It’s now only six weeks until this year’s Nene Vally Rock Festival! With yet another stellar line-up, covering multiple genres, NVRF is not to be missed. Set in the grounds of Grimesthorpe Castle, Bourne, Lincolnshire, it really is the perfect place to enjoy the variety of music on offer. The full line -up can be […]
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A week after EDDFEST, I found myself thinking back to Friday afternoon, when the Podpads site first opened. I spoke with the team before taking a MetalWalk with Emily, who guided me through the accommodation field and explained how the site comes together. Even after the tents have been packed away, the rhythm of those days still feels present.
Festival accommodation has changed dramatically over the past two decades, and many guests now search for reliable glamping options that offer comfort, security and a calmer arrival experience. Podpads has become a familiar name for anyone looking for luxury festival stays at events such as EDDFEST, where demand for high‑quality bell tents and wooden units continues to grow.
The company’s story began with a simple idea at Glastonbury, and the approach behind the brand still shapes the way guests experience festival accommodation today.
Podpads began with a desire for a better Glastonbury weekend. Roland and Robbie, the company’s founders, arrived at the festival in 2005 and decided a tent no longer offered the comfort they wanted. They built a small wooden structure for themselves and brought the unit along the following year.
Crew members behind the stage noticed the design immediately. A lockable door, solid walls and a secure sleeping space created a level of comfort that canvas could not match. Interest grew quickly, and the pair returned the next summer with a pallet’s worth of units. Growth continued from that moment, shaped by a steady, family‑run approach that still defines the atmosphere on site.
Walking through the accommodation field at EDDFEST, the original idea feels present in every row. Luxe pads stand in neat formation, each one resembling a compact beach hut with wooden frames and simple interiors. Guests sleep in singles or doubles, and bunks are added for groups when needed.
Nearby sit the octopads, a hybrid design that combines wooden walls and lockable doors with a canvas roof. The result feels practical and warm, a blend of structure and softness that suits the festival environment.
Further along are the safaris, long canvas tents that sleep six, and the classic five‑metre bell tents, which usually hold four guests. All wooden units come with power, while the tents rely on charging stations placed around the field. Those stations are new this season, created by Roland.
Tables, stools, mirrors and chairs in the pamper area were also built in‑house. Pre‑season involved a full upgrade, giving the entire site a refreshed and cohesive feel.
Sustainability plays a role in the build. Pallets left over from deliveries are reused whenever possible, although some projects require new materials. As Emily told me while we walked the rows, “We try to reuse whatever we can. It just makes sense when you’re building a whole village from scratch.”
EDDFEST’s scale is striking. A total of 356 accommodation units sit across the field, including 320 bell tents, 33 luxe pads and 3 octopads. Guest capacity reaches 820 once every space is filled.
The team builds the entire site in four days. Ground markings go down on Sunday, followed by three days of construction in heavy heat with barely a breeze. The crew works with calm precision and finishes on schedule every time. Take‑down is faster, beginning on Sunday and finishing by Wednesday.
Crew members live on site in a dedicated camp with a kitchen and a full‑time chef. Rosie leads the kitchen this season, preparing plant‑based meals chosen for environmental and ethical reasons as well as practicality.
Large festival sites often require long walks to reach crew catering, which can consume an entire break. As Emily put it, “If the kitchen’s close, people actually get a break. You don’t want to spend half your downtime walking across a site.” A kitchen placed beside the work area gives the team genuine rest. They receive three cooked meals a day, self‑serve breakfast, ice lollies delivered to the field and iced coffees during the hottest hours.
Despite the workload, crew members still enjoy time off. Reception duties take place over the weekend, including check‑ins, bag carrying, walking guests to their tents and making sure everyone slept well enough to enjoy the next night. Once those hours are complete, the team heads into the festival to see bands and relax.
Guests often mention how helpful the guided walk to their tent feels, especially after hauling bags through a busy site. Festivals can be confusing to navigate, and a friendly escort removes stress from the arrival experience.
The pamper station adds another thoughtful touch. Guests use hairdryers, straighteners and mirrors throughout the day, preparing for the festival in a shaded and comfortable space. New canopy tents make the area cooler and more spacious than previous seasons. Every piece of furniture inside was built by Roland, which gives the space a handmade character that guests appreciate.
Emily has worked with Podpads since 2023 and is now entering her fourth season. In her earlier years, she had winters off and spent that time travelling through Asia and Australia, but the role has since become year‑round. Winter months are quieter, focused on planning, followed by a full summer of events.
“It’s a strange cycle,” Emily said. “Winter’s quiet, then suddenly you’re building a village in four days.” The job feels unique and enjoyable, shaped by a sense of community and the satisfaction of watching the site grow from an empty field into a temporary village.
By Sunday morning, the field had settled into its own quiet rhythm. Guests looked better rested, moving slowly through the rows with coffees in hand, and the village Emily showed me on Friday felt lived‑in without ever losing its order.
Even as the festival wound down, the site stayed clean and steady, a small, comfortable corner of EDDFEST that gave people space to breathe before their journey home and the weekend came to an end.
Exciter Records is proud to announce the release of Judas Priest’s ‘Sad Wings of Destiny‘ (Original 1976 Masters), a newly restored 50th Anniversary archival edition that will make its debut in CD format exclusively at merchandise stands during Judas Priest’s ‘Faithkeepers‘ Summer European Tour. Created to celebrate one of heavy metal’s most influential and enduring […]
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East Midlands based singer-songwriter and musician Wayne Banks releases his debut solo single, ‘World We Share’. This will be the first taste of a busy year before his full debut album slated for release in November later this year.
Recorded at Old School Recording Studios (Wirral) and mastered at the iconic Abbey Road Studios (London), ‘World We Share’ embraces a moderate-tempo, upbeat slice of indie pop/rock; it is a rich festival anthem built for a sing along and fans of Brit rock classics like The Who, The Jam, and Oasis, but still carries real weight beneath the hooks. The track is a social protest anthem centred on empowerment, class struggle and the reclamation of personal autonomy, drawing directly from Banks’ own childhood experiences growing up on a council estate.
“It’s a social protest anthem, centering on themes of empowerment, class struggle and reclamation of personal autonomy stemming from my own childhood experiences growing up on a council estate,” says Banks of the track.
Speaking further on the song’s roots, he explains: “I’m based in Nottingham, but in a lot of ways my music comes from pushing against the environment I grew up in as much as reflecting it. Growing up there, I saw a lot of division, silence, people being judged by class, background, or circumstance, and that stayed with me. Songs like ‘World We Share’ are really a reaction to that.” He adds that the song is “about voices that get ignored or pushed aside, and about refusing to disappear even when the world tries to box people in” – ultimately a song about defying labels, the power of unity and people standing together.
I love the sound, natural, powerful, the energetic vibes, and the performance, visceral, intense but very melodic as well, with fantastic guitars and a super solid rhythm section. ‘World We Share’ is also part of the playlist Rock Rotation. Give it a go by clicking on the Spotify player below and follow Wayne Banks on social media, if you like what you hear.
https://youtube.com/@waynemichaelbanks
https://www.instagram.com/banksy_therealone_official
https://www.facebook.com/banksyonbass
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/wayne-banks/6777745229
‘Gone With The Wind‘, the second single from Dark Sky’s upcoming album. The song combines powerful hooks with a dramatic, historically charged storyline. Driven by emotional vocals and a soaring chorus, the song reflects on lost freedom, broken promises and fading traditions, turning tragedy into an anthemic statement about change, loss and survival. ‘Gone With […]
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For almost 20 years, Slipknot’s side-project Look Outside Your Window was a thing of myth. Recorded during the sessions for 2008’s chart-topping All Hope Is Gone, it was announced 15 years ago and finally got a release date in 2026. The 10-song album finally came out for Record Store Day on Saturday, April 18, and marked a stark detour in the Slipknot sound, swapping ferocious metal for avant-garde slow-burners.
Although recorded during the Hope sessions, Look… doesn’t feature the full Iowan nine-piece. Frontman Corey Taylor, guitarist Jim Root, percussionist Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan and turntablist Sid Wilson recorded the album as a separate unit. Fed up with how regimented their ‘main’ album sessions were under producer Dave Fortman, the four set up their own studio to improvise some softer, free-flowing material. They then recruited Lacuna Coil singer Cristina Scabbia, who dated Root from 2004 to 2014, for guest appearances on two tracks.
“We were literally going in a different building, which was in front of the studio, to create other music,” she remembers. “It was just a beautiful, calm, creative bubble. Think about some musicians in a house writing whatever they want with a pure spirit, without thinking about pleasing a record company or a crowd. They just let the music flow, and I gladly contributed.”
True to that off-the-cuff spirit, Scabbia says she wasn’t formally asked to sing some parts, but naturally got involved.
“I found myself singing harmonies and recording vocals for the pure pleasure of doing it and being with people that I loved,” she explains. “I wasn’t intimidated at all: it was liberating and natural for all of us, without any pressure or deadlines. Luckily, usually artists don’t need a reason to create. We just translate our feelings and thoughts into lyrics and music.”
The first track on which Scabbia appears is her (misspelt) namesake, Christina. It’s a spoken-word piece, where she reads a poem written by Clown, which she translated to her native Italian.
“He asked me to translate it as he liked the sound of the language,” she recalls. She can’t remember what it’s about, though. “I have to re-listen to it all,” she admits.
Her other performance is on earnest rocker Is Real, where she sings back-ups to a crooning Taylor simply because “it was in my style and was missing some touches here and there”.
The rest of the songs form a diverse yet moody whole, inspired by everyone from noise-rockers Big Black to Radiohead. U Can’t Stop This is a seething, dissonant crawl, whereas Juliette is a 90s-style alt-rock stomper. Toad integrates acoustic textures and field recordings, and Away evokes vintage blues by contrasting heavy percussion against ominous guitars.
Despite that wealth of material, just one song, the bittersweet Til We Die, made it onto Hope, and even then it was only on the special edition. Though there were other previews in the following years, they were rare. Juliette was on the soundtrack to Clown’s 2016 film Officer Downe, and My Pain, from 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, was based on an idea from the sessions.
Rather than scrap everything else, Slipknot sealed it in their vault. Rumours of a “secret” album circulated before Taylor confirmed that the stories were true during a 2011 Q&A. He revealed the title and said it’d drop “hopefully within the next year” – the first of many self-imposed deadlines the band missed.
Chatter picked up again in 2018, when Clown told Metal Hammer, “I’ve held onto [the songs] for 10 years because it hasn’t been right, and I’m going to let you know now that it’s feeling right.” In later interviews, he predicted a release sometime during the We Are Not Your Kind touring cycle, then 2023, 2024 and 2025. Needless to say, all these dates came and went without a note.
Fans got impatient, as did the band themselves: Root confessed to Hammer in ’24 that he’d more than once threatened to leak the album and get it over with. Scabbia admits she’s surprised that it’s actually out.
“I had the feeling it was gonna happen,” she says. “But knowing that it came out so long after [it was recorded], to me, it’s like something genius: something like a treasure lost and found after many years. There’s a magic vibe around it, for sure.”
Any attempt by fans to upload the music to YouTube has been promptly taken down since it was first made available on Record Store Day. Demand was unsurprisingly immense, but new vinyl and CD packages became widely available in June. Whether or not it’ll make it onto streaming services remains a mystery.
“I’m still waiting for my copy,” Scabbia reveals. “But it’ll arrive soon and I am excited!”
This article originally appeared in Metal Hammer issue 415, July 2026, which you can order now. Look Outside Your Window is available on CD and vinyl.
