Product Code Database
Hellfest (), also known as Hellfest Summer Open Air, is a rock festival focusing on heavy metal music, held annually in June in Clisson, France. Its high attendance makes it the French music festival with the largest turnover. It is also one of the biggest metal festivals in Europe and the biggest to exist in France.
It originated in another music festival, the Fury Fest, held from 2002 to 2005, in different areas of Pays de la Loire. Hellfest took over in 2006 and over the years has seen a continuous rise in visitors, from 22,000 in the first edition, to 55,000 tickets sold per day in 2017. In 2022, the seven-day festival featured 350 bands and was attended by 60,000 people per day.
Its programming is primarily focused on hard rock and metal on the two main stages, while each of the four other festival's stages are dedicated to more extreme metal, making the presence of a wide variety of groups possible.
It is unrelated to the Hardcore punk festival Hellfest, which ran in Syracuse, New York, in the United States from 1997 to 2005 or the Drakkar Productions black metal festival named "Drakkar Hellfest - Darkness and Hate", which took place in 2000 and 2001 in southern France and saw a third edition in 2002 in the Netherlands.
In June 2009, conservative groups expressed concern about the festival's name and asked its sponsors to drop their support. Coca-Cola announced a few days later that they would no longer support the festival.
In March 2010, two days before local elections, Prime Minister François Fillon and the leader of the conservative MPF Philippe de Villiers came to support Christophe Béchu, candidate for the regional elections of the Pays de la Loire for the then main French right-wing party UMP. In front of 1,500 people, Mr De Villiers reiterated his support for the candidate and attacked the metal music festival: "Our values are not like those of the Regional Council (PS); to be funding a satanic festival!". The same month, former minister and leader of the conservative Parti chrétien-démocrate Christine Boutin wrote to major brewery Kronenbourg asking them to stop supporting the festival.
On 30 March, answering a question from PS Member of Parliament Patrick Roy during a "questions to the government" session, then minister of culture Frédéric Mitterrand declared to the Assemblée Nationale that detractors of the festival should calm down.
On 9 June 2010, the AFC (italic=no) sued the Hellfest, asking them not to allow people under 18 years old to attend the festival and to give them the titles of the songs to be played during the 2010 edition. On 14 June, the judge refused their demand.
During the 2011 edition of the festival homage was paid to Patrick Roy, who had died two months prior.
The festival continued the following years. It attracted 7,000 people to attend concerts of Sick of It All and Youth of Today (in) in 2003. The format changed to two days. Because no room was available in Clisson, the Hall of Trocardière (Rezé) hosted the second edition. The organization of the festival also changed: the "MAN.IN.FEST" association was created to take charge of the organization. In 2003, the festival had reached €30,000 in profit, allowing Benjamin Barbaud, one of the founders, to become an employee of the structure. In 2004, the festival moved to Le Mans and took place in the halls of the 24 Hours circuit where it attracted 21,000 spectators for bands such as Slipknot and Soulfly.
After a deficit in 2004, the 2005 festival inherited liabilities so that the organizing team decided to give the rights of the festival to other promoters in order to focus on organization. This time 30,000 admissions were recorded at Le Mans over three days, as fans came to see acts such as Slayer, Motörhead and Anthrax, across three stages. But financial problems worsened, particularly with the disappearance of the promoters with €600,000 in receipts. These losses marked the end of the festival, at least temporarily.
On 19 February 2021, it was announced that Hellfest had once again been cancelled, due to "uncertainties about the health situation and the latest government regulations", and would be rescheduled to 2022.
|
|
