Another day, another big French summer music festival releases details of who's on the bill for their
big event. This time it's the turn of Download Paris, the rock festival in the capital scheduled for four nights in June.
There are four big names at the top for each day Ozzy Osbourne for the first night, Marilyn Manson the second, Foo Fighters on the third night and Guns 'n' Roses on the Monday night.
Also playing are Ghost, the Offspiring and the Hives and alongside Volbeat, Opeth, Alestorm and dozens of others including Black Veil Brides, Slaves, Turbonegro and Wolf Alice.
There are still more names to be added, but what's striking is how many acts there are, and the range of rock genres on display.
Hellfest 2018, France's biggest rock festival which takes place later in June has some serious competition. Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Avenged Sevenfold are among the acts confirmed for this event, with more to come. Looks like it will be quite a summer for the festival-minded French metal fan.
Download Paris takes place from June 15-June 18 and tickets are on sale now.
I've long had a theory that metal is a modern take on a type of folk music that's been around for thousands of years.
There have probably always been songs about war, brave deeds, evil men and the supernatural sung round campfires by groups of men to a receptive audience of similar young men. I'm sure that these would have been sung to the tempo of a galloping horse, with as much thunder as a hand drum and a lute could muster.
However, modern heavy metal hurdy gurdy and mandolin are quite a proposition, but in the hands of Swiss band Eluveitie they're a natural mix.
The band release a new collection entitles The Early Years on Nuclear Blast records, essentially a re-mixing of their debut album Spirit and a re-recording of their debut EP Ven. Both items have been out of print for years, and had become collector's items as the band's career took off, and both certainly deserved to be heard by the wider audience the band now has.
A special edition also includes a newly recorded track.
The band released their most recent full studio album Helvetios earlier this year
Eluveite are currently touring with sweden's Sabaton, in what promises to be one of the best metal bills of the year. This video captures them playing at the Summer Breeze Open Air festival in 2008.
Gojira are unquestionably one of the greatest rock bands to have emerged in the last couple of years, and their new album is certainly much-anticipated.
The album, their fifth and their debut oninternational rock label Roadrunner, is entitled L'Enfant Sauvage and comes out on June 25.
Ahead of the album the title track is being made available as a digital single and on the strength of this track the album looks set to be one of the key rock releases of the year.
Gojira's first album was released in 2001, having formed in 1996, and in the last decade they have gone from the metal underground to one of the most respected rock acts around.
With regard the new album, singer/guitraist Joe Duplantier said: "When you become a musician, you don't have a boss telling you what to do so you have to be very responsible,"
"With freedom comes responsibility so I'm asking myself, 'What is freedom? What does it mean to me?'
"L'Enfant Sauvage reflects on that. There's no answer though. There's just life and questions."
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.
