Do you think now would be a good time for a touring summer festival to return like Mayhem Fest?
Part of what caused it to dry up with the same bands at the top every time. The one time they tried to switch it up worked for most long time metalheads with slayer and king diamond but it didn’t connect to the younger crowd.
Now with new blood starting to take over headline spots or at least selling tickets like crazy to their own shows like Bring Me The Horizon, Sleep Token, Bad Omens, Motionless In White, Parkway Drive, Electric Callboy (playing big arenas in Europe haven’t fully hit here yet), ghost do you think they could build lineups that would sell amphitheaters?
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Do you think now would be a good time for a touring summer festival to return like Mayhem Fest?
Part of what caused it to dry up with the same bands at the top every time. The one time they tried to switch it up worked for most long time metalheads with slayer and king diamond but it didn’t connect to the younger crowd.
Now with new blood starting to take over headline spots or at least selling tickets like crazy to their own shows like Bring Me The Horizon, Sleep Token, Bad Omens, Motionless In White, Parkway Drive, Electric Callboy (playing big arenas in Europe haven’t fully hit here yet), ghost do you think they could build lineups that would sell amphitheaters?
Copied from your Facebook thread, but:
My heart says "yes" because I really miss Mayhem Fest, but in all honesty, no. I don't see them being successful. Desination fests have taken over for a reason. Touring isn't viable for most bands anymore, and massive mixed lineups like that present a lot of risk.
As I get older, I also get why the lineups look like they do. What bands would I want to see on these lineups? Bands like Trivium, Shadows Fall, Demon Hunter, Devin Townsend, Dog Fashion Disco, Alestorm, etc - bands that have been around since the 2000s. I dont listen to a lot of newer bands aside from black metal and melodeath, and those bands arent very good for festivals like this most of the time. So they are once again faced with booking lineups young people want to see, who dont have money, or bands that older people with disposable income want to see, and then we're looking at the same issue again.
I think they could do a touring fest today but it would have to follow the trends. Metalcore is back in style. All of the bands Lance listed would be in the headliner/main stage pool. Then you have your side stage headliners/main stage openers like Currents, Polaris, Make Them Suffer, Lorna Shore, The Ghost Inside, etc.
Throw in some 2000s bands that still have a fanbase like Killswitch Engage, Trivium, Bullet For My Valentine, Lamb of God, and fill out the side stages with smaller bands and boom.
Do you think now would be a good time for a touring summer festival to return like Mayhem Fest?
Part of what caused it to dry up with the same bands at the top every time. The one time they tried to switch it up worked for most long time metalheads with slayer and king diamond but it didn’t connect to the younger crowd.
Now with new blood starting to take over headline spots or at least selling tickets like crazy to their own shows like Bring Me The Horizon, Sleep Token, Bad Omens, Motionless In White, Parkway Drive, Electric Callboy (playing big arenas in Europe haven’t fully hit here yet), ghost do you think they could build lineups that would sell amphitheaters?
They didn't want to change it up, the organizers spoke publically about the fact they were banking on Slipknot to headline for some reason and they chose to do their own thing with Knotfest instead.
I agree with MC's points about how rock/metal destination fests have exploded in the US in the absence of Mayhem and Ozzfest. I would love if Slipknot tried to fill the void when they do their Knotfest thing by having Jagermeister or someone sponsor a side stage with club-level bands playing during the day but I feel like they don't want to bother with the logistical headaches.
My guess is that whoever was trying to get Mayhem Fest back off the ground right before the pandemic probably had a good amount of money on the line and lost it.
Also keep in mind that Slayer was at their seemingly lowest point in their career in regards to sales when Mayhem Fest had them headline. The year before I saw them at the goddamn Worcester Palladium, which was sick but they were doing all small clubs that tour because they were probably tired of headlining half-empty venues. The farewell tour happened at the perfect time.
It's also absolutely wild to me that Lamb of God/Mastodon are playing the fuckin Mohegan Sun arena, and face value floor tickets are already sold out. These bands just make more money doing their own tours and shows at destination festivals.
These bands just make more money doing their own tours and shows at destination festivals.
I think this has always been the case tbh. Honestly the fact that Ozzfest and Warped Tour lasted so long is a miracle looking back. They always relied on popular bands playing below their pay grade.
In 2006 Avenged Sevenfold and Disturbed played Ozzfest which skipped a lot of cities it normally hit, so Disturbed and A7X just played those venues anyway on their own with a few sidestage bands. System of a Down was also on that bill and they played arenas on their own later that year. Iron Maiden and Rob Zombie in 2005. Slipknot in 2004. Etc. I remember reading an interview with Disturbed in 2008 before the first Mayhem Fest and he admitted that Disturbed and Slipknot could probably both sell out these venues on their own but they wanted to help start a new festival. Same thing with warped tour with Paramore, Blink 182, etc.
Not that I want bands to take less pay to make money for these corporations but that's the piece that's missing now. I think that's what made Ozzfest so successful. Everyone wanted to play on Black Sabbath/Ozzy's tour. No one gives a fuck about Kevin Lyman so he eventually ran out of bands that were willing to do him any favors
From Those Fishes were more melodeath than metalcore tbh
Tbf, I wanted to lean heavier into the metalcore side
I figured. I still dug the end result and idk y'alls songwriting process but as a listener it felt like someone in the writing process didn't want to go full metalcore.
From Those Fishes were more melodeath than metalcore tbh
Tbf, I wanted to lean heavier into the metalcore side
I figured. I still dug the end result and idk y'alls songwriting process but as a listener it felt like someone in the writing process didn't want to go full metalcore.
yea that's kind of how it was. In general, either myself or the other guitarist would bring a nearly completed song we had been working on, and the rest of us would fill in what was missing. We always wanted a melodeath slant, like how Trivium, Shadows Fall, and Killswitch Engage do, but early on we leaned heavily into it describing ourselves more like "At The Gates, In Flames, and Dethklok". Dethklok especially was always prominent on my song writing (its why we play in C Standard tuning, that's what Dethklok plays in).
I wrote the core of Dusk Descending, Lamentations (minus Lamentations Of The Kings), and Contagion. The other guitarist wrote the core of Dawn Ascending, and Lamentations Of The Kings. He very much does not like metalcore, and constantly pushed us more into the death metal territory, citing Revocation as the sound he wanted to go towards. I wanted to go more metalcore by the end, citing Demon Hunter as my main influence at the time.
And I think that's what really drove him out from the band. Contagion, the latest songs we released, definitely leaned into the metalcore vibe harder, especially with all the clean singing. It's my favorite EP we released, with Contagion being my favorite song we wrote. My other guitarist openly disliked it entirely, and often didn't even want to play any of the songs live - it was always a bit of an argument deciding to throw them onto a set.
We have a few unreleased tracks we were working on. I wrote two. One is a straight melodic metalcore party song. The other is actually an Opeth inspired acoustic song. The two he wrote were very much death metal songs, bordering tech death at time with weird time changes and things. They took a long time for my drummer to get down, and that definitely frustrated my old guitarist because he wanted to be more and more technical. The rest of us wanted to go more and more melodic.
Well aside from my bassist, if he had his way we'd have been a slam/deathcore band.
I don’t think a metal tour would really work unless it mostly aimed at old heads. There’s just not the money in young metal that could sustain such a thing. If you loaded up a tour with like Suicidal and Testament and Exodus and Kreator with like Danzig and King Diamond headlining, people would come out. Get like Hirax and Sadus and Dark Angel for the side stage. Maybe have a gimmick of having metal from different countries. People would go nuts if you could convince a trio of 90s tr00 cvlt black metal bands like Marduk, Dark Funeral and Mayhem to have their own stage. Fans of that sort of stuff have money now. My kids call it “Divorced Dad” music. They had a big laugh about it when we went to Mastodon/Gojira last year how many extended cab and maintenance trucks were in the parking lot. Give it another 5-8 years and having a first wave metalcore bill would be in vogue for this demographic. Get As I Lay Dying, Bleeding Through and Unearth lol
The money in young people is in trap and edm. Rock is almost over as a relevant form. I think you can add rock and metal bands into variety tours and make something interesting. I grew up in the original Lollapalooza era, pre-Ozzfest, where it was a yearly treat to see the new mix of music they had. I saw Green Day, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, The Flaming Lips and A Tribe Called Quest in succession to open Lollapalooza ‘94. At Lollapalooza 95 I went from watching Jesus Lizard to Redman to Beck with Cypress Hill and Sonic Youth as headliners. I’ll admit there aren’t many metal bands that would acquit themselves well on a mixed stage like that, but Ghost and Sleep Token have a very definite appeal to those outside of the “metal fan” spectrum. I’d imagine Municipal Waste, Mutoid Man and Deafheaven would go over well in a mixed setting. My kids are big on Deftones. They asked me who I’d like to see them tour with, I think expecting an answer like Tool or SOAD. I said they’d pair better with Interpol though. Deftones have a yearly fest they do in San Diego. I think last year they had Turnstile, Freddie Gibbs and Phantogram on it. That sort of frame seems like a healthy start for a package tour imo
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My heart says "yes" because I really miss Mayhem Fest, but in all honesty, no. I don't see them being successful. Desination fests have taken over for a reason. Touring isn't viable for most bands anymore, and massive mixed lineups like that present a lot of risk.
Logistically/financially i dont think its very realistic to see a festival take 20 bands on the road.
Almost everyone that has ever happened has failed. Ozzfest stuck it out for a while, but even that couldn't make it.
Throw in some 2000s bands that still have a fanbase like Killswitch Engage, Trivium, Bullet For My Valentine, Lamb of God, and fill out the side stages with smaller bands and boom.
I agree with MC's points about how rock/metal destination fests have exploded in the US in the absence of Mayhem and Ozzfest. I would love if Slipknot tried to fill the void when they do their Knotfest thing by having Jagermeister or someone sponsor a side stage with club-level bands playing during the day but I feel like they don't want to bother with the logistical headaches.
My guess is that whoever was trying to get Mayhem Fest back off the ground right before the pandemic probably had a good amount of money on the line and lost it.
It's also absolutely wild to me that Lamb of God/Mastodon are playing the fuckin Mohegan Sun arena, and face value floor tickets are already sold out. These bands just make more money doing their own tours and shows at destination festivals.
In 2006 Avenged Sevenfold and Disturbed played Ozzfest which skipped a lot of cities it normally hit, so Disturbed and A7X just played those venues anyway on their own with a few sidestage bands. System of a Down was also on that bill and they played arenas on their own later that year. Iron Maiden and Rob Zombie in 2005. Slipknot in 2004. Etc. I remember reading an interview with Disturbed in 2008 before the first Mayhem Fest and he admitted that Disturbed and Slipknot could probably both sell out these venues on their own but they wanted to help start a new festival. Same thing with warped tour with Paramore, Blink 182, etc.
I wrote the core of Dusk Descending, Lamentations (minus Lamentations Of The Kings), and Contagion.
The other guitarist wrote the core of Dawn Ascending, and Lamentations Of The Kings. He very much does not like metalcore, and constantly pushed us more into the death metal territory, citing Revocation as the sound he wanted to go towards. I wanted to go more metalcore by the end, citing Demon Hunter as my main influence at the time.
And I think that's what really drove him out from the band. Contagion, the latest songs we released, definitely leaned into the metalcore vibe harder, especially with all the clean singing. It's my favorite EP we released, with Contagion being my favorite song we wrote. My other guitarist openly disliked it entirely, and often didn't even want to play any of the songs live - it was always a bit of an argument deciding to throw them onto a set.
We have a few unreleased tracks we were working on. I wrote two. One is a straight melodic metalcore party song. The other is actually an Opeth inspired acoustic song. The two he wrote were very much death metal songs, bordering tech death at time with weird time changes and things. They took a long time for my drummer to get down, and that definitely frustrated my old guitarist because he wanted to be more and more technical. The rest of us wanted to go more and more melodic.
Well aside from my bassist, if he had his way we'd have been a slam/deathcore band.