Bang your head

The outdoor concert Bang Your Head is a place held annually in early summer Metal - Festival in Balingen in the Zollernalbkreis in Baden-Wuerttemberg .

Stage of the Bang Your Head Festival, during the Ensiferum performance (2008)

history

The first edition took place in 1996 as a party with 600 spectators, including advertisers, Heavy, or what !? -Subscribers and "scene insiders" of the area.

The name of the festival is derived from " headbanging ", a type of dance that is very popular among metal fans.

Until 1998 the festival took place in the Stefan-Hartmann-Halle in Tübingen . But then there was no longer enough space for the increasing number of visitors and the organizer Horst Odermatt dared to take the risk of organizing Bang your Head as an open-air concert for the first time in 1999. A suitable location was finally found in the Balingen exhibition center. The festival quickly gained notoriety and popularity and is still valued today for its relaxed atmosphere and stylish audience.

In 2005 the tenth Bang Your Head Festival took place. 22 bands, all of which had been guests before, performed. The festival had been reported as sold out a few days earlier with 20,000 visitors. It was overshadowed by a major storm: rain, hail and storm devastated the camping area, so that around 500 music fans had to be evacuated. 40 people were injured and there was considerable property damage.

In 2009 the campsite, the so-called "Metalcamp", was relocated due to space problems. It is now located on an area of around 100,000 square meters further away with a supermarket, party tent (with catering), shower facilities, sufficient Dixie toilets and a shuttle bus connection to the festival site.

In 2010, for the first time ever, three bands played as an alternative program in the Volksbank exhibition hall.

In 2015, the 20th anniversary of the Bang your Head Festival was celebrated under the motto Best of the Best . All but one new band (Dream Theater) had already been guests and the festival lasted three days instead of just two days. The first bands were announced at the 2014 festival.

In 2018, 20 years of Open Air was celebrated, because the festival has only been held as an open air in Balingen since 1999 and previously took place in a concert hall. In the run-up to the 2018 festival, the motto "End of an Era" was announced on a promo poster. The organizer Horst Franz responded to rumors about the end of the festival with an emotional speech in which the tense financial situation with regard to the headlining fees, shit storms on the internet against the festival and the oversupply of festivals were discussed. "End of an Era" would, however, represent a change, namely new headliners would have to be found and the ticket price for 2019 would have to be increased by € 20. The Bang Your Head 2019 is also not yet certain - the date is set, but the contracts have not yet been signed. However, the first bands for the 2019 festival were announced in September 2018.

The most famous music groups and headliners of the festival include:

Megadeth , Motörhead , Anthrax , Saxon , Deep Purple , Hammerfall , Foreigner , Alice Cooper , Scorpions , UDO , Dio , Heaven and Hell , Doro , Judas Priest , Nightwish , Rhapsody , Slayer , Amon Amarth , Thin Lizzy , Twisted Sister , Children of Bodom , Helloween , Gamma Ray , In Flames , Stratovarius , Y&T , Edguy , Accept , Kreator

useful information

On the eve of the festival, a warm-up show with some bands from the line-up took place in Hechingen every year until 2008 , and since 2009 in the Balingen exhibition hall.
The band Foreigner released a live DVD of their 2006 performance entitled Live at Bang Your Head Festival .
The festival has been taking place over three days since 2015.
In 2018 the Zollern-Alb-Kurier published a special edition Bang Your Head !!! Kurier published and distributed as a print at the festival.