Festival | Hellfest 2024 - Day 4 @ Clisson - 30 June 2024

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There's something very special about festivals, and Hellfest is no exception: time dilation. You're there from 10am to 2am, taking breaks that sometimes last several hours, wandering around, getting lost in the car park for four hours, you queue for three hours to buy an official mug, you wait forty minutes to be able to photograph a particular group. .. And suddenly, everything speeds up. A concert starts, you forget all about tiredness, time, space, smells, your feet wondering what they've done to you to diserve all this and then an hour passes in the blink of an eye. So here we are, already on the fourth and final day of this marathon of noise and crowds, this thing we're always talking about, that we've been waiting for and preparing for such a long time, and that's going to take us several more days to debrief, process the photos and so on. Once again, it was long, sometimes epic, but it was also very quick. Here are a few of the faces we met along the way, as well as a final handful of elements of the décor that make the place so spectacular...

To launch this final day, we had the pleasure of chilling our veins with Sang Froid: a bit of cold wave in the early hours of the morning, in the middle of summer and at a rock/metal festival? Just the sort of side-step we like, with sounds that speak to us immediately. Sati's Gnossienne remixed with an extra slow, funereal synth intro and the catchy Proudly Ruining Yourself right on cue: it's off to a good start. The bats gathered under the Temple savour the cold, nocturnal atmosphere, the icy drum machine, the reverb, the futuristic synths, the dark glasses, TC's vocals in a very different register from Regarde les Hommes Tomber (without the black stuff on his face and the hood but with clear vocals, he's immediately a lot more naked - fortunately he's still got a microphone stand to play with!) and that sense of efficiency between Depeche Mode and the Sisters of Mercy. Sang Froid manage with class to combine respectful homage to the codes of a genre they appropriate to play with its essence and modernise it.

In a very different vein to Spotlights the day before, Heriot suffer from the same problem for a while: it's hard to get caught up in the spotlight on such a big stage. However, their doom-flavoured post-metalcore (for want of a better label, let's stick with a vague catch-all) ends up having an effect, thanks to the energy the band puts into it, and in particular the snarl of singer and guitarist Debbie Gough - it's heavy, aggressive and nasty. After ten years in the making, Heriot are finally getting ready to release their first album, so there's no need to wait until September to delve back into their EPs and discover their atypical, tumultuous universe, which is not without a certain poetry.

It's twelve past noon, and at twelve past noon we're always hungry. Let's head for the most unhealthy gluttony possible: poetry, for its part, is going to take a hell of a beating. The hobo clowns of Pensées Nocturnes have escaped from their asylum to make Temple Stage their unhealthy pub. Their crazy, ramshackle mix of black metal, circus music, bal musette and all the dissonant noises you can make with brass, accordion and almost human voices takes on a whole new power live. There's the visuals, of course, but there are also irresistible rhythms and a massive sound: it's violent and, strangely enough, catchier than in the studio. This weird, twisted, deviant monster always manages to pull off this crazy feat: being enjoyable while having that sour taste that makes you wince. You come out of it as if you'd had a bender with a cotton candy supplement: dazed, with a hangover you couldn't believe, but happy to have experienced such a bizarre thing.

DOOL-DOOL. DOOL-DOOL. DOOL-DOOL. We're good at imitatating the sound of a beating heart, aren't we? For us, DOOL is one of the must-sees of this 2024 edition, and right from the sound check you can feel the Valley air crackling. It's hard to capture the band's energy live, but Raven Van Dorst's charismatic vocals, which are both welcoming and intimidating, and J.B. Van Der Wal's bass rage, soaked as usual and sweating every note, give their dark, heavy rock a visceral power that's overwhelming. The three guitars combine and respond to each other as the tracks from their recent The Shape of Fluidity (review) take centre stage. Perhaps a little less immediately moving and more cerebral, more technical, they are sublimated by the interpretation, like Hermagorgon and its poignant heaviness or the poetic lull of House of a Thousand Dreams.

If their previous album Summerland was about the afterlife, we still have to mourn the loss of old tracks that we would have loved to see again, especially those from this second album whose stage existence was cut short by a pandemic. But life is also death, you don't stagnate, you move on... which doesn't stop us from shivering with pleasure at Oweynagat, the first track released by the band, and their cover of Killing Joke's Love Like Blood, a monument of melancholy and romanticism. DOOL target our emotions with the same fearsome precision. Life is also death: alas, the concert comes to an end and we'll have to move on now...

... And despite a break, it's back in front of the Valley that we have a rendezvous with, well... Er, are we going for the lazy pun or are we avoiding repetition? Anyway. Post-punk band Rendez-Vous are shaking up the Valley. The audience responds, the musicians go all out, and we enjoy the occasional deviation into noise, but our minds are still clouded by DOOL and our hearts just aren't in it. Let's have a rendezvous next time. The same goes for Wiegedood, who we chose rather than Show me the Body, who were playing at the same time (a heartbreaker), and yet we love the frenetic, cold rage that emanates from their set from the moment they arrive on FN SCAR 16 right through to the finale on Carousel. It's incisive, possessed, radical, funereal. Wiegedood don't cheat, Wiegedood play with rage... but alas, here in the middle of the day, on the fourth day of the festival, it's hard to get into the swing of things, for lack of ‘surprises’. At the moment, the band sometimes play in front of projections of the incredible experimental silent film A Page of Madness, a sort of Japanese Cabinet of Doctor Caligari: although absolutely unthinkable at Hellfest, we would have dreamt of such a set.

On the other hand, we're particularly pleased to see SIERRA taking up residence in the Valley. Following her meteoric rise and her debut album A Story of Anger (review), the artist has found herself on the bill at a wide variety of events, from goth to metal to mainstream festivals. Her music is universal and speaks to everyone, thanks to the catchy rhythms and emotions she infuses into it, based on a few words: her mix of darksynth / EBSM turns Hellfest into a cyberpunk dancefloor. Catapulted in at the last minute to replace City Morgue, she easily took sole possession of the huge stage. It takes a lot more than that to impress her, and hearing electronic music in the middle of a metal festival is always a welcome interlude. We know the show was only planned a few days in advance, but we hope the next time will be at night, as it should be!

We could have gone to see Corey Taylor, but to get the most out of it we'd have had to miss part of SIERRA's set. That was out of the question. So we listened to covers of Slipknot tracks from afar and wandered around a bit while waiting to see another star of the nu-metal scene and his side-project: ††† (Crosses) played at 7.45pm. The synthpop/electro-rock project by Chino Moreno (Deftones) and Shaun Lopez (FAR) is well attended, especially as they're extremely rare (the band are just coming off a ten-year hiatus). The show begins with Invisible Hand, the synths enveloping us, Moreno's eruptions grabbing us by the throat. The singer is in fine form, bouncing around the stage... and then suddenly nothing. Halfway through the third track, the sound stopped. ‘We've got a technical problem, the concert's about to resume’. In the end, it took forty minutes for the duo to return to the stage, which was enough to discourage quite a few people. The bravest, or those who have kept the faith, will be treated to a few songs, including Bitches Brew. We're sure that ‘these things happen’, but for a band of this size and rarity (and whose set-up isn't the most complex in the world), it's a cruel let-down.

Speaking of disappointments, we haven't only heard good things about Tiamat live on stage. So we're expecting another cold shower, but it doesn't matter: we're shaking with excitement at the idea of having the rare opportunity to see this cult gothic metal band (over the last fifteen years, the band have played a few concerts here and there, mainly at festivals, and haven't set foot in France since 2010). The concert kicks off with In A Dream, a fitting choice given how unreal it seems. Johan Edlund, in his funny little hat and atrocious floral leggings that look like they were cut from his grandmother's curtains, is in fine form. Our doubts are dispelled: Tiamat is in great shape. The setlist is more devoted to heavier 90s tracks, with remnants of extreme metal. Finally being treated to Whatever That Hurts or The Sleeping Beauty on stage is a joy far removed from the darkness of this heavy, gloomy metal that resonates with strength and clarity under the Temple. It's a blast.

Edlund plays around and thanks his (admittedly small) audience. At the end of the set, the band tackled a few tracks from the 2000s: Divided, Cain (which seemed a little too fast, but never mind, what a kick!) and the anthem Vote For Love (did the band know that the French were voting that night?) which resurrects the catchiest hours of the Sisters of Mercy (whose shadow is definitely hanging over the festival today!) bring a little lightness and give more space to the synth strings. We went along, drawn by nostalgia (Tiamat seem to be ignoring their last two albums) and a unique opportunity to find ourselves propelled 15/20 years back in time for one of our favourites of this year's festival.

The human being in all his contradictions: if nostalgia gave Tiamat's concert a very special flavour, it's also what prevents us from being entirely convinced by Dimmu Borgir. Here again, opinions differ: yes, the best-of setlist was a blast, yes, the sound was good, yes, the theatrical show with the menacing castle backdrop that gives the band its name is great... But it lacked a few surprises. Dimmu Borgir played on and, being less rare than the Swedes who preceded them on the Temple Stage, didn't exactly wow us in the same way. After two live shows and a compilation of well-known covers, we're waiting for a successor to their 2018 album Eonian. Perhaps the Temple was too packed for us to fully appreciate the concert (for the anecdote, on the photographers' side, we were told a few seconds before the start that we would be entitled to... half a song so that everyone could take a picture of the band. Not easy to get good pictures!) This is one of the limits of Hellfest: some bands, who by their very nature are predestined for ‘small’ stages, overrun them, spoiling the experience. So what do you do? Do we push back the walls or do we accept to put more extreme bands on the Main Stage? If you've got the solution, apply now!

That's it for us this year. No fireworks: some people are upset. We don't really care, especially as we remember that the real fireworks are reserved for special editions. On the other hand, we did take notes: when, at a conference, Hellfest said that they wanted to learn from their mistakes and communicate better in the future on essential subjects, we thought that a ‘thank you, goodbye and see you next year’ would have been classier than a ‘tickets for 2025 go on sale in a week's time’ at the end, so that we'd feel like we were being considered as a bit more than just customers who'd come to empty their wallets (remember that story about the glasses only being available in large sizes so that only pints could be sold on environmental grounds?).

As always, we leave the festival with a head full of memories and the funny impression that, out of the 60,000 festival-goers present each day, no one will have experienced the event in the same way. For our part, we've rarely reached the Main Stages, but we can't help but salute the diversity and richness of the line-up. More than ever, the festival is at a turning point: to last, it will have to open up and get younger, and that means dealing with the headliners of tomorrow rather than those of yesterday, with all the changes that it represents. For four days, we ate extreme metal, mainstream stuff, electronica, weird brass instruments, unclassifiable weirdness, goth, rap/metal crossovers, dark stuff, festive stuff, violence and poetry.... Has Hellfest become too pop? Has Hellfest become too mainstream? With its six stages, the event had plenty to offer as long as you were curious and not afraid to walk. Music evolves, audiences evolve, festivals evolve. We're not worried about them: next year's festival is already sold out whereas not a single band has yet been announced.

... And, as always, you leave as if you'd just had a hearty meal. Will we ever go back? Who knows? The crowd, the way the event monopolises attention... you leave the table with a feeling of too much, and it's going to take some time to digest it all. Like all blockbusters, Hellfest fascinates as much as it annoys, even revolts. Nevertheless, we're confident that Hellfest will once again succeed in offering a line-up that mixes tried-and-tested acts with new discoveries and unique events. Above all, we're waiting to see whether the festival will be able to keep up with the many current issues on which it is expected to make progress. If we don't get stood up, maybe we'll see you again!

Our top 3 (in alphabetical order) :
Pierre: DOOL, SIERRA, Tiamat (with special mention for Sang Froid and Pensées Nocturnes!)
Erick: Dimmu Borgir, DOOL, Tiamat