For the first time, Shaka Ponk will set foot on Clisson soil. For the first time… and the last, the French rock group decided several months ago to put an end to its musical adventure. Shaka Ponk at Hellfest? For those who don’t know them yet, here are the essentials in six points…
Shaka Ponk was founded in 2002 in Paris but the group moved to Berlin in 2004 where it struggled for a while, according to its own words, before finally managing to get on stages, notably by opening for groups on tour such as than the Americans Korn or Mudvayne. It was also in Berlin that he was spotted by a manager, signed with the Edel Music label, and released his first EP, Hyppie Monkey. It was only in June 2006 that he returned to France to promote his first album called Crazy With Da Frenchy Talkin which will make him known to the French public.
From his first album, Crazy With Da Frenchy Talkin, the group displays its musical singularity with an atomic cocktail style, a fusion of funk, metal, hip-hop, electro and rock. Bingo! The media are hooked, the public too, the label Tôt ou Tard signs them and a second album, Bad Porn Movie Trax, good luck in may 2009.
A first Taratata in 2009, a nomination for the Victoires de la Musique the following year in the stage revelation of the year category, a third album in 2011, The Geeks and the Jerkin’ Socks, marked by the arrival in the group of Samaha Sam who will now share the vocals with François Chiron, alias Frah, an opening part for Guns N’Roses at the Palais omnisport de Paris-Bercy in 2012, a new nomination this time rewarded at the Victoires de music in 2013 in the category Musical show / tour / concert of the year for The Geek Tour which will bring together more than a million spectators between 2011 and 2013, another victory in 2014 for the best musical DVD… In short, we catch our breath, the group flies towards infinity and reaches the stars!
Very quickly, Shaka Ponk left its mark as an eco-friendly group, in words and actions, notably offering in 2015 the Pixel Live DVD made from recycled material, offering all the benefits thereof to the Nicolas-Hulot Foundation for Nature and man, taking a stand on climate change on multiple occasions and creating in 2018 The Freaks, a collective of artists ready to adopt new behaviors to fight against over-consumption, pollution, global warming and protect biodiversity.
More recently, on June 15 to be precise, Shaka Ponk shared a clip denouncing the horror of bullfighting…
As for the monkey Goz, the group’s mascot, he is there to “remind man that he does anything on this planet, that the political and industrial sphere is out of control, that we are somewhat locked in an egocentric bubble, disconnected from reality and nature” , as Frah recently explained in the show “C à vous” on France 5…
General farewell tour! In 2022, at the same time as the group announced the release of a new album, the eighth, we learned of their wish to end their career to devote themselves to their environmentalist collective called The Freaks.
And to begin a final tour immediately, The Final F#*ked Up Tour, which should logically end in November 2024 with four exceptional concerts at the Accor Arena in Paris. But before that, Shaka Ponk intends to take a little detour to the Nantes vineyard and the Hellfest, just to spread some of his energy on MainStage 2. See you Friday June 28 at 10:00 p.m.
If during the Football World Cup, as we know, France has to put up with a few million selectors, during Hellfest and even before, there are several tens of thousands of programmers who make and remake the posters on the networks social, questioning the legitimacy of each group to appear there.
Shaka Ponk is no exception. Since the organizers of Hellfest unveiled the poster for the 17ᵉ edition, we could see a number of Internet users wondering about the group’s arrival under the pretext that it scours all the festivals in France, which is all the more true this year, as it has a repertoire quite far from this that some may hope to find at Hellfest, it is partly true even if it has furiously explosive titles and stage performance, or even that this programming could announce the opening of Hellfest to other musical genres.
We remain calm, we breathe, the Hellfest which has become a big machine needs to regenerate itself but the metal spirit is still there, the programming of the Altar, Valley and Temple stages is there to prove it and reassure pure metalheads and hard.
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