy riffs. The sound was OK, with a special mention to those vintage amps which sound really cool. The show was nice too and they played a nice and tight set. But, like Bongripper, this is also a band we’d rather see later on the day. We think they will leave a better impression in the dark.
Sanctuary
Time for another oldschool metal band! Sanctuary, dating back from 1985, knows how to please the old school fans just as much as fans of the more recent groovy/progressive sound! You could have gone to this concert as a big fan, but just as much only to go take a break from the heavy day of partying, while still enjoying a fantastic set by this band that is perhaps still a bit underrated. They might not be the biggest discovery you’d have seen at Hellfest, but they are sure worth to check out if there’s nothing else playing that you are dying to see.
Pentagram
Pentagram did the soundcheck themselves and they play this 70’s doomy (hard)rock, like Black Sabbath but heavier and in a lower tuning. Their singer, Bobby Liebling, is not on this tour, he’s in rehab apparently, so the vocal duties were done by the guitarist, Victor Griffin. During soundcheck the roadie apparently didn’t understand that the monitor mixer is on the side of the stage and he was gesticulating wildly towards the FOH sound guy for minutes, of course to no avail. When the show started we were quite surprised by Victor, he was singing good and he’s a great guitar player. It’s not easy to handle both at the same time and he did it quite well! Still the show is not the same without Bobby Liebling and we missed his crazy stage appearance and moves.
The sound was alright, not perfect, but we noticed that they didn’t bring their own soundguy so for someone who probably mixed them for the first time, he did a good job. One funny moment was when the drummer tried to throw his drumstick in the audience but instead hit the giant projector above the stage. Their set wasn’t bad, but because of Bobby missing, the show got a bit boring. They tried to fill in the gaps between the songs with samples, but this just didn’t work in our opinion. In the end, we didn’t really like this show. It just missed something… And to make things worse, they trashed the drum kit at the end of the set and we don’t really like seeing instruments being mistreated! So, better luck next time, hopefully with a clean Bobby Liebling! P.S.: You might want to check out the 2012 documentary about Bobby, it’s called “Last Days Here“.
Equilibrium
The epic metal vibe that Equilibrium brings to stage has left a mark over the whole of Europe. Their efforts the past years playing every major festival have resulted in a Temple stage that is packed with people. Disappointing was the fact that the music that came out of the boxes was not great, the balance was rather off and we noticed that the band struggled with it the first couple of songs. Being the pro’s they are Equilibrium fought on and the crowd kept on being enthusiastic and tried to sing as loud as they could. The moshpit looked brutal and the guys from the security couldn’t rest for 1 second.
Blue Öyster Cult
One of the most anticipated bands in the Valley this year, was Blue Öyster Cult. The tent was filled up way before the show started and it was not that easy to work my way up front when I arrived about 15 minutes before showtime. As intro, the the theme from Game of Thrones was played. That was kind of strange since there’s no link between the band and the series as far as we know. This band started in 1967 and the crowd was a mixture of old and young people. One older person next to me even took binoculars with him to see the show.
The setlist consisted of a nice selection from 6 different albums. Most of the songs rely heavily on musical harmonies and solos. Because of that, they have 4 vocalists and 3 guitar players on stage. The show was fun to watch, with some cool 80’s rock clichés like playing solo’s lined up next to each other. You could see that the band was in their element and had a really good time on stage. “Next song is dedicated to Hellfest” they announced and “Burnin’ for you” started. The crowd was really enthusiastic when the singalong hit “Godzilla” started and totally reached it’s climax when “Don’t Fear The Reaper” began. Half the tent was clapping throughout the whole song! The sound was good, but they could’ve used a little more cowbell! They left the stage way too early, but returned quickly to play 2 encore songs. They ended with “Cities On Flame” with an epic long ending as a grand finale. This was a great show with a high entertainment-from-the-80’s level (after all they were already playing back then!) with a nice set and an amazing response from the crowd! Next time on a bigger stage?
Prophets Of Rage
The rage is back and a lot of people were excited to see them live. We too but took a bit of time off to stand in the midst of crowd and chilled out at the bar and watch these legends play the anthems we all know by heart.
It is a joy to see everybody go wild scream their lungs out. Put your fists in the air!
Five Finger Death Punch
With all the rumors and troubles the band has got in to lately we got a chance to see a full show with singer Tommy Vext and honestly we could not be bothered with it. It was a killer show, the fans were sadly being upset and some people left before the ending of the show or turned their backs.
Hawkwind
They are considered as the pioneers of space-rock: long jams with simple but energetic riffs, all spaced up with noise and synthesizers. One of their first bassplayers was Lemmy Killmister and he wrote the song “Motorhead” for them. Unfortunately they didn’t play it, too bad, it would’ve been a nice tribute to Lemmy. We couldn’t help but wonder if they visited the large Lemmy statue on the festival site? Anyways, this band started out in 1969 and today Dave Brock is the only remaining original member. This spaced out band continued to make albums throughout the years and now they’re touring in support of their 30th studio release. The visuals they use, look a bit outdated, like watching a movie from the 90’s, but you get used to it after a while and it’s actually quite charming. The set included some older hits like “Born To Go” and “You’d Better Believe it”, nicely accompanied by some newer songs. The space-rock took us away to another planet and when they stopped, it felt like they only just began. The set was way too short and the crowd wanted more, but again, Hellfest policy is not to go overtime, even though the crowd kept asking for more for a minute of 5. Too bad! But a pretty good show nevertheless!
Slayer
As usual, Slayer played very tight and gave a show that was superb on a technical level, but we kind of missed some enthusiasm from them. Even though they played everything right and played a flawless set, we did seem to miss something. However, putting “Raining Blood” and “Angel of Death” at the end of the set is bound to make fans happy and throw out their last bit of energy, so that’s a plus for sure.
We went back to the campsite, tired but happy with a great festival. At the same time we weren’t that happy, because we already had to leave to get to work in time on monday… But hey, we – once again – had an amazing time in Hell!
