I’ve always wanted to go to Warped Tour. All those amaz­ing bands for one day only really gets me excited, so when I read about a one day, multi-stage fest­ival called Slam Dunk I knew I had to go. Slam Dunk has been run­ning in Leeds, hold­ing club nights and cham­pi­on­ing unsigned bands. There two pre­vi­ous fest­ivals have been a suc­cess so it was good news when they announced that Slam Dunk fest­ival was guar­an­teed to be run­ning near you. For £25 a ticket you could see an array of bands and enjoy the fest­ival atmo­sphere without the hassle of lug­ging your tent around for a week­end; what’s not to love?

Slam Dunk South took place in Hert­ford­shire at the uni, and over­all the fest­ival was good, but a few major issues cropped up for every­one who atten­ded. First of all it was hard get­ting to the actual venue, which was set on uni cam­pus. The email sent round said that there would be a shuttle bus every ten minutes to pick people up from the train sta­tion, but the bus didn’t show up. The organ­isers hadn’t put a stew­ard at the sta­tion to guide the way and a lot of con­fused people got on wrong buses or ended up get­ting taxis. Some people braved the rain (myself included) to walk to the cam­pus, which was quite near to the train sta­tion. The second organ­isa­tional shambles was the ticket exchange. I simply don’t think the organ­isers were pre­pared for the num­ber of people show­ing up, which made the queues massive. Put­ting the e-tickets, guest­l­ist and VIP wrist­bands all at one stall with one per­son man­ning it was also stu­pid, and meant that a lot of people missed some of the first bands that were playing.

Finally get­ting into Slam Dunk, I man­aged to catch the end of Save Your Breath on the out­side stage, who were totally feed­ing off the tiny crowd of people who had man­aged to get into the fest­ival already. They kept get­ting applause from people queueing in the car park, mean­ing more people prob­ably saw them then they noticed. They played all of their hits, a really strong set. They even saw off the rain. Walk­ing around the fest­ival I found there to be a very chilled and friendly atmo­sphere. I joked with secur­ity and the bar staff were really friendly. The bonus of hav­ing Slam Dunk at the uni­ver­sity was uni-priced alco­hol, with two pints only cost­ing £6 (Ed: at my Uni, two pints cost £3.60!). The toi­lets were clean the entire day which was a wel­come surprise.

Fol­low­ing on from them were Mon­een who I was really excited about see­ing. They had an amaz­ing sound sup­port­ing Brand New on their UK tour last year and they didn’t fail to please on Sat­urday. Even through the rain they kept diving into the crowd, which seemed to be made up of ded­ic­ated Mon­een fans singing every word back to them. Some­thing which I exper­i­enced all through the day was quite poor sound qual­ity, which showed for Mon­een when the singer’s vocals couldn’t be heard for the first and second songs. How­ever it didn’t spoil the buzz as they played crowd favour­ite ‘Don’t Ever Tell Locke What He Can’t Do’. The band ended weirdly, with the singer jump­ing into the crowd and run­ning away. He didn’t even say good­bye! Maybe he wanted to get out of the rain?

The start and end times of the bands were unpre­dict­able, so I made my way over to the Imper­ial stage, which was focus­ing on thrash and metal bands. I bagged a good spot for the band I was most excited about see­ing, Fact. I feel really sorry for any­one who didn’t catch this band, because they poured their heart and soul into the per­form­ance. They claimed they would make everyone’s panties wet, and I chal­lenge any­one who was there not to agree that they did their job. They were full of energy, play­ing into the crowd and inter­act­ing with every­one. One again sound was an issue, with the singer repeatedly ask­ing for his mic to be turned up, but even so the crowd were mov­ing, start­ing mosh pits and punch­ing the low ceil­ing for the whole set. Fact played a lot of hits, the best being Fact of Life which every­one sang along to and the new single Slip Of The Lip. I’ve heard cri­ti­cism of this band before say­ing they use a back­ing track when per­form­ing but I can safely say that is rub­bish, they actu­ally make all that noise by them­selves. I was deaf in one ear for two days after­wards. They were by far the best band of the day and amaz­ing to exper­i­ence live.

Late in the day now, prob­lems star­ted to arise with the inside stages. Hav­ing three stages upstairs in the venue was never a good idea, as safety issues meant people were queueing down­stairs miss­ing their favour­ite bands who were play­ing to fewer people than they should have been. I queued to get to the Ker­rang! stage for twenty minutes, but the wait was made a bit more bear­able by secur­ity, who were hand­ing out water to people who looked uncom­fort­able. They didn’t deserve the abuse they were get­ting. I gave up on the traffic jam to get upstairs, which would prove to be a fatal error for any­one who wanted to see Four Year Strong, Cap­down or New Found Glory. The whole of the inside of the venue went on lock down, with no one allowed in or out. Even Chas P Wil­li­ams (formerly of Lightyear) couldn’t get inside to fin­ish his set, leav­ing his bassist and drum­mer stran­ded play­ing the same riff over and over again until the boun­cer would let him in! A state­ment released by Slam Dunk apo­lo­gises for the dis­ap­point­ments but that they are bound to have teeth­ing prob­lems with a new venue. Hope­fully next year they will either have more than one out­side stage or change ven­ues altogether.

The out­side stage was my favour­ite stage of the day; Against Me! played a strong set, the singer’s vocals soun­ded amaz­ing. The weather turned out to be dry for the rest of the night, as people danced in their own little circles to clas­sic AM! songs.

The last band of the night that I saw was Alkaline Trio. I have seen Alkaline Trio before but I have to say they played the strongest set I’ve ever heard them play. This band knows what their fans want to hear, with favour­ites such as Stu­pid Kid, Armaged­don and Radio being screamed out by both band and crowd. They chucked in lesser known but equally loved songs ‘97 and War­brain, mixed in with a couple of songs from the new album. Everything about their per­form­ance was good, a per­fect way to end the day.

Over­all, I prob­ably would go to Slam Dunk again. Des­pite the over­crowding inside the crowd mostly stayed pos­it­ive and cheery. It was easy to talk to people and easy to talk to bands after their sets. Most bands hung around their merch stands, there wasn’t any celeb VIP treat­ment. Most bands set up and dis­mantled all their equip­ment and seemed to be really happy to be there. Hope­fully next year the weather will be brighter and the organ­isers won’t make the same mis­takes again.

Image found here, released by AlexDiru under a CC-BY-SA licence.