The Haters Guide To Hating Festivals

Yes, it’s hard to hear, but this seasons UK festivals are mainly done and dusted, with the exception of Damnation, Hard Rock Hell and some smaller niche ones. But that doesn’t mean that next years Festivals are a distant dream.

Oh no. Festival announcements are already happening, as MetalMouth’s Joel Graham wrote about yesterday, and of course, the annual hatefest has begun in earnest. No, Hatefest is not a festival, but you can hate that too, as is your right as a punter and it would be a crud festival anyway, obviously.

To enable your hating to be as extreme and as targeted as possible, We’ve put together a guide for you, so that you can excel in your efforts, and gain those valuable w*nk bank moments knowing you are making a real difference in gaining “likes” online, and making as many valid derogatory, inflammatory responses as you can.

Tip 1. Follow all festival Facebook Pages.

But, you only like metal so why bother? Why bother?! Why only hate one that you may go to, when you can hate all of them. You have more line ups to hate on, the options are limitless. Don’t stop at UK festivals, you can whip up a shitstorm by wading in to some European fests, use Google translate to see what people are saying if necessary, then disagree with it. Ensure you have mobile notifications set on your super duper android or iPhone so that the split second a band is announced, you can be the first to comment with a cutting damnation of whatever band it is. Get extra brownie points for sharing the announcement with your friends to show you have hated it more than once, and gaining friend requests for your awesome rapier wit.

Tip 2. Set Yourself Up For Disappointment.

This is paramount. Plan your own perfect festival line up (the only one that matters)  at least a  few months in advance, and convince yourself that your favourite festival, and others, will telepathically book only the bands you select. Then, when the inevitable happens, and they don’t book your next door neighbour’s band that played a gig in 2005, you can steam in accusing them of being too commercial. Make sure your comments are poorly spelled for best effect. Use your own vague colloquialisms to ensure mass response is generated from confusion.

Tip 3. All Festival Line Up’s Are crud

This is your new T-shirt logo. This is your new desktop wallpaper. This is your phone alarm message. This is your motto, soldier!  Of course they are all crud, how else can you effectively complain if they aren’t? If your favourite bands aren’t all on the line up, of course the festival doesn’t know what they are doing, you have the god given right to tell them so. feck their diplomas in Event Management, you know best. You are duty bound to tell ‘em.

Tip 4. This Years Line Up is NEVER as good as the last one.

This method of hating can backfire if you are not properly prepared, you should refer to your list of every band that has ever played every festival you think is crud (which is every single festival ever), and have never been to (or have been to, and rightfully said it was crud afterwards when your student loan didn’t come through and you had to spend it sober) and compare it to the best ever festival that exists, but hasn’t been created yet, because it is of course one you created on your laptop with a blank Donington Poster. Every festival is unworthy. All Bands suck other than the ones you like, and even then, refer to the other tips to create some hate.  The millions of people that go to these  festivals need educating to your way of thinking, immediately.

Tip 5.  Ticket Prices are Outrageous.

This is an easy one. They charge way too much for what you get. After all, you have to travel to get there, eat, own a tent and then get drunk. You have to pay to get in too. And the bands?  frikkin’ extortion. Why should the ones you’ve never heard of get paid anyway, it’s not like they’re on your list. They are crud too, so they don’t deserve paying. It’s obvious that the festival is easily run by one person, so their salary should be minimal. You can’t mention dropping or freezing of ticket prices, as that implies you are keen on going.

Tip 6. Line Up is Predictable, and boring.

Well, we all know you knew who would be every headliner at every festival, so it’s obviously going to be predictable and incredibly boring having the same multi platinum headliners each year playing at different festivals, it doesn’t matter that you haven’t seen them at those festivals, you are still fully within your rights to point out that they played one. I mean, Iron Maiden played a festival last year, so why should they be dragged out yet again to play a different festival next year. Rammstein are playing Download for the first time, but they played Sonisphere in 2010, 3 years ago. Talk about frikkin’ repetitive eh. Let’s have some new bands, the ones on your friends list for example. They’d be frikkin’ perfect headiners after only having played The Dog And Duck once, it will be a revelation to fans and will truly open their eyes as to what metal really is. You can also use this one to call major festivals money grabbing bastards or something similar, as they have not put on all your favourite local bands.

Tip 7. There are no known bands other than the Headliners.

You can double whammy Tip 6 if you are challenged by using the following slam dunk. If the festival has too many (read that as: any) unknown bands the festival is clearly just after your money. Why would you bother going to a festival unless it has every multi platinum, well known band in music history playing. Waste of frikkin’ money booking bands that live down your road. Who wants to pay to go an see an unknown band anyway, when you can go and see them at your local pub for free.

Tip 8. Everyone else is wrong.

Always. If they like a band and say they are looking forward to seeing them, immediately reply with some form of slander to their personal taste. “Faggot” is a good one. “Your band is gay” is another.  Relating every gig you have ever seen about your favourite band and educating them as to why your favourite band is better than their favourite band is always a fail safe. If you can’t convince them, brow beat them. Or throw in a Justin Beiber comment for lolz.

Tip 9. Bombard the Festival Facebook wall.

Everyone knows that you can force festivals into booking your line up by posting derogatory comments in public, so go for it. 100 times a day, “Book Slayer” is recommended, and any other festival haters doing the same, remember to follow the above 9 tips, after all, just because they hate it too, it doesn’t mean they are right. This works particularly well if someone has asked them to book your favourite band, you of course must see Tip 8 and deploy fire accordingly. Call them a faggot too.

Tip 10. Classic bands are past their sell by date.

Yes, why didn’t they book them 30 years ago when they were good? Penny pinching motherfucker band bookers just want us to listen to music that is 30 years old. New music is the way forward, like the bands that create “fresh new metal” that live down your road. But under no circumstances can they be as young as Bring Me The Horizon, or any that have a record label because that is just sell out metal. Ensure everyone knows that you are the foremost source of music knowledge and what festival attendees would prefer.

Tip 11. Musicians must be ugly.

Another very important factor in hating. If, god forbid, a festival books a band that happens to have a singer that doesn’t look like a truck of crud hit him at 50 miles an hour, they do not deserve a main stage spot, or any spot. In fact, the band needs to stop playing music completely. It’s an unwritten, but very important hating law. No band member can make authentic metal if they haven’t fallen out of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.

Tip 12. They booked your favourite bands, they’re still wrong.

feck. This looks like you can’t hate. But, WRONG! There’s a small matter of the ‘setlist’ you can jump on. So you’ve seen your beloved band 84 times during your short life, and you are creaming your pants in secret,(Always in secret, remember, haters cannot show enthusiasm in any way) So what do you do? You list the setlist they should play. The only setlist they can play to be better than the previous 84 times. You have to hope they don’t play it, because that would make you happy and that’s just not acceptable, so throw in some unbelievably obscure tracks that have only ever been heard if you got to the end of the oldest album, on tape, backwards as a bonus track once given free with a magazine that ceased to exist before any other festival goers were born. (This might get you extra likes for your brilliant perfect metal mind, too) In reply, if anyone suggests classic tracks that everyone loves, this gives you mountains of hate material.

Tip 13. The rival festival line up is better.

Always. This is the trump card always. No matter if they have a line up you have personally written, if you cannot afford to go to it, and you paid for a ticket to another festival in the hope they would pick your line up, and you watched as all your bands were booked at a rival festival, the one you are going to is always better. Every other festival that year is crud. The festival you have a ticket to however,  is still valid to hate, you must publicly state that you wish you had never bought a ticket, you want a refund or you will just not bother going and are selling your ticket. Stating you have already used your ticket as toilet paper  is a phrase you can use right up until the hour before you leave for the festival.

Tip 14.  You are going to Boycott the festival.

This works great. You can drum up support from the other festival haters by the hour. Let the festival ass-wiper organisers play to an empty field, that will sort the men from the boys. Remember not to post your group festival photo’s on Facebook afterwards however. Or if you do, state that you could not get a refund, so the festival forced you into it against your will. Call them “a bunch of corporate cunts”.

Tip 15. If the Line Up Looks good – find something else to hate.

Let’s face it, a festival might book some of the bands you like. If this happens, do not panic. If all your lines of hate have been applied and the line up is still holding strong, focus on whatever the weakest link is.  There is always something you can hate. The toilets perhaps? The fact is isn’t walking distance from your house? Is your favourite obscure beer on sale? You can always lambast the headliners latest release if it wasn’t as good as perhaps some of their other albums in your educated opinion, obviously.

Or, go all in and slate their latest release just for the hell of it, remember to call it “Gay” or a derivitive spelling of the same.  Have they ever played in the UK before? That’s a reason to wade in with a “waste of money, I saw them last year at a better festival overseas” You also can create panic by constantly advising that a monsoon is expected and that everyone will get dysentery from toilet overflow. Slate the camping, even though you take your own tent, and ignore the fact it is likely to be your fellow campers wiping their crud on the toilet walls rather than the bands/organisers. or if all else fails, just say “Meh” and show your superiority.

Hopefully this will give you plenty of ideas (you obviously already knew all of these, it’s just a gentle reminder) to boost your hate agenda for the next festival season. A good hater knows that there can only be one festival line up that is valid, his own, and that anyone that vocalises their pleasure at a festival line up that does not match this, is an idiot.

There’s also a way you can create your own festival, if you have done enough hating for the day, and don’t have a spare 8 figure bank balance. Try out The Music Festivals Game, book your own bands, clean your own toilets and pit your festival line up against others.

Then we’ll see who’s boss, eh.