Featured image: Slam Dunk
It’s the start of the 2024 festival season, and if you’re ready for another year of unforgettable live music, an entire day of moshing and the tastiest food stalls in any English field, you’re in luck. Slam Dunk Festival (North) returns to Temple Newsam Park in Leeds on 26th May with a line-up promising to be bigger, better and bolder than ever before.
It’s 18 years since Fall Out Boy headlined the first Slam Dunk, held on a single stage in the city centre. This year’s lineup, meanwhile, spreads itself over a packed schedule of five stages, stacked with the great and good of rock and punk, including what promises to be some extremely special special sets.
Headlining this year’s main stage are You Me At Six, who will play their final UK festival. With two UK chart-topping albums under their studded belts and last year’s Truth Decay showing that the band are still at their creative peak, Weybridge’s finest are going out on a high after 20 years of constant graft. This is your final chance to catch ‘Bite My Tongue’, ‘Underdog’ and ‘Take on the World’ live, but with an eight-album back catalogue of pristine alt-rock to call upon, it’ll be a career-spanning celebration.
There’s a hefty dose of nostalgia running through the main stage, with The All-American Rejects on just before YMAS and pop-punk heroes State Champs revisiting their The Finer Things debut album from 2013. However, there’s a huge buzz around the return of Head Automatica. Two decades on from their appropriately-named Decadence LP, Daryl Palumbo and co have teased their performance with ‘Bear the Cross’, their first new music since 2006.
Elsewhere, I Prevail headline the heavier second stage, ably assisted by Funeral For A Friend, Asking Alexandria and The Blackout among others. There’s more pop-punk shenanigans courtesy of Waterparks, who top the Kerrang! tent, which has an eclectic lineup further down with everything from Pale Waves’ slinky pop to the untrammelled fury of Bob Vylan.
The Wonder Years and Mom Jeans lead the way on the Key Club stage, a lighter dessert after feasting on the unrelenting hardcore of H2O, Stick To Your Guns and Guilt Trip earlier in that day. Finally, The Interrupters have top-billing on what is effectively the ska-punk stage, which will also see Goldfinger, Big D & The Kids Table, and The Selecter roll back the years.
The festival is now in its fourteenth year, and it’s come a long way since its humble beginnings at Leeds’ Millennium Square back in 2006. Akin to the Vans Warped Tour in the US, Slam Dunk has become a staple in the calendars of alternative music lovers across the UK and this year promises to be as ear-splitting and head-banging as ever.
Slam Dunk returns to Hatfield Park on Saturday 25th May and Leeds Temple Newsam on Sunday 26th May. Visit slamdunkfestival.com for tickets and more information.
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