• For its 15th edition and after two years of cancellation, the Hellfest returns in a new format.

  • Seven days of music, Metallica, novelties and warmth... The event should be remembered.

From this Friday, an orgy of decibels will emanate from the small town of Clisson (Loire-Atlantique) for the return of the highly anticipated Hellfest.

For its fifteenth edition, the organizers of Europe's biggest extreme music event are “on a war footing” to prepare what they already call “the edition of the century”.

20 Minutes

tells you why the event should indeed be remembered.

Because the festival team saw double

After two canceled editions, the first due to the pandemic and the second due to too strict imposed gauges, the Hellfest team saw things big.

Because it is not a single festival but two that the organizers of the high mass of metal have imagined.

The first part, which starts this Friday and until Sunday, is reserved for ticket holders of the canceled edition in 2020, who were very few to request reimbursement.

Nearly half of these 180,000 festival-goers will even attend the second round, which will take place the following weekend from Thursday, and for which places are again torn off, in barely two hours.

These "finishers", as they are already called among themselves, will be part of the privileged Hellbangers since the formula "is not intended to be reproduced", has already warned Ben Barbaud, the director of the festival.

Because the programming reaches its climax

For Pascal, who has been coming since 2015, Hellfest is an opportunity to "discover new groups but also the opportunity to see and see again the legendary groups that gave birth to hard and metal".

Gun's N Roses, Scorpions... He will be spoiled for choice among the 350 concerts scheduled during these seven days of music, especially since for the first time in Clisson there will be Metallica!

The legendary American group, which is said to be particularly demanding, is expected on Sunday June 26 on the first main stage, as part of a European tour, with a scenography that should be grandiose.

“The icing on the cake”, welcome the organizers, who recall that a tourist program has also been set up in the Nantes vineyards for the approximately 10,000 festival-goers who will stay on site between the two weekends.

'Cause everyone's hot, even the thermometer

Among the festival-goers, the excitement is great after “two years of doubt telling ourselves that what we have known might not happen again”, even admits Christian, one of them.

A feeling that should quickly turn into euphoria, especially since the site promises several new features without revealing everything “to keep the wow effect”.

Let us mention a few: a new statue of Lemmy Kilmister, leader of Motörhead, changes to the masterful cathedral at the entrance, but also the opening of a giant car park with 13,000 spaces, described as the largest of France after that of Disneyland.

The gates of hell should not bear their name as well since the temperature could rise to 38 degrees for this first day.

Giant arches from which water will spurt and the mobilization of firefighters, who will spray the public with a lance, will try to deal with it.

Beer too, which will flow afloat (440,000 liters swallowed up in 2019), with undoubtedly a new record, even if the consumption of alcohol "is to be avoided" during periods of heat wave, recalls the prefect of Loire-Atlantique. 

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  • Culture

  • Nantes

  • Pays de la Loire

  • Hellfest

  • Festival