The ESP Guitar Company

We're just getting back from France, where ESP was the official guitar sponsor of Europe's biggest and coolest heavy music festival: Hellfest. It was a huge event that combined dozens and dozens of ESP players in many bands, along with an amazing ESP presence overall that went above and beyond our highest expectations.

The Players
If you were looking for ESP players at Hellfest 2018, you didn't need to search very far. This year’s lineup included a ton of great ESP-playing musicians in bands such as Akercocke, Amorphis, Benighted, Bukowski, Bullet For My Valentine, Children Of Bodom, Corrosion Of Conformity, Deftones, Dimmu Borgir, Exodus, Judas Priest, Kataklysm, Napalm Death, Nightwish, Parkway Drive, Powerflo, Satyricon, Schammasch, Septicflesh, Suffocation, Terror, Watain, and others.

The Winner
We held a sweepstakes for ESP All Access members around the world, and sent one lucky winner and his guest to Hellfest. Eric Dalby of Ivybridge, UK met up with us in Clisson, France, and had a complete blast. He told us that he hadn't been able to go to a metal festival since the '80s, and seemed to enjoy every minute of the experience.

The ESP Building
Along with our French distributor Algam, ESP made a huge splash as the official guitar sponsor for Hellfest. Visitors to the event were treated to a little town square of sponsoring companies, but the ESP Building was pretty much the epicenter of coolness throughout the show. People could come in, meet-and-greet with various bands who were hanging out and doing signings, or try out a variety of ESP, E-II, and LTD guitars and basses in the showroom, and then purchase instruments that would be shipped to them after the festival was done. 

See For Yourself
Check out this short recap video from our friends at Algam, and you'll at least have an idea of what things were like at Hellfest for ESP. And yes, before you ask, that's Hodor from Game of Thrones (aka actor/musician Kristian Nairn) at 1:37.

Enjoy a few more pics from Hellfest 2018 below!

Luke and Jeff from Parkway Drive

Exodus

Padge from Bullet For My Valentine

Septicflesh

Suffocation

Hodor!

Alexi from Children of Bodom

The overall design elements of Hellfest were beyond awesome

The ESP Building was the place to be!