The Oya Festival happened last weekend in Norway, and while it seems like the US has enough festivals, we never get ones with these kind of lineups. Lots of cool bands played, with lots of great drummers. This was the 10th year of the festival, which has a capacity of around 20,000 people, relativly small for most festivals. Still, lots of people came out to see Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, No Age, Isis, Sigur Ros, Mogwai and many many more.

The Oya Festival is renown for having a great setup so that barely any bleed-through occurs from stage to stage and they do a good job of showcasing up-and-coming Scandinavian acts while still having international ones. Pitchfork Media has some exclusive photo’s and coverage of the festival worth checking out.

Every time I see stuff like this I just shake my head. The reason being that the European festivals seem to always have better lineups than we get here in the US, at least more in line with my taste anyway. Hopefully this will change in the coming years as US festivals evolve and grow.

Europe’s annual Download Festival is hitting 2 US cities this weekend. The lineup seems to feature a few older reunited bands such a The Jesus and Mary Chain and Gang of Four, as well as a lot of newer acts.

The Download Festival on Saturday (7/19) happens in the San Francisco area at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. The Sunday (7/20) version will be occurring at Gibson Amphitheatre in Los Angeles, with another version of the festival occurring in Camden, NJ on August 2nd.

This is an interesting way of planning a festival as most occur for 2 or 3 days in the same location. For the full festival lineup and more information go to downloadfestival.com