But Chris Ingham, the publisher of Metal Hammer and Classic Rock magazines, believes the market is at something of a crossroads with older artists seen as offering a dependable return for any investment while fewer new acts are reaching the level of heavy-metal titans such as Alice Cooper, Iron Maiden and AC/DC. “You are getting these big spectaluar shows, but very few younger acts are reaching that level. You look at Download this year and have to wonder who the next generation of headliners are,” says Ingham.

Indeed take a look at Sonisphere’s Friday line-up and you could be forgiven for forgetting what year it is – with Metallica being joined by Anthrax, Slayer and Megadeth. Download also included a good spread of heritage acts including Alice Cooper, Def Leppard, Twisted Sister and The Cult (Who recently signed to Cooking Vinyl)

But Copping insists that it is a matter of finding a balance between the old and new and with so many heritage heavy-metal acts having maintained huge fanbases for many years they have more than earned their headline places. “You are trying to put a decent cross-section of artists – Def Leppard sitting alongside Linkin Park, Avenged Sevenfold and Bullet For My Valentine second on the bill. It’s not all heritage acts. It’s down to us as festival promoters to continually move these bands up the bill, but you can only move them there when it is right. Most definitely the bands are there.” Copping cites Avenged Sevenfold and Bring Me The Horizon as being among a small number of newer acts that look set to be in a position to become a festival headline act in the near future, but he believes there are only ever a handful of global bands that become suitable to headline major events such as Download.

Other newer acts creating a stir are Universal’s Black Veil Brides, whose album Set The World On Fire was released earlier this year, and Earache’s Rival Sons which Ingham describes as “one of the most exciting, dynamic and naturally feel-good rock bands I have heard in years”.

Earache had little or no previous history of doing anything with melodic rock bands, but it was exactly that absence of experience that provided a mutual attraction for both the label and the band, whose heaving groove-laden riffs echo Led Zeppelin. “Rival Sons are a great band, but we thought they’ll not want to get involved with us because their music is so different from our roster. But like us they could see it’s such a curveball that it makes them stand out,” says Tobin.

While fans of the majority of Earache’s roster will doubtless forgo the opportunity of buying into Rival Sons, the label is quite rightly targeting the band at a more mainstream audience and will doubtless be gaining the support of Chris Ingham at Future publishing. Indeed while both Kerrang! magazine, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year with an array of activity, and Ingham’s Metal Hammer were among the very few music titles that increased their circulations in the most recent ABC report, there remains frustration within the hard-rock community that when it comes to media, radio is letting the side down.

“Radio doesn’t do rock shows very well. Dan Carter’s show is on Radio 1 at midnight for two hours – that is a proper ghettoisation,” says Ingham. “It’s interesting that as soon as Radio 2 starts playing Journey and things like that, the band can go on to sell out arenas. I wonder what would happen if Radio 2 played Alter Bridge or Black Stone Cherry. Without Planet Rock and Rock Radio it really would be very hard for bands to sell the tours.” Fortunately, the genre seems to inspire a near infatigable loyalty from fans, whose continual interest and investment in acts helps to sustain artists’ careers at varying levels over long periods.

“The audience is very, very loyal,” says Copping. “They stick with their bands – you look at something like Rage Against the Machine: they became a bigger act after they reformed. System Of A Down reformed after five or six years and headlined Download. Two years ago Faith No More got back together again. It proves that this music attracts an incredibly dedicated fanbase. There is a certain mentality that this kind of music inspires. It creates loyalty; people really hang on to it for years,” agrees Tobin.

Others, meanwhile, are looking to the US and are hoping that the apparently more faddish trend of discovering and discarding new acts is a fad that will not survive the Atlantic crossing. “In America it is very much about metal being underground now,” says Ingham. “There is a huge army of smaller bands that have come out of social networks whose albums will sell no more than 20,000 copies in America but they will go and play 800–1,200-capacity venues for four or five weeks at a time three times a year.

“There is a lot of fan energy being expended on discovery but it remains to be seen whether they will be supporting their heroes in five or six years’ time or will the thrill of the new mean they are into something else,” continues Ingham. “They say that whatever happens in the US will come here and if that’s true there is a lot of pain on the way.”