Summer Festivals 2012

[martyngnr]

NO!

 

Not QOTSA! Saw them at Leeds 2002, boring as fuck. Leeds 2008 comes along and they are on again, thought to myself "give them another chance, could have been an off day last time", and they were still boring as fuck. More boring then Deftones were at Download 2010

Yet they played at Leeds in 2010 and were absolutely brilliant.

[Harvey Dent]

Download have just confirmed their third headliner after Vodafone leaked Pearl Jam yesterday.... And it's Slipknot. That's thoroughly disappointing.

[Egg Shen]

I'm kinda happy with Slipknot because i haven't seen them headline a festival yet, but Pearl Jam would have been something special wouldn't it.

[KingOfMetal]

Its a strange one. As I said yesterday, I would have been happy with Pearl Jam, but im very happy with Slipknot also. However, that's 3 metal oriented bands as your headliners, as opposed to last year with Prodigy and and Aerosmith and AC/DC in 2010. I'm chuffed to bits with who they've got but would liked to have seen Pearl Jam. At least it wasn't Green Day, as was also rumoured

[Harvey Dent]

Yeah but most options would be better than GD so I'm thankful for that. I thought the headliners were all a bit samey, I know it's a metal fest but you usually would've got a bit more variety there. PJ have never played Download before, would mix it right up and have a huge following. Whilst I'm sure Slipknot will deliver, they played in '09 and Sonisphere last year, they have no new material and it'll pretty much be the same songs again. They'll still draw a massive crowd and sell tickets though so it's still pretty good. If the PJ carrot hadn't been dangled I think I'd have been happy with that set of headliners. The prices also seem to have gone up again, it's

[Merzbow]

Has there been any new metal bands big enough to headline since Slipknot? I don't really keep an eye on that sort of music but it feels as if they were the last BIG band to come along and that was back in when, 1999 or something?

[KingOfMetal]

Has there been any new metal bands big enough to headline since Slipknot? I don't really keep an eye on that sort of music but it feels as if they were the last BIG band to come along and that was back in when, 1999 or something?

 

There have been big bands, but not that big, particularly metal bands, to shift a festivals number of tickets We were all talking at Download this year, and mentioned it on here too, that festivals are in between a rock and a hard place with the genuine headline acts available to them. There are good bands out there (Machine Head, Opeth, Mastodon etc.) who are good live acts and have strong followings, but nothings that's going to shift 80,000+ tickets for a weekend festival. I reckon you could see a return to either the all-dated or 2 day festivals were you can load up the stages with the cream of talent year on year. It would be quite a while before you end up booking similar lineups if there are fewer spots to fill.

Going back to your point, Slipknot probably are the most recent band to really warrent headliner status coming to the front around the same time as Linkin Park did. Slipknot released their debut before Linkin Park did (I think), but didn't have the same kind of label backing that Linkin Park did. Slipknots success turned made a tonne of money for Roadrunner though