We spent a couple of days in a park in London at the inaugural High Voltage Festival and aside from getting sunstroke, we saw some awesome stuff. Bands, mainly. We picked our top moments.

Best Air Guitar
High Voltage actually has an air guitar booth. While those of us from Thrash Hits don’t indulge ourselves (we don’t want to show anyone up, obviously. Particularly ourselves) the undoubted winner of the weekend in this particular category did his work on the Metal Hammer stage. Orange Goblin are on their usual storming form, ripping through their set of balls-out heavy metal with vim and vigour. Frontman Ben Ward is the star of the show, captivating your attention. And playing air guitar better than anyone else all weekend.

[Read more →]

So Skindred, Sylosis, 65DaysOfStatic, Black Spiders, Audrey Horne, Throats, March of the Raptors, Slaves To Gravity, The Casino Brawl, The Boys with the Xray Eyes, After The Ordeal, Blitz Kids, Fei Comodo, Cars on Fire, Lower Than Atlantis, The Xcerts, Little Fish and Eddie Clark’s Fastway have all been added to the Sonisphere Knebworth bill?

You gotta admit, the line-up’s looking pretty fucking boss right now, ain’t it?

With all out “Download Festival this, Sonisphere Festival that, Oh look Reading & Leeds” blathering recently, we’ve really missed out on emphasising one fact about the upcoming UK festival season: that High Voltage Festival, frankly, looks like it’s going to piss all over everyone else. The fact that it was confirmed today that Opeth will be playing their only UK festival show of 2010 there merely cements that fact.

[Read more →]

Resident photographer Gary Wolstenholme headed over to Norway this week to visit the quite fantastic Hove Festival.

True to form, Gary’s been snapping away and has got some brilliant shots of what looks like an awesome festival. Check out our photo gallery right here.

Hove Festival 2008 photo gallery: