The final day of any Hellfest edition is always the worst day, but not because of the lineup; it simply has to do with the fact that it’s all coming to an end and soon, we will have to return to our crappy day jobs. Still, we always try to make the most of it, and it all started at the Warzone with an amazing performance by Gouge Away. With barely a breather between songs, the band slashed through the audience with murderous intent, like a sonic claymore. Frontwoman Christina Michelle herself looked like a human assault rifle, constantly moving and screaming bullets everywhere she looked. Fucking hell. Bands like this one are what the hardcore scene has been in need of. A lukewarm performance by Faetooth followed up at the Valley, with Pain of Truth not being much better back at the Warzone. Well, at least they had an inflatable dog on stage, makes a huge difference, right? After that, we got to see a very energetic, but also very weird performance by Poppy at the Main Stage. It suits her style, we suppose, especially if you know about her show, Improbable Poppy, but we were left with a lingering feeling that something was missing. We then returned to the Warzone to see Guilt Trip, another band that is bringing some much-needed fresh air to the hardcore genre. Much like Gouge Away before them, Guilt Trip were unstoppable in their salvo of fast-as-fuck riffs and combative vocals. Music to break your bones too, and they wouldn’t be the last one at that, as you will soon see. We made a quick and hilarious stop at the Altar to catch Gutalax live. Words cannot describe the complete chaos that we saw when the Czech masters of shit-related grindcore hit the stage. There was toilet paper and toilet brushes flying everywhere, inflatable Toi Toi surf boards, and even an inflatable turd made an appearance – it would also appear latter at the Gorilla Biscuits show, as well as Linkin Park, of all places, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Where were we? Oh yes, Gutalax and their feces-covered music. The way we see it, there are two kinds of grindcore – either you have the sociopolitical, powerviolence-charged grindcore, or you have the party kind. Three guesses to which one is Gutalax. From fart jokes, large penis callouts and a wall of shit (don’t take it literally), Gutalax delivered an hysterical performance, filled with fantastically imaginative songs such as “Assmeralda”, “Buttman”, “Robocock”, and “Diarrhero”. Yes, those are real song names, look it up. Gig of the festival? No, but only by a little bit.
We then returned to the Valley to catch Kylesa. Reunited and reinvigorated, the duo of vocalist and guitarist Laura Pleasants and Phillip Cope made their way back to Hellfest after being dormant for eight years. With a set mainly focused on their seminal records Static Tensions and Spiral Shadow, from which they played songs such as “Running Red”, “Scapegoat” and “Don’t Look Back”, Kylesa gave it their all in a highly competent performance chock-full of killer riffage and harsh headbanging. We wish they choose to remain active and release another record. We jumped from a reunion to a final performance in France, as Refused were calling it a day. Something we will never understand is why somebody thought that putting Refused on the Main Stage was a good idea, especially on a day where people were camping to see that other cash grab we talked about earlier. What resulted was a very disappointing performance, partly due to this decision that led to the band not having a lot of fans at the front, but people that were completely disinterested in their legacy. That being said, Refused didn’t seem to be enjoying themselves so much, which made the situation worse. We remained at the Main Stage because what came next was the group we were waiting for the most to see, fucking Cypress Hill. You would think that a hip hop act would not do so well at a festival like Hellfest, and under normal circumstances, you would be correct. But Cypress Hill are a different story, they continuously vibe with the metal scene, and even their music has punk rock influences, even being named as a strong influence for the whole nu metal genre. And besides all that, they know how to pump the fuck out of an audience, which they did at Hellfest, from beginning to end. As absolute classics such as “I Wanna Get High”, “Dr. Greenthumb”, “Hits From The Bong”, “Insane In The Brain” and “How I Could Just Kill A Man” were flying through the air, the crowd jumped, moshed and crowdsurfed. Even security was having a great time, as we saw through the screens. For the end, Cypress Hill delivered a powerful rendition of House of Pain’s “Jump Around” that caused the entire audience to erupt like never before. Cypress Hill are living proof that some hip hop acts deserve to be in a place like Hellfest without the festival losing its identity. And screw anyone who says otherwise; Cypress Hill is much heavier than most of you trve kvlt fucks. After a pretty damn cool performance by the death metal heroes Dethklok, which included classic songs such as “Birthday Dethday”, “I Ejaculate Fire”, “Briefcase Full of Guts”, “Murmaider” and “Thunderhorse”, all accompanied by visuals of the legendary Metalocalypse animated series from whence the band came, it was time to end the night in the right way. Back in 2022, while baking under a hot Sun, we saw Knocked Loose live for the first time. Back then, we were highly impressed, and since then, we have been waiting for the moment they would return. From a mid-card band playing at the Main Stage to a fully-fledged Warzone headliner, Knocked Loose grew tremendously during these past three years, and that is mostly thanks to their 2019s record, A Different Shade of Blue, as well as their latest record, You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To, the latter of which broke the entire hardcore scene and catapulted the band to the forefront, to the point of getting the band to perform at Jimmy Kimmel Live!. We knew what we were in for when we stopped by the Warzone, but even so, we were not fully ready for the sheer devastation that we would witness and feel. Knocked Loose were on top of their game, unleashing brain-splitting riffs, bone-grinding drum pummels, and body-numbing, high-pitched vocals that caused a massive circle pit that lasted the entire show. We had little fuel left in the tank, but we still managed to get beat up while moshing, all while songs such as “Blinding Faith”, “Mistakes Like Fractures”, “Where Light Divides the Holler” and “Counting Worms” echoed along the entirety of the Warzone. The only slight gripe we had was the fact that Poppy didn’t show up to perform “Suffocate” with the band. A perfect moment wasted for God knows whatever reason. Other than that, it was a flawless end of night.
Or it would be, if not for the last thirty minutes of Linkin Park that we ended up watching, just like the rest of the festival. We got to the Main Stage just in time to catch the classics “In The End”, “Faint”, “Papercut” and “Bleed It Out”, which were intertwined with a song from Linkin Park’s comeback record, From Zero, specifically, the second single off of it, “Heavy Is the Crown”. While it was certainly nostalgic to see one of the most legendary nu metal bands perform again, it all felt a bit dry and devoid of emotion. This was mainly due to the fact of the vocal duties being handled by Dead Sara’s vocalist Emily Armstrong. The thing that made Linkin Park so great in the first place, apart from the band’s unique sound, were Chester Bennington’s enormously powerful vocals. The late Linkin Park frontman opened his heart in every lyric and in every bellowing scream – one could feel deeply his anguish, his anxieties, his struggles. It made the band’s music seem so much heavier and so much more mature than a lot of their counterparts in the genre. The problem with Armstrong is that she cannot give that same performance at all. It feels like she is in a constant battle of whether to utilize her own voice or imitate that of Bennington’s for the nostalgia, and what ends up happening is a meager rendition of what could have been. The rest of the band performed just like they used to, and even Mike Shinoda’s vocals seemed on point, even if they slipped down a couple notches from time to time. But the emotion and passion weren’t there at all, it was like watching a ghost of better times past perform for the sake of performing. Nothing noteworthy ever happened during those last thirty minutes, and we felt like we were actually wasting our time standing there. But we got to the end of it, and while our bones recovered from four days of intense madness, we made our way back to the airport, and waited for the plane to take us back home. Until next year, Hellfest, we love you.
Words by Filipe Silva
Photos by Alexandra Ramos
