Top Rock Festivals

If you want to see Metallica this summer, they’ll be performing at Sonisphere Festival on 8 July 2011, along with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax.

Razorlight will be rocking the stage at Get Loaded on 11 July 2011 with The Cribs and British Sea Power in Clapham Common.

Also in Clapham Common this summer, The Big Festival 1-3 July 2011 will host the stage to talent such as Athlete, Guillmots, New Young Pony Club and The Charlatans. They’ll be supported by a mixture of other musicians including Roots Manuva and The Bees. My boss has already booked tickets for all his staff. Happy days:)

The Levellers may not be the typical rock band but they are being supported by the brilliant Flogging Molly, The Jim Jones Revue and Pop Will Eat Itself at their annual festival, Beautiful Days, 19-21 August 2011 in Devon.

From June 24 to 26, this years Glastonbury Festival will be littered with rock stars. The Pyramid Stage will be played by Morrissey, Biffy Clyro and Paul Simon. The Other Stage will feature Queens of the Stone Age, Eels and White Lies. The John Peel Stage, as always, hosts up and coming talent such as Glasvegas, The Horrors and The Joy Formidable.

This year’s ultimate rock festival is in Sölvesborg, at the Sweden Rock Festival, with its stellar line-up that is organised so no one misses the headline acts. On Saturday, for example, Black Label Society will finish 9pm on the Festival Stage and then crowds can catch Thin Lizzy at 9.15pm on the Rock Stage. Thin Lizzy’s slot finishes at 10.45 so that the crowd can watch Ozzy Osbourne rock the Festival Stage from 11pm until 2am.

Other international bands performing from Wednesday 8 June to Saturday 11 June include Judas Priest, The Cult, Rob Zombie and Whitesnake. The Sweden Stage will host national bands, the Rocklassiker Stage will have unplugged performances from European rock bands and the Zeppelin Stage will be used by well-established British and American rock and blues bands, some from the 1970s.

In previous years, the Sweden Rock Festival’s headliners have featured Aerosmith, Foreigner, Poison, Alice Cooper, Dragonforce and AC/DC. Therefore tickets sell out really fast. This year all four-day tickets (2390SEK/£232) have already sold out and there are very few three-day tickets available (2290SEK/£222). Selected one-day tickets are available too. Be quick to buy your tickets for 2012 if you can’t get tickets for this year. Check out the official festival website to find a timetable regarding the buses taking revellers to the festival, including from Sölvesborg train station.

Rock Wercher Festival

This year Rock Wercher Festival is held for four days from 30^th of June and allows the main acts a full hour of performance time. There’s an artist for everyone but for the rockers in the crowd, you’ll be impressed by the rock acts who include Iron Maiden, Kasabian, My Chemical Romance and Kings of Leon.  The festival costs €195 and provides a free shuttle service between its site and Leuven railway station.

Durbuy Rock Festival

This coming weekend (13-14 May), the 15^th Durbuy Festival is held in Bomal-sur-Ourthe village near Durbuy city in Belgium. The entire weekend and camping is covered by just €55. The line-up is comprised mostly of metal bands such as Korpiklaani from Finland and Triptykon from Switzerland. Bormal-sur-Ourthe SNCB train station is only 300m away from the festival site.

Groezrock

The weekend of 22-23 April 2011 marked the 20^th Anniversary of Groezrock, a festival of punk, emo, ska and rock music. Over two days, 67 bands performed to crowds of 10,000 people from three stages, called the Main Stage, Eastpak Stage and Etnies Stage. Headliners included Flogging Molly, NoFX, Underoath and The Used. Groezrock is held on the last weeked of every April, for €125 including camping. Take bus NR 299 from Geel, Diest or Hasselt train stations.

With hundreds of music festivals around the world, you would think that there would be greater genre-specific choices. Yet, so called “rock” festivals have been diluted by pop stars, dance acts and indie bands.

If you go to Reading 2011, for example, you must wait through Bombay Bicycle Club and Crystal Castles before finally seeing Jane’s Addiction. Similarly at Download 2011, Sunday crowds have to wait through Gossip Girl star Taylor Momson’s The Pretty Reckless and three other chart-topping bands before enjoying the equally as mainstream Linkin Park.

These ambiguous line-ups are costing rock fans £192 and £155, respectively.  So where in Britain are the top rock festivals hiding?

The Sunday line-up of Sonisphere Festival in Hertfordshire, 8-10 July 2011, has Volbeat, Arch Enemy, Parkway Drive, Mastodon, Motorhead, Limpbizkit and, finally, Slipnot. Maintaining such calibre, Friday and Saturday’s headliners are Metallica and Biffy Clyro and aren’t preceded by indie or dance acts. Weekend tickets start at £155 and you definitely get your money’s worth.

High Voltage Festival in London, 23-24 July 2011, has a line-up of rock gods, especially on Saturday when Thin Lizzy leads into Slash before Judas Priest headlines the day. £99 for two days.

Giving more head-bang for your buck, Rebellion Festival in Blackpool has four days of rock bands over five stages (that’s over 200 performances to choose from) for only £120.

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