While this weekend sees the Download festival in the UK's Donnington Park, France's biggest Rock festival Hellfest takes place in Clisson Loire Atlantique, on June 17, 18 and 19.
Hellfest - which has sold out all its three day tickets a month ahead of the event for the first time - has been running for five years, and has established itself as one of the major events in Europe's summer rock schedule. Last year over 70,000 people attended the event.
There are headline slots by Iggy and the Stooges, Scorpions and Ozzy Ozbourne, others on the bill including big names like Judas Priest, the Cult, Rob Zombie and Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society.
While there's classic rock from the likes of Thin Lizzy, Hawkwind and UFO, there are also less-mainstream cult acts like Down, Mayhem, Cradle of Filth and Opeth.
It's an unsurprisingly heavy line up and one that caters for fans of all types of extreme music from commercially successful classic to underground legends. It certainly reflects the the variety of sub genres to what used to be just referred to as 'metal' with Black Metal (Mayhem), Folk Metal (Turisas), Hardcore (Bad Brains), Punk (The Exploited), Thrash (Municipal Waste), Doom (Church of Misery) and Progressive (Anathema) all on the bill.
Previous headliners included Kiss who played as part of their European tour in 2010. Video from their set at Clisson is below, and having seen them when the played in Scotland during the tour it would have been quite a something to see them at a major outdoors festival. The picture at the top was taken by me at the Glasgow show.
Manowar headlined in 2009, Slayer in 2008, so the festival organisers certainly know both their audience and the bands that will make the most of the gig.
The festival has has some controversy, with right-wing MPs criticising the 'satanic' festival, and while Coca Cola stopped their support, Kronenbourg payed no heed to similar pressure.
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