On festivals

Czechia’s Brutal Assault just completed its twenty ninth cycle. And with festival season wrapping up, what better time to curse the nature of change by meticulously focusing on the gripes.

2026 was my fifth visit to Josefov, the 18^th Century fortress in Jaroměř that houses Brutal Assault. It’s fair to say it’s changed a fair bit since my first visit in 2014. Naturally this has given me pause. Like the proverbial frog failing to hop out of the pan as the water is slowly brought to the boil, the outdoor music festival is morphing into a summer camp. And like the frog, each step to boiling point is gradual enough in isolation, yet taken together represents a slow march toward doom. Unlike Hellfest or Bloodstock, this quietly confident Czech operation seemed less susceptible to fanfare despite playing host to some big names. But this year a threshold was crossed.

Non-musical activities have always been part and parcel of a festival. I’ve made use of Brutal Assault’s horror cinema during a lull in the lineup. I’ve taken in the art exhibits, the Mad Max cosplayers that set up shop each day in a corner of the site. But this year the abundance of supplementary recreation on offer was such that one could happily waltz through the week without even paying lip service to the lineup itself. There are chilli eating contests, craft stalls, morning workouts, lectures, workshops, and a haunted house. Novelty onesies veer from moshpit to moshpit like sharks attracted to blood, seemingly indifferent to who’s actually playing (incidentally, when did circle pits become the default? I remember a lot more mindless shoving back in the day). Kids are just everywhere. There’s a kids’ daycare centre, culminating in a special end-of-summer-camp style show for the parents and…anyone else passing by. And in amongst the common fan lurks the influencer cast, livestreaming their day, holding up signs requesting the drumstick and setlist, traditional souvenirs turned trinkets of content creation. But this pales in comparison to what Brutal Assault’s sleepless social media team are capable of. Cameras haunt every crevice of the festival grounds. Within the milling crowds, harvesting every micro interaction, every meal eaten, every attendee in fancy dress, every t-shirt bought and marriage proposal accepted, no crowd surf goes undocumented. All to be duly churned into Instagram ready clips endlessly broadcast across screens installed in every corner of site. Sets that ended minutes before are instantaneously hacked up into slickly edited TikTok shaped vignettes. Every inch of activity from the floor of the mosphit to the drone’s-eye view above is monitored in the hope of provoking FOMO in those foolish enough not to be here.

None of this is shocking. We’ve long known that outdoor festivals have been rebranding themselves into theme parks. If anything we’ve now entered the acceptance stage of grief. The problem, if problem it be, is much bigger than any one festival or even festivals themselves. It is a sign of a much wider and permanent split within the good ship metal.

Sure, for Brutal Assault at least, its core business remains intact. Traditional festival goers can enjoy a solid, diverse lineup of acts big and small, managed with military precision through five days of baking heat. Quality food, beer, and all the essentials of life are readily available throughout the festival grounds. You can still happily enjoy the bill, get steaming on pilsner, and quietly ignore the surplus pomp.

But all the while this parallel summer fete unfolds around us. A duality in audience demand that Brutal Assault have nimbly navigated, patiently curating a please-all bill whilst vastly expanding its syllabus of extra curricular activities, catering to those happy to drift between viral opportunities in front of the cameras and the various sundry amusements on offer. Nor is the constant stream of quick turnaround digital content all that surprising, just another outlet leveraging social media to promote their wares.

So should the proverbial frog simply learn to live with boiling water? Or maybe the problem isn’t the boiling water itself but the source of the heat. What’s driving this demand for festivals to be all things to all people? And what does it mean?

To answer that, let’s dive headfirst into the thorniest issue, kids. I hesitate to wade into this minefield, especially as a dad developing an extreme hostility to armchair parenting from others. But judgement beckoned from all corners of Josefov Fortress last week. Many of the kids I saw at Brutal Assault were young, not able to walk young, strapped to parents in slings young, donning t-shirts like “Daddy’s little metalhead”.

Being lucky enough to leave my son with his mum, Brutal Assault was one of two festival outings I managed this year (Scarborough’s Fortress Festival being the other), a favour I’m now returning as she jets off for her own festival week. So on the one hand yes, not all parents have the luxury of flexible childcare.  Making these traditionally adult festivals more family friendly affords less fortunate parents the opportunity to catch an experience they would otherwise be denied. Yet on the other, shoehorning my son into my love of metal by forced marching him to five days of extreme heat and noise feels like trying to have my cake and eat a cheeseburger. Many of the kids I saw were being dragged around with a look of bemused indifference. Clearly unsure how to process the dense crowds and intense music swirling around them. For my son, developing an interest in music distinct from my own is far over the horizon. And until then, when he’s in my care it’s soft plays and feeding farm animals until further notice.

The point extends well beyond festivals and even metal itself. As millennials age into parenthood they struggle to shed elements of their youth that may directly conflict with having young kids around. There is no right way to deal with this, but some ways are more right than others. And one obvious consequence was all around me at Brutal Assault, as festivals are asked to be all things to all people, a one stop shop.

This is the heat source under the pan of water. The ask from fans no longer willing to compromise one element of their identity for the sake of another. Once a place where life, health, and hygiene were put on hold for the sake of music, booze, and good company, a metal festival is now a holiday resort, gig, family friendly village fete, food festival, beer festival, craft fair, massage parlour, gym, tattooist, a Viking neckbeard supplies emporium, and even a hairdresser’s, all wrapped up in a social media feeding frenzy. Each one of these things is benign enough in isolation, but taken together something is sacrificed for the sake of trying to be all things to all people. A simple metal festival must now perform the role of an all inclusive package holiday. They’ll be doing cruises next…

Despite these misgivings, demanding that we return to a simpler time feels churlish, especially with the number of indoor all-dayers still operating throughout the year that supply the bread and butter of just showcasing music to appreciative punters. The atmosphere at Brutal Assault was indeed fantastic, as a were many of the bands. A diverse, friendly crowd all receiving their own tailored experience.  

And so we return to the great bifurcation. On the one hand, simple music fans. On the other, a much larger group I call casualised fans, or fans who are more interested in metal as an aesthetic and lifestyle than a form of music. This cleavage has been in place for a long time, perhaps since the dawn of metal. But as its populace expands across demographics old and young, I speculate that it will only intensify over time. A smaller group of traditional punters are retreating to the world of local gigs, tours, and larger all-dayers, whilst a larger bracket of casualised fans are cosplaying across metal holiday camps, absorbing its distinct aesthetic into scroll friendly nuggets and light curiosities. For now, the lineup remains the primary selling point for all the major festivals, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this too is gradually sidelined as acts with the biggest name recognition finally retire or die, until eventually the frog is boiled alive in pageantry.