What every one has speculated about it, after all the problems and drama surrounding this year’s edition of the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival, it’s has been confirmed today by co-founder John Reese via Facebook, calling the end of the yearly Festival for good.

The poor ticket sales, unfortunate (but not false) choice of words from co-founder Kevin Lyman, and even worse backlash the festival received this past weeks from people on it, it comes as no surprise that this would be the last edition of the tour, leaving a sad lapse in the North American metal scene that will be tough to replace in the future. As some of you may know, this would be the second Rockstar Energy Drink festival cancelled for the future as Uproar Festival also is taking this year off.

You can read Reese’s announcement on his decision below, which you can be sure it wasn’t an easy one considering his efforts to unite the metal community after the festival was suffering from the public disaster.

Despite the changes and issues the festival was going through in the past years, no one can ignore the positive impact it created in the metal community by exposing many new upcoming bands or bringing great acts to the masses. We can only hope that Reese and Lyman will see the blank slate they have now and will work on something new to replace the hole this tour will leave. Reese says a new beginning could start, so maybe a replacement metal fest could happen. Maybe not with Lyman, however. In an interview with Billboard that ran on Friday, Lyman had a more measured response than his earlier comments, but claimed “No one’s developing the new headliners we need in metal. I thought maybe we could be part of that, I don’t know if we can.”