This isn’t a review or anything more than trying to explain this fest off the top of my head with a few rants thrown in for good measure.
For a start, Hevy Fest suffered from pretty poor organisation. Don’t get me wrong, everything ran smoothly once you were inside but that was just it, getting inside was something of a pain. Fortunately I was lucky to have a press pass for the entire weekend which enabled me to get in by cutting out the queue. My friends weren’t so lucky and ended up waiting for 3 and a half hours to get in. This is a bit of a joke when you consider the size of the festival, I mean I only waited three hours to get into Reading last year and that’s like 80,000 people. They also missed Crossbreaker because of the queue, bummer, they ruled.
Once inside the campsite was quite nice, surprisingly there was enough room but there was hardly enough toilets for the population which was ever so slightly grim come Saturday morning.
Enough moaning about that anyway. This weekend was all about the crew. Myself, Tom, Ben, Damon, Tilt and Sam set about having as much fun as possible whilst moaning as much as we could about the fashion scene, sorry i meant Hardcore scene present at Hevy. I am now going to sound like a complete dick for moaning about this but the whole fashionable nature of hardcore is something that I don’t really get. Everyone there kind of looked the same, us included I guess, but hey, this scene is popular so I guess that’s the end result. As long as the bands keep making awesome music that is all that matters.
And my god were the bands awesome. I was working on the Saturday interviewing bands so I missed bits of some sets, but I got to see the majority of the bands I wanted to see which was awesome. I interviewed some awesome guys as well, Crossbreaker, Sam from Architects, Brutality Will Prevail and Fabian from Polar were all absolutely stellar guys and interviewing Jeremy from Touche Amore sat under a tree in the sun was mind blowing!
In terms of sets of the weekend my top bands in no order would have to be Brutality Will Prevail on the Etnies Tent:
Touche Amore on the Macbeth tent:
Hang The Bastard providing the riff worship on Sunday morning, Bastions on both days making everyone seem invalid, Ceremony for inciting pure violence, Crossbreaker for showing that South Wales is on top, The Bronx for being The Bronx. Dillinger Escape Plan for making every other band look like they couldn’t play their instruments properly and Defeater for nearly making everyone cry.
Unfortunately the sound quality kind of killed it for a couple of bands. Architects didn’t sound half as good as they should have and Your Demise didn’t have any guitar from where I was stood, which sucked so hard as I was massively stoked to see those guys play again.
There was some cool merch sprinkled in between the fucking trendy bollocks. Fuck Honour Over Glory and Drop Dead when there is a Holy Roar Merch Tent. Picked myself up the Eisberg 7″ (CHECK IT OUT) the Kerouac Cold and Distant, Not Loving 10″ (CHECK IT OUT) and Hellfire Reign by Hang The Bastard (CHECK.IT.OUT) as well as snapping up a Holy Roar vest. Massive shout out to those guys for keeping it real with real prices and amazing merchandise. Seriously Drop Dead, £25 for a tee, fuck that.
The drive back to Cheltenham going through central London at midnight was pretty cool and was completely hassle free, unlike what is happening at the moment.
This weekend was awesome for the sweet hangs I got to have with some awesome people. Posi-Moshing was the highlight (You have great teeth) and just having fun and not taking it seriously was awesome. Anyone who saw us lunging around in short shorts in the pissing rain would totally agree with this.
Next year I think the plan is to venture across the channel to sample some Euro mosh which would be awesome, can’t wait to see if we pull that one off!
In the mean time, stay-posi and listen to SLAYZOR.
Peace and love.x
The New Beat 