So in a nutshell, the good parts:
- excellent weather, very hot but quite stable (except the cold night at the camping)
- you could bring in water bottles with caps (I suppose this was OK because of the heat)
- grass everywhere, so Clisson was not covered in dust and we could sit anywhere
- the Altar and Temple are now two separate scenes, still connected
- the Altar, Temple and Valley scenes all had a big screen displaying either the band currently playing or announcing the next band
- a very diverse crowd, all generations of rock/metal lovers could be found
- no more HellStairs to reach the camping (see our 2014 report)
- toilets were rather clean
- few last minute changes/cancellations
- the cashless card (that you can reuse for future editions), no more tokens
- collective showers with no queue, if you don't care about intimacy
- even better decorations, and that 10th anniversary fireworks was crazy good
- Blizzard went overboard with their own decoration: animated pre-show for bands announcements on the MainStages, a tavern where you could play HearthStone (and a bit of WOW) while listening to
Charlie Parra whom they invited to play some WOW tunes, a hammer contest, the train from Clisson to Nantes entirely decorated, etc.
- I was guided to a parking in no time on my arrival on Thursday
- the Woodbrass stand in Hell City Square, you could test Gibson guitars equipped with autotuning systems
- all the bands I saw performed admirably
And the bad parts (although "bad" is too big a word for many of these issues):
- it still feels like there are too many people
- not much space to watch the shows on the screens of the Altar/Temple/Valley
- no screen for the Warzone scene
- access to the Warzone was still problematic when big bands were playing (
Bodycount)
- when a band played under the Altar, if you stood to the right side you could hear the band playing under the Valley at the same time
- the sound blacked out on the MainStage 1 four times (Airbourne, Scorpions, Cavalera Conspiracy, Korn)
- the RFID chip on the festival wristbands felt a bit useless, not sure it really saved some queuing time
- the part with the least grass was... the forgotten small "wood" (aka the former best place to rest)
- "compost toilets" in the camping. I don't mind the concept, but you really had to seat on a hole in a plank of wood to take a shit
- queuing for official Hellfest merch was tough, and some items were sold out after the first day (including discounted 2016 tickets)
- it could take more than 1h to get to the individual shower cabinets on Saturday and Sunday
- fashion trends bent towards mullet/undercut hair and hipster beards
- the skate park looked good but I found it useless, a waste of space
- It took me like 3 hours to get my car out of the parking, on Monday morning. Nobody was there to control the traffic
- the Marshall stand in Hell City Square, with terribly overpriced t-shirts and earphones. Better buy cheap fakes if you only fancy wearing that Marshall logo.
I'm still undecided about going there next year, because I realized I wasn't interested in seeing bands play live anymore. I took more pleasure in enjoying the evolution of the festival; I like what they choose to do to answer the constraints/complaints they received and the new ideas they bring every year. Though maybe I don't need to attend the whole 3 days to witness that.
I may write more (do you want to read more?) but in the meantime you should see the official picture gallery (
here) and the videos of some of the shows (
here)