Top metal acts headline at Mediterranean Metal Gathering 2010

The lineup is a dream come true for metalheads of every persuasion: death metal heroes Cannibal Corpse will be headlining on June 28, while veteran purveyors of gothic-tinged vitriol Paradise Lost will grace the stage on the following day. They will also be joined by local bands For The Godless, Thy Legion, Knockturn Alley, Nomad Son and The Lesser Gods, while Twan Sibon of Brutalism will DJ on both nights.

Both headliners are veterans in the field, with a fanbase that is still going strong. Cannibal Corpse are a New York-based outfit first founded in 1988 and whose discography ranges from 1990's Eaten Back to Life down to 2009's Evisceration Plague. Among the most successful bands playing in their genre today, they certainly have a fan in Jim Carrey, who insisted on giving them a cameo in Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. While CC's death metal style comes with the requisite (and often controversial) splatter-horror imagery, Paradise Lost's career (which also kickstarted in '88) is not as visceral to behold, but is an interesting and varied one. Starting out on a more or less straightforward doom-metal path with their initial releases (with '90's Lost Paradise being their first studio album), they have exhausted nearly every byway and subgenre of heavy music, mining an atmospheric, gothic vein throughout the 90s and dividing fans with 99's Host, which took its cue more from Depeche Mode-style synthpop than anything in the metal field. The noughties, however, saw the band returning to familiar ground and consolidating their experiments and their undeniable connection to metal, their most recent studio release being 2009's Faith Divides Us – Death Unites us: their 12th album so far.

The event will also be filled with merchandise stands and food stalls, while World Cup games will be shown on big screens in separate areas. Tickets can be purchased from maltaticket.com. Those who purchased their tickets before the event got postponed will have theirs automatically upgraded into a block ticket. Ticket hotline: 7999 2136, 7923 7762, 7991 3053.