It may be debatable if it’s the first dedicated heavy rock festival to be held on Danish soil, but Berlingske Tidende reckons it’s the event the country has been waiting for “since Lars Ulrich had a newspaper round in Hellerup,” the upmarket Copenhagen suburb where the Metallica drummer was born.
Copenhell was an instant hit with the media when in January it launched its marketing campaign with a minute-and-a-half-long promo video that portrayed the devil himself, flame red with spiky horns and wearing a trench coat, emerging from a Copenhagen subway.
The film, which continued with him taking a brief tour of the city and buying a hot dog from a burger stall near the harbour, got coverage for the number of hits it got on copenhell.com.
The organisers said the event would be as hot as hell and maybe the devil would show.
Another hit with the Copenhagen journalists was the Copenhell beer produced for the event. The BT reporter said Copenhell was “a quite brilliant experience.”
“A lot of people were very drunk, which helped in a way because it was raining all the time,” said Live Nation Denmark promoter Anders Wahren, after a week of heavy downpours reduced late sales to a trickle.
There were nearly 5,000 per day on the old industrial works site at Refshaleøen, about a couple of thousand less than LN had hoped, although the media fanfare may have well made up for the rain-induced shortfall.
The acts June 11-12 included Deftones, Megadeth, Hatebreed, Danko Jones, Dillinger Escape Plan and Suicidal Tendencies.