Saturday saw the South Coast's metal community descend on Brighton for what was the inaugural Breakout Festival.

The city's first ever open-air heavy music event featured two stages of mostly new acts given an early break in their careers, from across the genre.

Headliners came in the form of nu-metal survivors Skindred and Welsh post-hardcore flagbearers Funeral For A Friend.

The lovely Downland views from Brighton's racecourse provided an incongruously peaceful backdrop to early sets from youngsters Everest, whose chirpy post-hardcore was rendered even more crowd-pleasing by an on-stage marriage proposal, and the punishingly heavy technicality of Death Remains' unflinching grind.

The at-times bravura prog stylings of the excellently-named Deadly Circus Fire was sadly sometimes let down by strangely contrived vocals, though on the whole it impressively rounded the afternoon off before the big guns hit the stage.

After poor sets by the extremely whingy-sounding The Blackout and a very flat Funeral For A Friend, second stage headliners, Brighton's own The Qemists, gracefully took the baton with a frenzied set of Pendulum-esque d'n'b class.

A triumphant climax from the self-styled godfathers of "ragga-metal", Skindred, prompted surely one of the friendliest moshpits of any festival, making for a memorable close to a sometimes hit-and-miss event that would clearly be welcome back this time next year.