The mythical metal festival which is held every year in mid-June in Clisson, in Loire-Atlantique, wreaks havoc on festivals. The 17th edition of Hellfest will be held from June 27 to 30, 2024 – one to two weeks later than its traditional dates. With the opening of the ticket office on Tuesday June 27, festival-goers will already be able to obtain a 4-day Pass for next year. But this change of niche disrupts the plans of other festivals organized around Nantes, such as La Nuit de l’Erdre.
This event, which will welcome artists such as Indochina, Juliette Armanet, Louise Attaque and Lomepal during its 23rd edition, is also held in Loire-Atlantique, only about forty kilometers from Clisson. Scheduled for 20 years during the last weekend of June, the current music festival welcomes nearly 20,000 festival-goers daily for four days. Its president Marc Jolys deplores this unexpected decision. “We are presented with a fait accompli. I don’t know how we’re going to do it, it’s fraught with consequences, “he told Ouest France.
Such a change of date forces the festival to review all its logistics. “We have a lot of service providers in common: security boxes, technical boxes, such as lighting, toilets…” Beyond logistics, it is mainly security issues that worries him: “It is already very difficult to have emergency doctors on site in a disaster-stricken medical environment and will the prefecture accept two events of such magnitude in the department, the same weekend with regard to hospitals, emergencies, the gendarmerie? he fears.
The Hellfest, which was sold out this year with 240,000 festival-goers expected, did not communicate with La Nuit de l’Erdre about this change either. “Their ticket office has even been launched. Their case is made, it is without appeal, regrets Marc Jolys. Why didn’t you trade with us? It is contemptuous, for us, for the local associative fabric. Faced with the metal giant, La Nuit de l’Erdre immediately thought of changing the weekend. A complicated reorganization given the tight schedule of the festivals, which share the artists all summer. The historic date of the end of June “takes into account the end of the tour and, precisely, the other festivals in the territory. »
Hellfest regularly finds itself at the heart of critics. At issue: the increase in the 4-day Pass this year, the price of which now stands at 329 euros, but also the presence of neo-Nazi groups and artists convicted of domestic violence. Finally, the gigantic environmental impact of the festival, which consumed 300,000 liters of fuel oil last year for its exceptional double edition, adds to the long list of controversies.
