Festival season is all but underway. Before you think this is going to turn into one of those snivelling moans about how the line-ups are shit while essentially saying "you haven't booked all my favourite bands. Fail. Me. Me me me! I! My taste is good, everyone else isn't metal" let me say this- Download, Sonisphere and Bloodstock (as much of the latter as has been announced, at least) all have brilliant bills. The headliners through some of the smaller main stage acts right through the second stage headliners to the most obscure tents and trucks, there are some great bands playing. Wherever you go this summer, I'm sure you're going to have a great time, get off your face and have crap tent sex with someone who, under normal circumstances, you wouldn't give a second look. But one thing I have noticed over the years has been thrown into sharp focus by my choice of destination this year.
Until last year, we essentially had two choices for the last decade- Download or Bloodstock. Then last year Stuart Galbraith gave us Sonisphere, and I had a big sex-wee at the prospect of Mastodon, Lamb Of God, Cancer Bats, Machine Head and Metallica all playing on the same day. It was great, I had a fantastic time, got far too hot, drank overpriced beer and generally broke myself for the next week. This year's bookings once again led me into choosing Sonisphere as my festival- if I had the money, I'd go to all three, but as I don't, Knebworth is the place. While all three bills have had their fair share of fucktarded moaners- the smeg-for-brains who cited Cannibal Corpse as evidence that Bloodstock has sold-out, on the basis that the Corpse are a "mainstream" death metal band, was particularly moronic- there does actually appear to be something of a pattern to the three festival bills that I don't think has been touched upon yet. Essentially- Download is the American festival, Bloodstock the European festival, and Sonisphere the British one. If you will bear with me, I'll explain.
Take a second to look at the Download bill. Go on, do it now. Have you seen it? Good. Welcome back. There is an almost overwhelming American presence on the bill. Sure, there are a few other points of origin for the bands, AC/DC, Motorhead and Billy Idol perhaps being the most obvious. But the length of the list of US acts is far longer- including an all-American mainstage on Saturday- stretching right down past Job For A Cowboy headlining the Friday of the third stage. Even those acts not from the other side of the Herring Pond either have considerable success there- such as Bullet For My Valentine, who America has taken to like a teenage boy to an internet connection without parental restrictions- or at the very least you would imagine the US market would hold some potential for. There are a few exceptions, but not until you get down to the level of Die Apokalyptischen Reiter (and yes, of course I had to check the correct spelling of their name). Download is a festival full of either American bands, bands who do well or you suspect may do well in the States and bands either so small or so big it doesn't matter. This is not a criticism- I think the Download bill is great and has a broad range of bands, and it feels like a bill ideal for getting pissed and having a laugh in the sun- it is merely an observation on the character of the festival.
This is hardly a new pattern though. Download may have had some of the biggest names in rock grace Donington Park since the current incarnation came into being seven years ago, but the bill has never simply been a question of "who's big?" (although obviously, as a commercial venture that comes into it). If you want demonstration of big bands that do not fit the Download profile, the obvious example is Emperor. When Ihsahn and Samoth came together for one last time, black metal's finest band headlined Wacken. They did not play Download. In fact, I believe I am right in stating that only three black metal bands have ever played Download- Cradle Of Filth, Dimmu Borgir and Satyricon. While some fairly brutal (and not overly popular) death metal bands populate the fringes of the festival, less heavy (and commercially more successful) black metal bands and the kind of ridiculous widdly power metal I love (some of which would possibly be more of a commercial draw as well) does not feature.
Nor should it. They would not fit. While I'd love to see Immortal back in the UK, I wouldn't want it at Donington. Nor would I particularly be interested in Stratovarius at the famous old site, as much as I'd need someone to peel me off the ceiling if they were playing somewhere else. Download has been running long enough to develop it's own style, it's own ambience, and that should not be messed with without very good reason. If the occasional exception is made- Manowar being the most obvious candidate- that is great, but changing the biggest date on the rock calendar should not even be considered. Not only that, it allows bands such as Slipknot- who would be unlikely to headline a festival elsewhere- to bask in the limelight we want them to have. Download is the UK's American rock festival, and that is how it should stay.
Bloodstock, conversely, is the European festival. It is dominated by bands from the continent (Gorgoroth, Sonata Arctica etc) or those that do their best business there, bands that are so big it doesn't matter (Heaven & Hell would have been the obvious example) and young British bands who would either work on both sides of the Atlantic or more this side than the other. While there are American bands- such as Cannibal Corpse and Fear Factory- they are all bands who fit into those styles popular on the continent (death metal, power metal and over-the-top hard rock). Despite -core-suffixed bands still being amongst the more commercially powerful, they are conspicuous by there absence at Catton Hall. You could transfer the Bloodstock bill (albeit with a much larger undercard) to Wacken, Hellfest or Metalcamp in Ljubljana (I didn't actually have to check that spelling, surprisingly) without it looking out of place.
As great as they are- and as much as they are bands I personally like a great deal- Lamb Of God and Trivium would make me uncomfortable at Bloodstock. They would be as out of place as Abbath at a Hadouken show. Far more old-school American bands- from classic bands like Testament to Municipal Waste, both of whom have played before- or more stylistically Eurocentric American bands (such as Iced Earth or Kamelot) would of course be more than welcome. It is not directly about nationality, more about what fits stylistically. If there was a German version of Machine Head, for example, you feel they would be far more appropriate a booking for Download than Bloodstock. That is the nature of the festival, and as a lover of the sometimes-derided Euro metal and of trve kvlt Norwegian black metal (and a lot of the far less kvlt stuff and non-Norwegian outfits too) I like it that way and want to keep it, in the hope that I will someday have the cash to get to three festivals a year.
The thing that strikes me about both bills is that both appear to be looking to other shores with misty eyes. Download seems to look to the West and wishes it had grown up regularly attending CBGB's and Madison Square Gardens rather than the Astoria and Wembley, while Bloodstock looks firmly towards a little village in Schleswig-Holstein (I knew that spelling too, but only because it comes up in a Flashman novel). In defence of both of them, that was because British rock music was at a real low ebb when they began, and having been forced to focus on European and American talent have now ended up with that as their nature. In reality however, in rock terms, Britain is neither America nor Europe. We do like our American hard rock and our metal influenced by Southern groove and East Coast hardcore. We also like Swedish death/doom, Finnish folk metal and Italian goth stuff. We also like uniquely British bands, be they the techy thrash and death bands coming out of the south of England, the UK hardcore scene and- as much as some may deny this- our alt rock and dance music- specifically in the area of drum and bass.
Look at the Sonisphere bill. It is undoubtably the most diverse of the three bills. Any argument would be as stupid and inaccurate as suggesting to Phil Anselmo's face that he is a weedy midget with a strange sexual prediliction for household furniature. The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal sits alongside alternative rock, reggae metal sits with deathcore, thrash neighbours heavy drum and bass and New York harcore is joined by power metal, just to begin with. Bands that would fit onto the bills of Download, Bloodstock, Reading/Leeds or even more mainstream festivals all have high billing at Knebworth. While Download has had more Scandinavian-accented acts in the past, they have never really been as diverse as the simultaneous presence of Katatonia and Sabaton. This more accurately reflects the diverse tastes of the British rock public than either of the other two our world really pays attention to.
Above and beyond Britain's rather unusual position of appreciating both American and European styles far more than America appreciates European metal or vice versa, there are some very British bands on the bill- and I don't even need to talk about Iron Maiden to demonstrate this.
Skindred could not really have come from anywhere else, and this is historical. Britain has had a far stronger influence from the Caribbean than anywhere outside those countries within that description themselves. The large immigration from former British colonies in the West Indies in the 1950s and '60s brought music with it, some of which is crucial to Skindred's sound. That kind of population movement did not happen to the same extent elsewhere, and only in places like South Wales could a band that sound like them arise.
In a different manner, Pendulum- although Australian- were always going to find most success in the UK, their drum 'n' bass basis being at its most popular in the UK. Skunk Anansie and Placebo are quintessentially British bands- that brand of indie-tinted alt rock does massively less well outside of the UK than it does here. Add in the triumphal Bohemia-headlining performance from Gallows- a band who sound like they could not possibly come from anywhere else, and are an act we can be seriously fucking proud of- and you begin to get a pattern. Some phenomenal bands from the US (Fear Factory and a band I've been trying to resist mentioning, but fuck it- SLAYER!!!), Europe (Rammstein, Europe) and some bands that are very British (not only the above, but Sylosis and Black Spiders amongst others) and you have the British festival that best represents the British rock audience.
This may of course be coincidental- the bookers may have simply put together the best bill they could, and this is how it turned out. It would seem sensible, however, for each event to keep an eye on its identity in terms of their bookings. Not only does this make it less likely that they will suddenly have a slump because they have misjudged their audience, but it also means there are a few bands who are always going to be most suited to one of the three more than the other two. For example, from bands not playing anywhere this summer, Shadows Fall would be best suited to Download, Mayhem to Bloodstock and CapDown to Sonisphere. That is not to say there cannot be an overlap- there must be an overlap, in fact- simply that it gives the ticket-buying punter a much better idea of what they are getting from the outset.
In truth, we actually already have a British metal festival, one representative of Britain's broad metal tastes, and that is Hammerfest. It is probably the only place where DevilDriver and Five Finger Death Punch can comfortably play alongside Akercocke and Dark Funeral, and is genuinely reflective of the metal-buying public's taste for a far less provincial menu than some other countries.
The long and the short of it all is that we have a fantastic selection of festivals, and if one is not to your taste you have others to choose from. So let's all have a few beers and a giggle and watch some bands. I plan to enjoy myself whatever festivals I manage to attend this summer. Make sure you go with the same attitude. Trust me, you'll enjoy it more.
Now I'm off to listen to Keep Of Kalessin's magnificent new album Reptilian and try and persuade Kili and LiveNation to book them for somewhere next summer so I can stand in a field and sing The Dragontower with thousands of other people. I'll try and get them to book Immortal while I'm at it. Any requests?
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