Heavy Montreal 2016 – Saturday in photos (Nightwish, Mastodon, Sebastian Bach and more)

Heavy Montreal
August 7, 2016
Plaine des Jeux, Parc Jean-Drapeau

With a slimmed-down 2-day format and a completely re-designed festival grounds, this year’s Heavy Montreal focused more on the fan experience than ever before. Gone is the bloated 3-day schedule of 2015’s edition, along with it’s slew of punk bands and whatever genre Faith No More fits into. With this year’s emphasis on metal and mainstream hard rock, Heavy Montreal offered enough to interest a wide swath of heavy music fans, without stretching too far beyond its audience-appointed mandate.

The new, compact festival grounds allowed easy access between the facing main-stages, which operated like The Warped Tour, with one band beginning just as soon as the one on the opposite stage wrapped up. While the new site offered little opportunity for shade, it made the process of catching as many bands as possible incredibly simple (the third, smaller stage was a quick jot over).

Saturday highlights included the seemingly-ageless Sebastian Bach running through a set of classic Skid Row tracks, the pummelling psychedelic stomp of Mastodon, and the pyro-heavy Nightwish, bringing their elaborate Europrean festival stage-show to Montreal for the first time.

Below you can check out photos from the Saturday sets, courtesy of Jason Hughes. Stay tuned for photos from the Sunday sets, as well as the Heavy Mania wrestling bouts.

Five Finger Death Punch

Nightwish

Mastodon

Black Label Society

Sabaton

Sebastian Bach

Skeletonwitch

Fear Factory

The Dillinger Escape Plan

USA Out of Vietnam

Shiny Heavy People