Picture: Live performance of the black metal band Marduk

I was rushing to add antibodies to my ELISA experiment on a late Thursday evening, trying to detect C-reactive protein and finishing the last experiment before the start of my extended weekend. I cycled back home late night, had a quick dinner, packed my luggage and went to sleep. The next morning was one of a kind, my first trip to a heavy metal music festival. As a fan of heavy metal music (aka a metalhead) from India, a country dominated by movie music (one example could be Bollywood music), finding metal music and metal festivals was extremely scarce (and still is). So, attending Graspop Metal Meeting in the June of 2016 as my first metal festival was a dream come true.

As expected, the preparations for this 4-day festival began weeks ago, buying a backpack, an air mattress, a tent, selecting which bands’ t-shirts to pack, preparing my battle vest (Image 9) with new patches, the list goes on. As the day got closer, it was becoming more and more difficult to contain my excitement that I will finally be watching my favorite bands play live – Opeth, Megadeth, Slayer, Gojira and most of all Black Sabbath, the pioneer of heavy metal music.

Although I love and listen to many different genres of music (more info here), heavy metal has a special place in my heart. It is quite challenging to explain why a simple music festival can be such an exciting event in the life of a metalhead. But I will try my best to break it down and explore what makes a metal festival so special. However, before going into the nitty-gritty of metal festivals, I must explain the readers who are unfamiliar with this genre of music, what is heavy metal music – a difficult and debatable topic in itself.

What is heavy metal music?

Yes indeed, the stakes on this question are too damn high, and as someone who is a not a historian of heavy metal music, I will leave the job of explaining ‘what is heavy metal music’ to the YouTube experts below, as they have already done a pretty good job explaining it. All I would like to say is that heavy metal music is a type of rock music and has a wide spectrum of musical characteristics, so, is much more than just loud music, deafening drums and shrieking guitars. Below here I am linking three different videos, which I found interesting to share the complexities and the vastness of heavy metal music.

Now that these videos have covered some aspects of heavy metal music, let’s dive into understanding heavy metal music festivals.

Understanding heavy metal festivals

Metal music festivals are predominantly a European phenomenon, as can be inferred from the list of such festivals and their locations. One (unconfirmed) theory from a fellow metalhead friend of mine goes as follows: European countries typically have had summer festivals of all kinds during the months of June, July and August, as the weather is on the warmer side and people want to do outdoor activities which otherwise, they could not during the colder and darker months of the year. This resulted in organization of all kinds of music festivals during European summers, and heavy metal music was no exception to that. This may explain the predominance of such festivals in Europe compared to other regions of the world which are generally warmer for most of the year. However, why this phenomenon did not take hold in other colder regions of the world than Europe – this I am not sure about – but perhaps because heavy metal originated in Europe in the 1980s. I am curious if my line of thought is in the correct direction, please enlighten me if other readers are aware of the reasoning. That’s why most of the European metal festivals are around that time of the year (June to August), although more recently, they have also started winter editions as well.

How does the structure of the festival look like?

Metal music festivals are typically multi-day events ranging from 2-3 days up to a whole week. Many different metal bands play live during the entire festival, alongside other activities such as heavy metal DJs, Ferris wheel rides (Image 1), heavy metal games, markets for records, CDs, clothes, costumes (Image 2 and Image 3), food courts, interviews with musicians, signing sessions, barbeque parties, metal karaoke parties and so on. It is like a mini-metal-town come alive. The day starts with bands playing music late in the morning around 10 am and goes on until late past mid-night, ending usually by headlining bands (which are typically more commercially successful bands). Each band plays live between 45 minutes up to 2 hours, spread on multiple stages all over the entire festival venue.

The first 2 days are the most exciting ones before the exhaustion starts to set in on day 3 and 4 followed by ‘ready to drop’ situation on the 5th day. Apart from headbanging to my favorite bands playing live, I really enjoy just strolling through the festival grounds, the heavy metal markets, browsing all the t-shirts and clothing of various bands, snacking on delicious (and often heavy metal themed) food, debating with my fellow metalheads on every possible topic.

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Why so many metal festivals and what distinguishes one from another?

Each metal festival is unique and has its own character and idiosyncrasies. While one festival may focus only on inviting black metal bands, another one would focus on old school heavy metal bands or progressive metal bands, thus attracting relevant audience. The festivals may also distinguish themselves based on other characteristics that they aim for such as focusing on underground metal music (lesser-known bands) or commercially successful bands; there are festivals for metal aficionados and for metal novices, and also festivals that provide a more relaxed atmosphere clubbed with other activities (winter activities, beaches, cruises etc). Some metal festivals may target the same audience, but just the fact that they are organized in a different country, can make a difference in the overall feel and purpose of the festival. Such comparisons are very subjective and may decide who prefers to go to which festival.

I have enjoyed many festivals including the Belgian favorite “Graspop Metal Meeting”, the incredible and famous French festival “Hellfest” and the more musically refined Dutch festival “Roadburn”. In the future, I hope to attend the holy grounds of “Wacken Open Air” in Germany, the relaxed Slovenian beach metal festival “MetalDays”, the cruise themed festival in the Caribbean “70000Tones of Metal“, the progressive metal themed festival in Spain “Be Prog my Friend” (which I hope is revived someday again) – the list goes on and on.

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Where do you sleep, shower and eat over the course of such multi-day festival?

Thousands of metalheads attend such festivals each year, a total of 220,000 for Graspop in 2023 [1], 420,000 in Hellfest [2], 110,000 in Wacken Open Air [3]. It is really like a mini-metal-town come alive. Hosting such a large gathering over multiple days needs a great deal of planning, accommodation, shower and toilet facilities, breakfast, lunch, dinner and beers (and lots of it!). The quality and the price of such facilities vary from festival to festival.

Let’s start with accommodation. Since these festivals are typically organized in remote open fields far from urban locations, camping in tents is the choice of most of the attendees. My go-to choice on festival accommodation has also been camping. This has made pitching your tent, inflating your own mattress, mingling with your camping neighbors an integral part of the whole heavy metal festival experience. The tents pitched by attendees are in extremely close proximity to each other (Image 6), and one often has to carefully navigate the terrain to avoid tripping on tent strings. However, more recently, I have been opting for a slight upgrade on my choice of accommodation setting – already pitched tents provided by the festival organizers (Image 7). This small upgrade helped me offload carrying my own tent supplies, mattress, tools etc. on my back and, also unburden the tiring process of pitching my own tent on the festival organizers (of course at an additional cost). This way, I can save more of my energy to enjoy the festival and the music. For those who prefer to further upgrade their accommodation, can opt for festival huts (more comfortable small housing with better beds and electricity) and even possibility to stay at the nearest hotel along with a bus service to and from the festival grounds.

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As you may have guessed, the shower and the toilet facilities are almost always a temporary setup, owing to the rural setting of the festival grounds. All the festivals I have been to offered warm water for shower along with long queues for both shower and toilets in the morning. A piece of advice from me for a festival novice would be to shower after the day is over (usually post-midnight), as the queues are negligible. On the nature of the cleanliness of the toilets, that is highly dependent on the festival that one is attending. Even in my limited festival experience, I have seen both, the best and the worst.

As the first bands go live late in the morning, and the festival grounds are closed until then, breakfast is either possible within the camping area or outside by third parties. Another piece of advice, the breakfast is almost always nicer outside the camping area, where third party vendors put up their stalls. However, during the day, when you are in the festival grounds listening to bands, the distinction between lunch, snack and dinner can be lost, and (at least I) go by the motto – eat when hungry. Staying hydrated (with water and not beer) is critical to avoid feeling unwell, as you will be in open areas, walking, running, headbanging to your favorite bands.

What are heavy metal music fans (metalheads) and bands like?

Heavy metal listeners come from all over the world, with diverse backgrounds, identities, race, religion, politics (video 4), yet, we are all still united in one aspect: we all love heavy metal music. Why we love heavy metal could still be different, for one it could be a simple childhood nostalgia, and for another it could be something heavier that it provides a meaning to their existence (check out video 3 for more on this). This diversity is also reflected in the heavy metal bands themselves, in terms of their musical themes, lyrics and artwork. You can find bands who sing and write for political activism (e.g., Rise Against, Rage Against The Machine and Anti-Flag) [4], to promote vegan/vegetarian way of life in their speeches and songs (e.g., Alissa White-Gluz (from Arch Enemy) and the band Napalm Death) [5], to sing about atheism or religion [6, 7], talk about death (e.g., Bleak by Opeth, So Far Away by Avenged Sevenfold), fiction and stories (album Blackwater Park and Ghost Reveries by Opeth), non-fiction but strange (Eaten by Bloodbath), history, mythology, war (Iron maiden) or just sing about beer [8].

This diversity in heavy metal music and of festival attendees becomes evident at every heavy metal festival. Metalheads will debate, argue and defend their music, their favorite song, political views, talk about their stories, about a new underground band that not many know of, they will headbang together to live music – and in this way we all come together. Fans will volunteer for festivals, help each other out, cheer together for each others’ favorite bands, shop together for anything black (t-shirts, hoodies, jeans, battle vest, bandana, etc.) – there is an enormous sense of a large family within the metal community. Heavy metal music is not a mainstream music, and so metalheads can sometimes feel isolated from what is a more popular form of music out there, but when we are at a metal festival, we are all there for just one purpose – heavy metal!

So why do metalheads go crazy for heavy metal festivals – the music and the community

Attending a heavy metal festival is sort of a yearly pilgrimage for metalheads; it is the time of the year when they get together as a community, don on their black t-shits and battle vests, listen to their favorite musicians that they strongly associate with, talk about their new favorite album, or a recent change in taste of their music or musician of choice. Both the music and the community are what make heavy metal festivals an eagerly awaited attraction for metalheads.

As Malcolm Dome rightly puts it during his interview in the documentary Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey, “It’s a substrata of society as it were, because what attracts heavy metal fans is a tribal attitude, it’s “let’s go to a festival – let’s enjoy ourselves”, and the fact that the outside world doesn’t actually understand is fantastic “. [9]

I first got a taste of heavy metal music at the age of 14, and since then my love of heavy metal has only increased. However, it was only at the age of 25 – after moving to Belgium to pursue a Ph.D. – that I attended my first metal concert (Opeth) and also my first metal festival (image 8), because metal concerts and festivals in India are extremely rare. As you can see in the image below, the conditions under which the festival happened were far from pleasant, but the built-up desire from the age of 14 until the age of 25, to listen to metal music live, played by my favorite bands, in the company of thousands of metalheads, was too strong for such “minor” unpleasant rains and waterlogged mud fields.

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Some more pictures (click to enlarge)

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