Slam Dunk 2024 is a triumphant return to form

This year's event is a real success that can be measured beyond the bands who play. Words: Alexander Bradley. Photos: Sarah Louise Bennett.

Slam Dunk makes a triumphant return with its 2024 edition boasting some of the brightest new talents, returning favourites and some bands right at the top of their game. There's no setting more fitting for You Me At Six to make their final festival appearance, too. In one of those perfect, full-circle moments, their swan song is at the festival that first gave them a leg up in music. Despite the hearse parked backstage, their performance is in no way a funeral but more a celebration of their journey from underdogs to one of the standout British rock bands of the last 20 years.

Throughout this year's line-up, there's just the same enthusiasm for exciting new bands who could one day repeat YMAS's climb up the festival billing. There are plenty of well-established acts still at the very top, too, especially on the Monster Energy Stage, with The Bouncing Souls, Pennywise and Goldfinger featuring ahead of The Interrupters. But, more than anything, the 2024 line-up sees a resurgence of the MySpace-era band. Like a long-lost MP3 player of downloads that broke the family computer, Slam Dunk embraces the mid-00s with open arms.

The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus are first to take a trip down memory lane, with singer Ronnie Winter keenly pointing out that while his hair is still long, his jeans are no longer quite as tight. Like a tour guide of their career, the singer signposts which of their classics have featured in TV shows and films along the way before they wrap up their set with an uncharacteristic cover of 'All The Small Things' and their classic 'Face Down'.

Over on the Main Stage, from out of the wilderness Head Automatica return to celebrate 20 years of their album 'Decadence'. With the effortlessly cool Daryl Palumbo at the helm, it's as if the band hadn't completely disappeared for so long. Some technical difficulties in Hatfield prevent them from playing every song they've ever released, but they do have time for a moody new number, 'Bear the Cross', before closing on their standout hit 'Beating Heart Baby'.