The Sacred Metal Festival

I've been to a number of music festivals over the years. Big Day Out in Milton Keynes 1999, Leeds 2000, 2001, 2002 and Download 2004. But in the UK we don't seem to know what a metal festival is!

For the past few years, I've not been festing it up, because there just hasn't been any I've wanted to go to! Well, not in the UK. There are plenty of decent festivals in Europe and North America, and I eye up Wacken with envious green eyes as I see many a band I would just kill to see.

I remember after the Big Day Out they were discussing bringing an Ozzfest like festival to the UK. I was planning on going, but they cancelled it. I'd been waiting a couple of years before Download was first announced! Though I didn't make the first Download, I did get along to the second one. I thought "at last! We have a metal festival in the UK!"

To my horror, this festival has turned slowly more and more soft and dare I say "emo"! Maybe my taste has got a lot heavier in that time, but I still like my softer metal acts like Deftones, Disturbed, Lacuna Coil etc. But when you see the headliners are wimpo bands like Linkin Park (who admitted that they'd only jumped on the "nu-metal" bandwagon cause they saw how big it was getting), My Chemical Romance and a whole array of "past it" acts such as Metallica, Iron Maiden etc as well as one of Corey Taylor's bands, you wonder where proper metal fans will get their festival fix without leaving the UK!!!

I've just been on Kerrang! (or as I more fondly call it, Kerrap!)'s website to see the first acts announced for Download 2008. I just couldn't believe just how bad it is!

The Offspring









Lostprophets








HIM (or should that be Ville Valo and some backing band or another?)












Judas Priest












Oh fantastic! I mean I do own a couple of albums by The Offspring (who I have seen in the past) and one by Lostprophets (their first one), but they've had their day! Judas Priest will make a few people think "ah it's not all bad", but I personally can't stand 80s metal. It oozes cheese! And as for HIM, the less said the better!!!

But then again, I had a feeling it would be yet another rubbish line up. I'm getting used to seeing it. I'm just working out who to put bets on. Slipknot, since they have a new album due this year, or Stone Sour? I think it'll probably be Slipknot this year, am I right Corey?

I lost respect for Slipknot a long time ago, but that is a different story that I may come back to at a later date.

So as my music tastes develope into a somewhat darker and heavier place, away from the hair over one eye pretty boys producing radio friendly, over produced, mind numbing crap for the masses that frequents Kerrang! TV and Scuzz, I find myself looking for something a bit more evil, twisted and altogether more brutal!

BLOODSTOCK!!!

Hell yeah! Finally a festival that has at least a couple of my favourite bands playing. Now, there are a lot of bands on their line up so far that I'm not too keen on, a few I'd never even heard of before, but the line up isn't full yet, plenty of room for more of my favourite acts to sign up!

So far I'm excited about Opeth (well they are my all time favourite band, don't dare say a bad word about them to me), Soilwork and Swallow The Sun. There's a couple of others who look interesting that I will have to check out!

This is a festival which appears to cater to those of us looking for a metal with an edge! Bringing in bands who don't appear in the popular metal magazines, but have loyal fan basis. They even encourage you to suggest bands and vote for bands videos (I'm still hoping they take into consideration my votes and suggestions of Blinded Colony and Smokescreen for Bloodstock 2008).

It's still not the "ideal" festival, it doesn't bring in the middle range bands, the ones who could play both Bloodstock and Download, which would probably bring more people, but I think it's pretty close. And it's a hell of a lot cheaper than Download! Cheaper + Better Bands = Hell Yes I'm Going!