No, they do not drink blood nor do they engage in satanic rituals. On the contrary, fans of metal music form a particularly well-bred audience, as revealed by a major survey conducted by Corentin Charbonnier. For several years, this doctor in anthropology and teacher at the faculty of Tours has dissected the profile of the spectators of Hellfest, the sixteenth edition of which begins this Thursday, June 15.
And, oh surprise, those who are going to be unleashed in front of the stages are mostly senior executives, cultured, relatively old and with a rather comfortable lifestyle. At the same time, it is better to have a well-stocked wallet to afford a four-day pass at 339 euros, not to mention the many extras, including merchandising. Despite these constantly rising prices, the festival ticket office (which hardly lives on any public subsidy) sold out in less than an hour! This is how 60,000 people from all over the world will settle in the small medieval town of Clisson (Loire-Atlantique) until Sunday evening to listen to and admire the monumental shows of Kiss, Iron Maiden, Slipknot or even Mötley. Crüe for the headliners, and nearly 180 other bands spanning the entire spectrum of metal culture. Here, hell really is paved with good intentions!
Corentin Charbonnier: First and foremost, I was a “metalhead” myself, and in 2008 I started doing my doctorate in anthropology on Hellfest which lasted until 2015. It was an approach as pilgrimage site. I compared it to a religious phenomenon and, through the interviews with the spectators but also the musicians, it is ultimately very similar. After 2015, I wanted to continue my research and I started a new statistical protocol on the public. We launched a first survey in 2019, then another in 2022. Out of 33,000 questionnaires sent, we collected more than 13,000 responses each time, which gives a very good sample. We asked for geographical origins and socio-demographic characteristics such as types of employment… We went a little further by trying to understand the link with metal – how they listen to it, since when, with whom, if they practice – then in relation to the festival – what they do there, how they experience it.
What do we learn about the profile of the festival-goer?
The average is quite old, 39 and a half, and half of the audience is senior executives, which has changed a lot from twenty years ago, when we were talking about a little more working-class music. There is also a greater presence of women: from 10% twenty years ago, it has risen to around 30% today. There are also more retirees (5%) than students at Hellfest. Finally, more than a quarter play music and, of those, nearly half have gone so far as to record a demo!
We are very far from the cliché, therefore!
It indeed breaks the clichés that generally hang around metal where it was long considered that it was listened to by marginal people, outside the norm, limited to the rejects of society, whereas on the contrary they are totally integrated. Apart from Hellfest, these are people who present a rate of visits to cinemas and museums at least equivalent to what is found in the French population for this same type of CSP.
What do we deduce?
We realize that the public ages with the festival. Today, 60% of festival-goers have been coming to Hellfest for five or more editions. It is therefore a very pilgrim public, which returns in an almost religious way and organizes its active life according to Hellfest (days off to ask for the opening of the ticket office, for the festival, but also to recover afterwards). What’s also interesting is that Hellfest has become a gateway to metal for another part of the public, who come to discover this style, which we didn’t have ten or fifteen years ago. . At that time, it was mainly the purists who read the specialized magazines that came.
Certainly, but this audience has always spent a lot on metal all year round. There is a form of devotion, whether in records but also in clothes and concerts. But we still have a lot of young people who arrive as volunteers at Hellfest.
Do we know how much the average festival goer spends at Hellfest?
Between 100 and 300 euros, not including the price of the pass. This includes food, drinks, possibly accommodation and, above all, merchandising. Three out of four festival-goers leave with at least one official T-shirt.
Where do festival-goers come from?
The most represented regions are Pays de la Loire, then Île-de-France and then Brittany. And there are 6% of foreigners, representing 77 nationalities. I got responses from Asia, South America, and even some people who come from South Africa every year!
The audience is overwhelmingly white?
It’s true that originally it was mostly a white-collar culture. Metal music was born in English working-class neighborhoods. However, in a good part of the African countries in particular, it is rather badly perceived. Some groups cannot play it because they are accused of Satanism. But that is changing and we are discovering that there are nuggets in many countries. The problem is that they have great difficulty in exporting. That said, this year at Hellfest, we have a group from India and another from Mongolia for example. And let’s not forget the Americans of Body Count and Rage Against the Machine (some musicians are Afro).
What are the primary motivations of festival-goers?
The atmosphere prevails over the poster. People buy their ticket and come no matter what, knowing that it will be interesting. Moreover, the festival is sold out even before the announcement of the groups. It’s “the place to be”, the ideal place, because it’s quiet. There is a strong feeling of security to live an extraordinary metal experience with big installations, a certain decorum, very slick compared to what you can see in other festivals.
Since this audience is older, do they come primarily out of nostalgia, to see bands they may have heard in their youth like Black Sabbath, Metallica or Iron Maiden?
More than nostalgia, there is above all one essential thing: our founding myths are all dying, so if we don’t see them now, it will be too late! For the oldest, it is a safe haven to see major artists, and for the youngest it is a way to see them at least once in their life. Even if Black Sabbath is no longer at the top, it remains the founding band of metal. Some young people regret, for example, having missed Motörhead [the group came in 2015 and the historic leader Lemmy Kilmister died a few months later, a huge sculpture pays homage to him on the Hellfest site, Ed] and Linkin Park [the singer , Chester Bennington, committed suicide in July 2017, a month after coming to Hellfest, Ed]. Finally, there is a transmission side from parents to their children. Unlike more current music, metal is transmitted within families, from one generation to another.
It started to appear in 2019 in a fairly minimal way. But it is a phenomenon that sociology already demonstrated in the 1950s: the larger a community becomes, the more there is an attempt at reappropriation. So, while attracting a new audience, we will inevitably displease some early viewers. From 2016, the Hellfest made this bet, successful, to bring together all styles of metal, which we do not see anywhere else in France. As a result, there are styles that are going to feel less represented today than they were before, and vice versa for others. And if we appeal to a certain audience, another may indeed be a little more disappointed. Perhaps the underground scene prefers to stay in between, but you should know that a group like Machine Gun Kelly [programmed Friday at 10 p.m., editor’s note], presented as a general public, goes into the metal sphere in the States -United.
Are we on the same type of audience in other festivals?
I also conducted a study on the Motocultor in Brittany [metal festival which will take place in Carhaix from August 17 to 20, editor’s note], where we find an audience more focused on black and death metal. It’s a subgenre also represented at Hellfest, but on the least popular stage (Altar) of the festival’s five. On the profile of Motocultor spectators, there is also a majority of CSPs, but as with Hellfest, it is getting old: in 2022, the average age was 34, compared to 27 in 2017.