Montreal’s Heavy MTL Festival ~ Hard, Hot, Headbanging Heaven!
Possibly the Most Amazing Line-up of Hard Rockers Ever Assembled
Heavy MTL is one of North America’s premier destination heavy music festivals and this year completely took over Montreal, Canada on August 11th and 12th. The event was held in the breathtaking Parc Jean-Drapeau at Ile Saint-Helene and kicked off on August 10th with a “Heavy in the City” celebration.
Since the very first edition of the Festival in June of 2008, audiences have been treated to heavy-hitter bands including Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, Disturbed, Three Days Grace, Dethklok, Anthrax, Type O Negative, Mastadon, KISS, Alice Cooper, Megadeth, Slayer, and many more who’ve shredded their way through a gloriously face-melting weekend of the heavy music we love ~ and this year’s line-up carried on the tradition in spades:
Saturday, August 11
* System of a Down
* Periphery
* Veil of Maya
* Job For a Cowboy
* Goatwhore
* Fleshgod Apocalypse
* Rose Funeral
* Origin
* Exhumed
* Cannibal Corpse
* Between the Buried and Me
* Kataklysm
* The Faceless
* Deftones
* Five Finger Death Punch
Sunday, August 12
* Slipknot
* Marilyn Manson
* Lamb of God
* Dethklok (talk about a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!!)
* Suicidal Tendencies
* Voivod
* Trivium
* Gojira
* Sword
* Overkill
* Emmure
* Cancer Bats
* High On Fire
* Dance Laury Dance
* The Agonist
* Iwrestledabearonce
Insane line-up, right??? Told you!
A full schedule of artist set times was available on HeavyMTL.com in the weeks prior to the festival, so we were able to plan our days accordingly. Festival headliners were the last to play on each given day and hit the stage between 8:00pm and 10:00pm (approximately). Their sets ran 90+ minutes, while up and coming artists’ ran about 30 minutes.
The Festival really is dedicated to the fans, so ~ although detachable camera lenses are not permitted ~ it’s absolutely fine to bring your digital camera and shoot this amazing concert…and believe me, almost no-one passed up the opportunity to get pix of the legends and the future legends alike. The Info/General Information tab on the site had a ton more great tips, facts, and advice for festival-goers, too, as did the section on food and drink ~ a variety of foods were available onsite, and beverages from water to beer and other spirits were, too…you could bring clear plastic water bottles to the site (although some people were asked to empty them before entering the event) and use any of the water refill stations provided. Now here’s something that might perk up some ears ~ YES, the legal drinking age in Quebec is 18, so for those who wanted alcohol with their metal, two valid forms of ID were required. And keeping in mind that everyone has different circumstances and for one reason or another might not have been able to attend both days of the festival, the organizers had made available several ticket options at heavymtl.com/en/tickets.
Ile Saint-Helene is an absolutely amazing backdrop for everything that went on during the weekend ~ there’s no camping allowed on site, but heavymtl.com/en/faqs/travel-stay brought festival-goers a list of nearby places where camping is allowed, plus a rundown of hotels and directions to the venue. There was even a recommendation as to how to dress/what to bring based on Montreal weather in August (take our word for it…the weather is super hot and super humid and sudden downpours are the norm ~ so basically, on top of providing two days of the best in heavy metal and hard rock music (it was worth checking the website right up to the last minute as a few more bands were added to the line-up, as were several special events ~ plus there was a Heavy MTL feed at heavymtl.com/en/heavymtl-news so you could read posts directly from the people in charge), the organizers made the event as fan-friendly as possible, no matter where you were traveling from ~ and this was one roadtrip that was 100%, totally, undeniably WORTH IT!
Videos from past years were available at youtube.com/heavymtltv and pix at flickr.com/photos/heavymtl so that anyone planning to attend could get a feel for what awaited them at Heavy MTL 2012, and bookmarking heavymtl.com was a great way to stay up-to-date on all things Festival-related (including Tweets from the bands themselves)!!
Words can’t even describe what the Heavy MTL experience was like ~ but true lovers of the hard stuff who aren’t afraid of getting down and dirty (like us…that’s right, we media folk can hold our own in a mosh pit) for two days of non-stop metal and more were in their glory…take a look at our live pix from the festival and you’ll see why…
