Five years after closing up shop, the heavy music package tour known as Mayhem Festival is returning in 2020.
“Don’t call it a comeback,” states the official Instagram page of Mayhem Fest with the hashtag #mayhemfest2020 and a photo of Sylvester Stallone as Rocky Balboa. The Instagram bio for the Mayhem Fest page also teases, “Hindsight is 2020… and so is the return of Mayhem.”
Mayhem Festival launched in 2008 with performances from Slipknot, Disturbed, Mastodon, Five Finger Death Punch, and more. Throughout the years, acts such as Marilyn Manson, Korn, Rob Zombie, and Avenged Sevenfold have served as headliners.
After low ticket sales plagued the 2015 bill that featured Slayer, King Diamond, Hellyeah, and more, Mayhem Festival shut down. It also didn’t help that during the course of that run, co-founder Kevin Lyman called out a lack of headliners in the genre and said that metal was “old, gray and fat.” Needless to say, the quote didn’t go over well with performers or attendees.
(Read: Musicians React to Heavy Metal Being Fastest-Growing Genre)
Earlier this year, Mayhem’s other co-founder, John Reese, asked fans if the festival should return. It looks like the answer was “yes.”
As of now, no bands or dates have been announced. Previous Mayhem Festival tours would travel across North America from late June or early July through early August. Stay tuned as details are revealed.