Last Tour Makes It Five

Last Tour International has increased its festival portfolio to five by starting new events in Bilbao and Madrid.

The new Bilbao festival, a heavy metal bash called Kobetasonik, will be staged in the Kobeti Mountains two weeks before Last Tour’s Bilbao BBK Live Festival, which it started on the same 40,000-capacity site in 2006.

The new June 20-21 event has already firmed KISS and Judas Priest while, for two weeks later, Bilbao BBK Live (July 4-6) has already announced The Police, R.E.M., Lenny Kravitz, Morcheeba, The Charlatans, The Prodigy, The Gift, Fancy and The Wombats.

The company’s first venture into the capital, or near to it, is a two-day festival called Getafe Electric Festival, which is named after the outlying district of Madrid where it’s held.

It’s scheduled for May 30-31 at the 40,000-capacity Auditorio John Lennon. Already confirmed are Metallica, Rage Against The Machine, Queens Of The Stone Age, Cavalera Conspiracy, Queensryche, Soilwork, Iggy & The Stooges, Machine Head and Within Temptation.

Last Tour’s longest-running festival is Azkena Rock Festival, which was started in 2002 on a 20,000-capacity site at the Mendizabala Park near Vitoria-Gasteiz. It’s scheduled for September 5-6 but no acts had been named at press time.

Santander Summer Festival, which is three years Azkena’s junior having started in 2005, hasn’t confirmed dates but Iratxe Blasco from the Last Tour press office says she expects it will be around its usual mid-August slot in the European festival calendar.

Despite the arrival of Rock In Rio, a new one-dayer from the Barcelona-based Doctor Music and with at least one more new event in the pipeline, Blasco believes the momentum the company has built since it started rolling out festivals seven years ago will see that it has another good year in 2008.