About COPENHELL

COPENHELL is a festival that celebrates rock and metal culture. It respects the past, represents the present and paves the way for the future. It is characterized by great respect for those that have been a part of creating and building the heavy music scene throughout the years, a strong shared desire to bring contemporary bands to the stages and not least the drive to support future talents and help them towards their breakthrough.

COPENHELL provides space for everything from new local bands to big international acts. The festival reflects the development of heavy music and serves a sharply curated selection of music experiences every year, which appeals to both those who want to experience the biggest bands live, those who want to experience new and unknown groups, and everything in between.

No matter whether you were born wearing a battle vest and headbanged before you could crawl, or you have never attended a festival before, you will feel welcome at COPENHELL. This is the place where all generations meet in their shared love of heavy music and culture. At COPENHELL, there is room for everyone who ventures through the gates of hell with the desire to experience a rock and metal festival of international class on blackened Danish soil.

Hard rock and heavy metal is music that will bruise you – quite literally! Everyone who has tried being a part of a roaring moshpit, where hundreds of people throw themselves around in one great mass of euphoric excitement, or experienced a Wall of Death that collides like two Scottish highland armies, can confirm that it is a wild experience!

Fortunately, this is also a completely optional activity, as everyone is free to enjoy music at COPENHELL in the way that they prefer. We typically say that COPENHELL is the festival ”where you are allowed to do it” – obviously while showing other festival guests as much respect as possible.

Heavy music is born from a multitude of subcultures that have historically been opposed to the mainstream. Today, heavy music has become mainstream itself, and we hear it in everything from big Hollywood movies to the evening news, and the amount of festivals dedicated to rock and metal all over the world is staggering.

Yet, it is still music that also provokes and challenges norms. The rock and metal universe is a very varied one with music that asks insisting questions and puts its finger on sore nerves and presses hard into them – or just music that is cheeky, unpretentious or inappropriate.

The sound is often raw and provocative, the lyrical universes are typically wild and evil, and stage shows can contain provocative symbolism and behaviour. Rock and metal evoke both emotions and thoughts, and they are often accompanied by the controversiality that has followed them historically.

All of this is an integral part of the heavy music genres’ history and development, and we welcome most of it at COPENHELL – also bands that may today be seen as less modern in their artistic expressions. Seriousness goes hand in hand with self-irony in the rock and metal culture, which is full of humour and detailed references and often challenges authorities and norms.

We are, in other words, unable to guarantee that no one will be insulted by stage shows experienced at COPENHELL. At the same time, we don’t want everything to become too polished and harmless. Music must be allowed to take stabs at prejudice and push boundaries, and the artists must be given the freedom to do so.

COPENHELL is one of Denmark’s biggest music festivals today and as such, it gives you ample opportunity throughout all four festival days to seek out alternative experiences if you know that a specific band is not your cup of tea.

The goal for every music festival is to work hard on ensuring that the festival guests have the best time possible. COPENHELL is both obligated and challenged by being one of Denmark’s biggest festivals today.

We have a great responsibility to give our guests a safe festival experience, and maintain and develop the positive culture which COPENHELL is built on. We do this, among other things, with our Safe & Sound initiative which focuses on mental health and helps festival guests with urgent problems that cannot be solved by our medics.

We tolerate no manner of harassment or hate speech at COPENHELL – whatsoever. We moderate our online channels decisively in order to create safe digital spaces with constructive conversation, and we take all inquiries about any issues during the festival very seriously.

All year round, we encourage festival guests to respect and take care of each other, and help us ensure that COPENHELL is a pleasant place for everyone. Particularly also for neurodiverse persons or others who might experience difficulties being among so many people when they venture out to enjoy live music.

COPENHELL has been on a long journey, and both the festival itself and our various spin-offs have been in constant development. When COPENHELL Freezes Over uses the COPENHELL platform as a launch pad for new bands that are ready to reach for the skies both in Denmark and in the rest of the world. COPENHELL Rock Academy helps young women and non-binary persons create communities and get started playing hard and heavy music. The geek universe COPENHELL Con has been an incredible success at the festival, where it gives the audience entirely new experiences and deep immersion between the concerts.

Moreover, we offer a formidable experience, rich in tradition, at the popular annual COPENHELL Metal Cruise, where we ferry both bands and music fans from Copenhagen in Denmark to Oslo in Norway and back again for a full-on party weekend on board.

COPENHELL is much more than just an annual music festival. It is a great and diverse community with a strong cultural driving force behind it. Everone of us that works with the festival feel that wonderful connection every time we see someone else wearing a COPENHELL, whether it is on the street, in a bus, on a vacation or in television.

We are legion – and there is nothing like that wry smile, the wink and those discreet horns exchanged between festival fans meeting each other out in the public. We also feel this very special spirit among our audience on the festival site, and we are eternally grateful for all the consideration and kindness that people show each other every year.

COPENHELL’s audience is a great, extensive family which, just like a normal family, contains a lot of different attitudes, experiences and outlooks, which we must all agree to disagree on when it is required of us.

COPENHELL represents very broadly in terms of both music and culture. We know that we will never be able to please everyone, and that has never been our mission either. We do not offer an entire festival full of only the most venomous and evil black metal acts that could conceivably be dragged out of the darkness. On the other hand, we don’t want to replace all the heavy and extreme music with soft rock in order to please an even broader audience. At COPENHELL, festival guests will get all of it and thereby the chance to find both familiar and new experiences as they please.

Festival guests form new communities and interest groups all the time, and the understanding that everyone enjoys music in their own personal way is starting to settle. We do it alone, in couples, in groups. Some people make a lot of noise and enter full party mode, others prefer to take it slow and easy. Groups of women build accommodating and strong communities that help more people go out and experience the music and culture live. We have room for all of it.

In other words, the COPENHELL audience is not just one big uniform mass. It is a diverse gathering of music enthusiasts, with everyone benefitting from seeing the heavy music culture being opened up to even more people and new experiences. Also, COPENHELL is not a party exclusive to those in the know. We are also very open to curious newcomers and every year, people visit us for the very first time – and leave the festival with amazing experiences behind them and very often the desire to take one step further and become a part of this culture themselves.

Therefore, our festival has what we never hesitate to call the world’s very best audience.