I've been going to Hellfest for three years. I owe a lot of my current position in life because I get to work for the festival. My view on it is a little different than most, and you will be able to find hundreds of articles about the festival, but I just want to take a minute to talk about why Hellfest matters in 2016.
This article came together rather slowly. Over the course of a few hung over mornings I spent in the south of France, coping with the death of my grandfather and trying to recuperate from the apparently endless touring cycle my line of work shoehorns me into. As I try and wrap this piece up it's on such morning. Britain's fucked up and left the EU. I got on a train going the wrong way. French kids still make me want to puke. Despite it all though I'm still glowing from Hellfest – that one weekend a year when I feel something that I guess you could technically call joy. That's because Hellfest is magical. It's the way forward through the dark and the reminder that even a dork like me can find themselves at a cool party once a year.
I love the sense of holiday around the festival. The pomp and circumstance upon which the lineup is announced every year is delicious. You find yourself scrolling through a list of dozens of bands released in the first announcement alone trying to find your friends. You realize that there is no end to the list of awesome groups who grace every edition. I would even argue that there is enough stuff now in a more 'normal' frame of musical reference to make the festival interesting even for non-metal fans. Not that it matters, Hellfest, despite what ballad heavy rock bands they might want to book, has always been a metalhead's paradise. It is the Disneyland of the Devil's music, the gateway to hell if there ever was one.
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The People of Hellfest Photo Gallery
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For me, Hellfest is no longer about the bands. In fact it was only ever about the bands my first year. For m, Hellfest is about the family – the reuniting of old friends once a year, every year. At what other festival in the world cold you introduce a member of Cattle Decapitation to a member of Foreigner just as one does? None. That's what makes Hellfest perfect. The sense of community extends from the crowd and into the backstage.
I owe a lot to Hellfest. This is the festival that picked me up when I was but a teenage stripling and let me interview people like Max Cavalera, Glenn Tipton and Ace Frehley. This isn't exactly 'just' a festival for me. I'm still fairly convinced that if I ever do get married, it will be with a girl I meet at Hellfest. There are times when you intertwine your fate around something, and other times when something intertwines its fate around you. With Hellfest it almost feels as if we have been brought together by the hands of God, slaves to the music, one and the same. This is simply how it has to work.
When I say that Hellfest is all about the music, I mean that in the broadest possible sense. It's about not just the actual performances, but the community, the treatment of artists (You can get free massages for fucks sake!) and the understanding that we are all in this together.
Even as the festival scene blows up over here in the US we have to wonder how much of it is legitimate and how much is profiteering. I'm not trying to attack any festivals – it's just that they don't have quite the same sense of building for the future that Hellfest does. As the fest branches out to book more and more non-metal bands (The Offspring anyone?) it makes me realize that this is not just a festival for metalheads. It's a festival for people.
The reason we love Hellfest is that it reflects the bacchanalian desires within ourselves and that resonates with the whole of humanity. As Lemmy put it in 2015, looking out on the endless crowds at his final Hellfest appearance, “There sure are a lot of you!”
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