The following report is courtesy of Bryan Reesman from Grammy.com:

It's summertime, so plenty of heavy metal and hard rock festivals and tours are rolling across America, shaking the rafters with loud guitars and screaming fans. But for all the hoopla surrounding OzzFest, Warped Tour, Sounds Of The Underground and other traveling rock and roll circuses, not to mention the steady growth of annual events like the New England Metal And Hardcore Festival, there are even greater numbers of heavy music festivals in England and across Europe that are attracting tens of thousands of fans per weekend and making an even greater cultural impact. Volume-driven events like Wacken Open Air, Download and Graspop have become the major destinations for headbangers of all persuasions.

"The festivals are getting more and more important because the people come together from everywhere, and the Open Airs are becoming a real happening for the fans from different places and countries," declares ATROCITY frontman Alex Krull. "Actually the audience is becoming the 'star' and not just the band playing on stage. Some festivals last for several days, and the people are celebrating together, joining the metal markets, or making new friends."

Singer DORO PESCH, who is based both in New York and Düsseldorf, Germany, believes there are more festivals overseas because the demand is greater. "I think that people are really into metal and rock again, almost like it used to be in the '80s," she observes. "The festivals are sometimes sold out in a couple of days. The time is good for our kind of music again. It's really, really great."

During the '80s, Monsters of Rock at Castle Donington in England was the festival to play, then by the early '90s it was the Dutch three-day extravaganza Dynamo Open Air. There were few festivals then, but by the late '90s, when Monsters of Rock had disappeared and Dynamo was experiencing various financial and logistical problems before its eventual demise, other events had sprouted up to carry the torch. These included the burgeoning Wacken Open Air in Germany, now the largest metal festival in Europe with 65,000 attendees, although it has plenty of growing competition from similarly minded events like Graspop (in Belgium), Fields of Rock (Holland), With Full Force and Bang Your Head (Germany) and Sweden Rock. And larger mainstream events like England's Download, which drew an estimated 80,000 people this year, also pull in a strong headbanger contingent.

Wacken is certainly a beacon of metal for Europe. "Over 60,000 metal fans will make their yearly pilgrimage to the small town of Wacken and make it the metal capital of the world," declares Jaap Wagemaker, A&R; and head of promotion for Nuclear Blast Records. "People are flying in from Australia, Scandinavia, Japan, South America and the USA to be there." This year's headliners include BLIND GUARDIAN, SAXON, DIMMU BORGIR, IMMORTAL, and IN FLAMES, and there will be special reunion shows from POSSESSED and SACRED REICH.

The sheer diversity of the festival rosters is what makes so many of these events so intriguing to seasoned American rockers. Take the first day of Graspop at the end of June as an example: The lineup featured AEROSMITH, WITHIN TEMPTATION, PAPA ROACH, CELTIC FROST and THIN LIZZY. Download (at Donington) featured three stages with acts as widespread as LINKIN PARK, IRON MAIDEN, BOWLING FOR SOUP, NAPALM DEATH, PORCUPINE TREE and BUCKCHERRY.

For many music fans in both Europe and America, Germany is the heavy metal homeland, with traditional metal still flourishing through fast-fading trends, unlike in America where it went underground for a decade. "I think in Europe the traditional metal bands are a little bit bigger, and here the new kind of metal bands are bigger," notes Pesch. "They get more support from radio and media, and in every city in America you have rock radio stations. In Europe radio airplay is very limited. In Germany there is no rock radio at all, and if they call it rock radio, it's still the Top 40. They would never play the heavier stuff."

Read more here.