Tens of thousands of revellers devoted to heavy metal, goth and punk temporarily forgot their musical differences to converge this weekend for the three-day open air Hellfest festival in western France.
Set in the small town of Clisson, in the Pays de la Loire region, some 100,000 European music fans on Friday gathered to catch world-famous acts like Kiss, ZZ Top and Korn over the weekend.
This year’s festival also includes British rock group Whitesnake as well as Swedish soft rock band Europe.
The festival-goers were drawn from a wide range of extreme music schools, from hard rockers sporting bandanas and 1980s-style haircuts to death metal fans dressed in black.
“We are Victorian-era vampires,” 27-year-old Matthieu said, dressed in a redingote and a puffy white shirt decorated with a red ruby pin.
His 21-year-old wife Manon was dressed almost exclusively in black — her black hair decorated with blood-red roses and her face powdered in white with black circles painted around her eyes.
At Hellfest, the morbid skull symbol was visible almost everywhere: on tatoos, flags and T-shirts, and at night, live fire torches and illuminated sculptures light up the festival grounds.
A giant camping site has been set up near the entrance, where thousands of tents line the carefully protected vineyards in the middle of the picturesque landscape.
France's Hellfest draws Europe's rock and metal fans
