The First: Burn It Down

Name: Burn It Down Festival

Year started: 2018

Original capacity: 1000 (The Foundry), 100 (The Attic), 100 (The Apple & Parrot)

Original location: The Foundry, The Attic, & The Apple & Parrot, Torquay 

First lineup: Mallory Knox, Arcane Roots, Malevolence, Dream State, Roam, Napoleon

For fans of: Rock, metal, pop punk, emo, hardcore

“If you grow up here and you’re a bit alternative, you see that there is a scene here, if you nurture it, you can build a strong local community, and you just have to put the shows on and try to get people out.”

In 2018, Torquay had a problem. A passionate alternative scene existed but had nowhere to go other than London or Bristol, and the scenic seaside town was crying out for a festival that could bring the best acts to it for a change. 

It’s that time again. Welcome back to The First, the series where we take a look back at the first edition of some of the most beloved festivals around. This time we’re taking a trip south to the luscious English Riviera, where few bands dare to tread, for Burn It Down. Spanning a single street in Torquay across three close-knit venues - The Foundry, The Attic, and The Apple & Parrot -  Burn It Down has helped bring the finest metal, rock, hardcore, and emo artists to an area that rarely gets to indulge in the rock and roll side of life since 2018.

Burn It Down began with BYP Live founder and events manager Matthew Goodyear, who aimed to find the solution to a problem plaguing the South Coast. “Matt was a hardcore kid from a small town; there were no shows there,” fellow BYP Live organiser Eve recalled. Before the first Burn It Down in 2018, she and Goodyear had three years of putting on shows behind them, but struggled with bands and artists rarely making the voyage south from Bristol. “If we were never going to see them, and no band is ever going to come down past Bristol, we had to try and bring them here.” 

At the time, Eve was 19 and dividing her working hours between making coffee and shifts at the local Crazy Golf course, while Goodyear, 24 at the time, was working behind bars; the shows were a side hustle before Burn It Down. Luckily for them, Goodyear had contacts from his previous event work with cosy Torquay pub The Apple & Parrot, which was just one of the venues where he and Eve were putting on hardcover shows in 150-capacity venues as Goodyear’s events company Boneyard Promotions (now BYP Live, formed in 2015). Even in these small hardcore shows, the potential for something bigger and better was there. “The thing about Torquay is it’s beautiful,” Eve says, “We’ve got a nice beach and all of these venues that are really close together, so it seemed like the perfect place for a festival.” 

From Eve’s memories, Burn It Down's first edition was “basically Matt doing everything by himself. I was pretty much just emotional support at the time, but even that wasn't very helpful because it was very stressful.” Eve’s efforts extended beyond mere emotional support, however, with her duties including managing the festival’s social media, helping with graphic design, managing the green room, and assisting with booking, catering, and staff. Despite Eve’s initial suggestion for the festival being Burnout, Goodyear saw the name as having connotations more to stoner culture than emo and hardcore. Thus, he preferred "Burn It Down," both as a Linkin Park reference and in line with their branding vision, which featured Torquay’s famed Torbay palm trees embellished in flames. 

When it came to setup and promotion, Boneyard already had support from the local venues. “We’re completely independent, and we’ve never had any funding in the eight years of Burn It Down, just had the support of the venues, and luckily, we have a great relationship with them.” Multi-purpose club The Foundry on Torwood Street acted as the main stage, sandwiched between smaller venue The Attic and the bar Park Lane, used during the festival as the artists’ green room. Facing across from these venues is the Apple & Parrot, a small pub all year round, aside from 1st September 2018. 

Dream State in The Foundry, 2023 / Photo: Oli Duncanson 

Each venue has its quirks. The Attic’s small and sweaty vibe was perfect for the hardcore stage, offering something a little different from the pub setting of The Apple & Parrot and the larger scale Foundry. “If you’re a loyal hardcore kid who’s not interested in the main stage, you can spend your whole day at The Attic, and it works for the type of music that it is.” 

All three venues trusted Boneyard, and with that came trust from local festivalgoers, and with pre-established trust came sponsorships; Jägermeister sponsored the 1000-capacity main stage in the Foundry; Fireball lent its name to 100-capacity The Attic’s hardcore stage; while Pistonhead was the namesake of Apple & Parrot’s small, 100-capacity stage. “The venues were putting their reputation on the line for those sponsors to have faith in us. Without the trust of the venues, we wouldn’t have had any of this. I genuinely don’t know why they trusted us that much, but they were great.” 

"The venues were putting their reputation on the line for those sponsors to have faith in us. Without the trust of the venues, we wouldn't have had any of this."

Despite securing sponsorships and the trust of the venues, Boneyard had another uphill battle on its hands when it came to booking artists, but Goodyear’s previous experience and contacts came in clutch. “It was challenging to sell Torquay as a place for people to go to see a big alternative show, but Matt had been putting on shows, with part of the idea being that if we booked them for Burn It Down, we could talk to them about booking shows throughout the year and get a full calendar doing this.” With Matt already years into booking shows, the booking agents were confident that Goodyear and Eve could put on a good show. 

Burn It Down’s first lineup delivered for fans of emo and hardcore, but it wasn't always a smooth ride. Alternative outfit Mallory Knox arrived in Torquay for their headline slot on the Jägermeister stage and put on a show despite getting robbed en route, as Eve remembered, “they didn’t even have clothes, I’m pretty sure they wore merch on stage in the end from one of the sellers, they were stressed. I think their van got broken into the night before.” Headliners included Sheffield hardcore band Malevolence, who left Burn It Down with a newfound love of Torquay and being by the sea, and now sport palm tree tattoos in tribute; while pop punk band Roam took to the Apple & Parrot, and Arcane Roots played amidst their farewell tour. For locals in and around Torquay, seeing these names in these spots felt surreal. “To have the locals see a band like Roam is so funny, and nobody could believe what they were seeing; it was such a novelty in the first year.” 

Dinosaur Pile-Up in The Foundry, 2021 | Photo: Oli Duncanson  

Despite selling just 300 tickets, the atmosphere in the first year was strong and saw the quaint seaside town being taken over by emos and goths. Owing to the operation being a team of two at the time, the memories at the forefront of Eve’s mind remain “us being really, really stressed,” which has never really left despite Boneyard blooming into a bigger team in the years since. When the day wrapped and the acts left the stages, corks were popped and everyone let loose. “Once the festival’s over, it’s that feeling of, ‘Okay, we’ve done it, let's go.’ We had these huge glass bottles and we’re just pouring them into each other’s mouths. And then you’ve got all these bands that have all this free alcohol from the green room. People do take it too far sometimes, we’ve had to drag people out throwing up and that kind of thing, but you know, that’s rock and roll, isn’t it?”

In the seven years since, the festival landscape has been a harsh one, with the cost of touring rising and bigger festivals scooping up exclusivity rights. How has Burn It Down evolved? “Everything that’s changed is probably for the better. The best thing to have changed about the festival is that we had no clue what we were doing first year, and now we have a team that is so good at Burn It Down. That’s the biggest thing to have changed overall, we are such a different festival now.” 

Despite the struggles in the festival and events industry, Burn It Down has made it work, and continues to bring a full house of alternative rock fanatics to the South Coast. Last year in particular saw the festival winning big at the UK Festival Awards, as it scooped up the awards for Best Micro Festival and Best Metropolitan Festival. “I’m so grateful that everyone trusted us, that we had it in us to make it better and what we really wanted it to be," Eve remarked, "I feel that first year was kind of the whisper of Burn It Down and maybe 10% of what we knew we could do. If you did go to the first year and didn’t come back, give it another go and see how much it’s changed.” A little bit of trust in 2018 went a long way, and now Burn It Down is bearing fruit. 

Burn It Down returns for three days this year, running from Thursday 28th to Saturday 30th August 2025, and you can grab tickets below. For more events like Burn It Down, head to our Festivals page. 

Looking for more trips down memory lane? Check out The First for Balter Festival and Coloursfest here. 

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