There’s just over a month to go until Hevy Festival 2014 marks the festival’s return to Port Lympne Wild Animal Park down in Kent. After – let’s be honest, a fairly disasterous turn of events in 2013 that saw the festival cancelling and taking a year off - the festival is back, with a new focus and energy behind it. It might not have the size or chequebook to match Download or Sonisphere, but the return of Hevy to the UK festival calendar is definitely something we can get behind – which is why this week’s Sunday Spotify Slaylist is all about their 2014 line-up. 

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We went on the BBC Radio 1 Review Show for a record seventh time this week. We reckon it’s because we’re a) one of the few blogs on Radio 1′s books who doesn’t deal in boring indie, and b) one of the few blogs willing to really put the boot in to bad music when we hear it on the show.

To that end, come and listen to our Deputy Editor Hugh Platt take on Paris Hilton on this week’s show.

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Oh it’s been away for a while, but Sonisphere Festival has returned to the UK and is less than one whole week away. We cannot wait. We are excited. There are loads of our favourite bands playing at the magnificent Knebworth Park, which is why in time-honoured tradition, we’ve gone and made ourselves a Sunday Spotify Slaylist of some of the bands we really want to see next weekend to get us well and truly in the mood for Sonisphere’s comeback weekend.

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In one week’s time from when we write this, we will be at Download Festival 2014. For three whole days, we will join approximately 100,000 other rock fans to help turn Donington Park into the biggest weekend in the UK rock calendar. Last week our Slaylist tackled the big names on the bill, so this week we’re scaling it back a bit to take on the new guys, the weirdos, and the bands you just haven’t heard of.

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In two weeks time, we will be at Download Festival 2014. Still the single biggest weekend in the UK rock calendar, once again around about 100,000 rock fans will descend upon Donington Park for three days of music, drinking, debauchery, and casual sexism. To get us in the mood for the first three of those things (let’s hope there’s a lot less of the fourth this year, right guys?), the next two Sunday Slaylists are all about the line-up to this year’s festival.

This week: The big guns. The heavy hitters. The bands you know.

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Pretty much the entire UK punk fraternity has decamped to attend Slam Dunk this weekend, so you’d think that’d be a good choice for a Sunday Slaylist topic, right? Nope. Today happens to be the birthday of Sandra Nasić, vocalist with stop-start split up/reformed ska/punk/metal/pop/whatever band Guano Apes. We love birthdays, and we love using them as an excuse to hang Sunday Spotify Slaylists off of ever more.

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Yesterday, Fyf Fest made some of us here at Thrash Hits very, very happy indeed by announcing that The Blood Brothers were reforming and playing at the festival this August. Obviously, at the time of writing that news is going to be little comfort to the many, many UK-based fans of the band, but we wouldn’t be too surprised if the band make it over to Europe later in the year. In any case, it’s as good an excuse as ever to go revisit their albums for this week’s Sunday Slaylist.

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Seven years ago today, IBM’s chess-playing supercomputer Deep Blue defeated the then-world champion chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov in a series of six games. If we put on our tinfoil conspiracy-theorist hats, then this was the day that the slow and eventual machine takeover of humanity really begun. With that in mind, we’re taking a break from building our survival anti-Skynet bunker to put together this week’s Slaylist of future-fearing machine-war heavy metal.

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Valient Himself’s Rocknowledgy returned this week with its 43rd episode – if you’re not on board with the superb (and Thrash Hits-sponsored) music podcast from the Valient Thorr frontman, then this Sunday is as good as ever to dive right in.

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When we posted our review of the latest Metsatöll album this week, we joked on Facebook that it was an apt time to do so, what with the pagan festival of Easter taking place this week. But it got us thinking – rather than wheel out some lame, been-done-to-death LOL-zombie-Jesus Christianity-is-bad Sunday Slaylist, why not go full pagan? And what could be more pagan than Paganfest 2014?

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