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Articles : Sweden Rock Festival 2016 – Metal Obsession Preview

By on June 2, 2016
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Photo from the 2015 festival

Summer time in Europe means just one thing to some people. If you have been lucky enough to have found yourself in the position of being able to get to one of the plethora of fantastic metal festivals that are on offer across the massive continent, it is a time of great celebration as the weather gets lovely and warm, the days get unfeasibly long. and the many gatherings of the huge European metal community become the order of the summer. I have been lucky enough to have made this mighty metal pilgrimage a few times so it is with a very tangible level of excitement that I board the plane for the inordinate number of – cramped next to the fat guy – flying hours that you have to commit to in order to get to one of these celebrations of all things Rock and Metal.

This year’s assignment, Sweden Rock Festival 2016.

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Sweden Rock Festival is Swedens leading rock festival held just outside the town of Sölvesborg in Blekinge, southern Sweden. The festival offers a great and diverse mix of metal, classic rock, hard rock, blues and related genres. The festival has been running since 1992 and has been on its current site since 1998.Today it is one of the most important rock and metal festivals in the world with 33000 annual visitors from more than 50 countries.

Acts such as Kiss, Black Sabbath, Guns ‘n’ Roses, Rush, Judas Priest, Aerosmith, Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake, Accept, Alice Cooper, Soundgarden, Mötley Crüe, Scorpions, ZZ Top, Sabaton, In Flames, Manowar, Venom, Candlemass and hundreds of others have played blinding, metallic, fist pumping sets at Sweden Rock over the years.

The festival not only presents audiences with some of the best music in the world, but also creates a fantastic environment and a festival area with excellent services and hospitality. The five stages ensure that each artist gets a decent set length, while punters always have different styles of acts, old school to the newest movers and shakers in the world of metal and heavy rock.

The organisers work very hard to ensure an all around great experience for punters attending the festival, 4 days rocking out in a field can be a test of anyones metal but facilities are great, many different kinds of food are offered and lines are kept to a minimum. Clean, vacuum-flushing toilets are standard on site, and 200 people continuously make sure that the huddled masses are comfortable, well catered for and can enjoy rocking out or chillin on the grass slopes throughout the festival.

Sweden Rock Festival has a reputation for being one of the best organized festivals in the world and it’s atmosphere and relaxed, good-natured, suitability refreshed crowd is one of the festival’s greatest traits. Your correspondent has made this journey several times and knows you are in for a treat.

Sweden Rock Festival is a place where you don’t have to worry about anything, just relax, get ya rock on and have a fucking great time.

Welcome to Sweden Rock Festival 8-9-10-11 of June, 2016!

The lineup for this year’s installment can be considered good by any measure, not the greatest collection of act’s ever assembled, not even the best selection I have witnessed in a sunny field in the south of Sweden but it is a super solid and diverse lineup by any standard, a very satisfying combination of the great and the good and the best t thing about SRF is that although the bands are a great collection of quality metal and hard rock luminaries, old and new, the festival itself is such a hugely enjoyable gathering of bands, fans and liquid libation that any and every year it is always a thing of great joy and a great excuse to dodge what little winter we get in Oz and catch up with the Swedish brotherhood.

This year’s lineup includes a few of the established mega bands required for any festival to draw in the crowds needed to make such an event viable with Queen and Twisted Sister being the obvious examples and although these event type bands are bound to be enjoyable the real strength in this years lineup exists in it’s gratuitous nods to trad metal; classic rock, 80’s hard rock and thrash. Three of the ‘Big Four’ of the thrash metal scene will be in attendance with Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax all gracing the SRF stages, trad metal is supremely well serviced with the likes of Diamond Head, King Diamond, Dirkschneider (playing a set entirely made up of Accept tracks) and Gamma Ray among others. Classic rock gets great representation from a career spanning Michael Schenker set, Glenn Hughes, Graham Bonnet; Vanilla Fudge, Hawkwind and others, 80’s hard rock kicks some ass with Loudness, LA Guns, Lita Ford, Foreigner, King Kobra, Dan Reed etc.

Contemporary Euro-metal is obvious with the inclusion of Blind Guardian, Soilwork, Sabaton, Epica, Fintroll and Avantasia. Further yet, Doom has My Dying Bride, Uncle Acid and Entombed, Black has Mayhem and Satyricon, there is a vast aray of new blood with a strong connection to the roots of rock with Winery Dogs, The Temperance Movement and Graveyard. Flashy new upstarts get a look in with Halestorm, Sixx AM, Shinedown and The Struts, there’s Symphony X for the proggers, Steve Vai for the shredders, a much anticipated Hellacopters reunion, and literally dozens and dozens of other quality bands spread over the four days of festival fun. Like I said, an embarassment of musical riches that would make any rock and metal fan with a pulse fuckin’ excited!

So soon to be coming to you from a field in Solvesborg, sunny, southern Sweden, June 8,9,10 & 11 – SWEDEN ROCK FESTIVAL.

LET THE MADNESS BEGIN!!!

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