7 bookers from just as many international festivals have announced their arrival at MONO Goes Metal Fest 2025. They have been invited to form a panel where they will let the audience in on festival details, themselves as bookers and what they are looking for when booking artists. Meet Rob Wood.
Rob Wood – The Rock and Metal Alliance / The Alternative Escape
Can you tell us a bit about The Rock and Metal Alliance and your work with The Alternative Escape?
– The Rock and Metal Alliance (RMA) was co-founded in 2025 by myself and Emma Wiggin (Westwick Management) to tackle a real gap in the grassroots showcase festival circuit. While genres like indie, pop, and electronic have long had strong industry-facing platforms, emerging rock and metal artists have often been overlooked. RMA was born to change that — our ethos is to give developing heavy artists from the UK and beyond the chance to showcase in front of booking agents, promoters, labels, and media at exactly the stage in their careers when that exposure can make the biggest difference.
The Alternative Escape at The Great Escape Festival was the natural starting point. I’d been running a stage there for a few years, but after speaking with other managers who shared the same frustrations, I reached out to Emma and together we re-focused it as a dedicated platform for Rock and Metal.
The showcase exceeded all expectations: it became one of the most well-attended alternative stages of the weekend, and the feedback from fans, artists, and industry professionals was overwhelmingly positive. Most importantly, some of the bands that played have since gone on to secure new opportunities, from representation to live bookings, as a direct result of their performances.
We’ll be returning in 2026 for a second year, and we’re also in talks to bring RMA to other festivals, including Pro Weekend in Valencia.
And what about your focus and musical profile?
– Our focus is very clear: we support grassroots and emerging rock and metal artists who are ready for the next step but need the right platform and visibility to get there. Musically, the profile is broad — RMA isn’t about a single subgenre. It’s about reflecting the diversity and innovation happening in heavy music today, from industrial/electronic rock and alt-metal through to metalcore, post-hardcore, and experimental crossovers basically right across our genre.
At its heart, the Alliance is about giving artists a stage that can genuinely open doors, and about showing festivals and industry that heavy music deserves the same presence and support within the showcase circuit as any other genre.
What is your background in the music industry and how did you start to work with The Alternative Escape?
– My Background I first started out as a musician in an ambient five-piece called The Boy with the Lion Head. I played keys and backing vocals over a five-year period, but even then I found myself more drawn to the “band manager” side—securing bookings, making contacts, and learning how the industry worked.
Music had always been part of my life before that. I’d learned piano from a young age—though it never really felt like my instrument. Still, it gave me a grounding in reading music and understanding structure, even if it came more from my dad’s pressure than passion. As a teenager I started going to more and more gigs, and I loved the whole live music experience— from the build-up and production right through to the final encore. At that stage I wasn’t tied to any genre, I just loved the energy of it all.
Later, my tastes developed, and I began to really appreciate the craft of songwriting and live performance. I stepped away from gigs for a while, but I helped my brother out with his bands— roadieing, doing some admin—and found I loved the behind-the-scenes work. Eventually, I joined The Boy with the Lion Head. I never wanted to play piano on stage, but after messing around with bass and other instruments, I went for it. We did pretty well for a local band, playing in bigger cities despite coming from a small rural area, and I got us press, contacts, and shows.
While in the band, I started helping other artists because I wanted to push harder than my own bandmates. First a singer-songwriter, then a London band called National Service—an incredible atmospheric rock band on Fierce Panda Records. Around this time, just before lockdown, I had a serious accident in my day job—fell 12 feet from a ladder and broke my back. Nearly paralysed myself. During recovery, I threw myself fully into music and set up Lonewolf Talent Management.
I started with National Service—we put out some great work before the band eventually folded. Then came Perfectparachutepicture, a Sheffield garage-rock duo who’d already been touring for 10 years. I got them signed to an agency, secured strong shows, but eventually they also wound down.
Next came HCK9—a project that threw me straight back to my early-2000s Kerrang!/emo roots. The songwriting was huge, and working together taught me a lot and made me a better manager. After that, I took on Melys—a legendary Welsh band with a massive BBC/John Peel history, including 12 Peel Sessions. With them, it was less about building from scratch and more about steering a ship that already had a rich legacy.
Most recently, I signed Lo Rays, a Glasgow-based electro post-apocalyptic rock band who completely blew me away. They’ve got everything I look for in an act, and even though we’ve only been working together six months, it’s been incredible so far. Alongside artist management, I began curating my own stage at The Alternative Escape in Brighton. The first time I ran it, London band Hotwax opened the showcase—they absolutely smashed it. The room was heaving with labels, agents, and bookers, and it proved the platform was worth creating. I carried that on for a few years, and last year we launched The Rock and Metal Alliance, giving rock and metal acts a stage and the chance to shine in front of the right people.
What is your perspective on the Danish metal scene?
– Denmark has produced some really great bands over the years — icons like King Diamond/Mercyful Fate and of course Volbeat, who broke into the mainstream globally. I wouldn’t claim to know every detail of the current underground scene, but what I do know is that Scandinavia as a whole has always been a hub of innovation in metal. These countries have brought forward not only incredible bands but also helped shape defining subgenres — from power metal to doom and black metal. And in a way, that links back to the UK, with Black Sabbath laying the original foundations and Scandinavia expanding them in bold new directions.
Check out The Alternative Escape
Meet Rob at MGM Festival Meet Up 2025 at Headquarters the 15th. november. Doors at 10:45. Festival Meet Up is free but you’ll need to sign up.
Sign up at: MGM Festival Meet Up
More details: Mød bookere fra 7 internationale festivaler til MGM Festival Meet Up
MONO Goes Metal Fest 2025 at MONORAMA the 15th. november. Doors at 16:00. Stay tuned on presentation at event: https://www.facebook.com/events/671255682253812
Tickets for this years festival at: MONO Goes Metal Fest 2025
Get info about MONO Goes Metal Fest 2025.
MGM Festival Meet Up is created in cooperation with and supported by MXD – Music Export Denmark, Tuborgfondet og Koda Kultur.